"Pointing me in a crooked line..."

While reviewing with my AP Psychology students today, we went over the differences between self-serving bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. Due to recent events, I have been thinking about this a lot, although I wouldn't have put my thoughts into those terms. Sometimes teaching psychology is a mixed blessing.

While I am just as inclined to give myself more credit for my successes, my problem is more often the tendency to ruminate. When I am faced with a series of problems, my anxiety is more likely to cause me to dwell on the problem, not the solutions.  As I mentioned in my previous entry, I tend to stew and when I do, it can consume me. I will end a relationship if I'm forced to dwell on things for too long.

I know that this is one of my less pleasant qualities. For my own sanity, I will end the relationship in my head so that I can stop agonizing. On the few occasions when the person actually just needed buffer time, they have been surprised not to find me waiting for them. I believe that I try to explain to the person why I am unable to wait. There are people who get it and work with me.  Many people simply don't understand how I was raised in a world of absolutes and binary thinking and, understandably, can't work with my tendency toward binary thinking. I guess it's best that these relationships end. I don't know for sure, I have never had a relationship go the other way.

Asking me to see compromise, potential paths, shades of gray or to understand my own contributions to a situation going wrong is akin to asking me to see clearly without my glasses. I can see without them, but it is very difficult for me to see anything beyond vague shapes, there is no detail and I cannot differentiate boundaries. It isn't that I am unwilling to compromise, but I simply lack the ability without considerable assistance. (My eyesight is very bad, I am nearly blind without my glasses.)

There is a lot for me to unpack when it comes to my inflexibility. I know it starts with something a friend shared with me recently.

The picture above is one of the best ways to explain my upbringing. I translate every interaction with people from the language I grew up with into what I learned is acceptable social expression. I usually feel like I am speaking a foreign language when I talk to people. I remember Jack was one of the first people I met who truly shared a common language with me. It was funny, because we were so used to translating our subtly nuanced language for other people that it took us a while to realize that we could simply talk to each other. There are very few people that understood me as well as I think he did. It wasn't simply body language and spoken context, it was an entire (fucked up) cultural experience.

I don't understand how to ask for touch or words of affirmation. I crave them, but they are foreign to me. I try to communicate in these ways, but I always feel awkward and like my accent makes me unintelligible. After a number of failed tries, I usually give up.

I don't understand that social situations aren't absolute. I did not grow up in a world of compromise or flexibility. I teach students for whom English is not their primary language. One of the most important habits I have had to develop is to give instructions explicitly. I cannot say, "It would be nice if you would spend the period studying for tomorrow's test." If I do that, my students will not study, because I didn't tell them to. I have to say, "You will study for tomorrow's test for the remainder of the period. I will be collecting the review sheet at the end of class." Like my English Language Learners, I don't understand implicit suggestions that are part of social interaction. I take the words I'm given and accept them as an explicit instruction.

When it comes to relationships, i am very aware of my limitations. This is why I have favored relationships that tend toward more logical interactions. My English Language Learners prefer to discuss personal topics in their primary language. They can express all sorts of logical things in English, but nuance and flexibility is difficult for them. If I find myself in a relationship that feels like it will rely too much on emotional nuance and flexibility, I tend to distance myself. I have learned that I rarely do well in such relationships. Convinced that I won't do well in that sort of relationship, I tend to avoid them. Because I avoid them, they fall apart when I attempt them. (self-fulfilling prophecy)

I should be very clear. My mother rarely struck me after I was 11. My father never struck me after I was 5. I was not the kid who went to school with bruises, broken arms or any obvious forms of physical abuse. My mother was raised in a very abusive household, so she made sure she protected me from the family that would have violated my body (it's why she finally left my father). I know my parents loved me to the best of their abilities. But abuse perpetuates abuse, so while my body was mostly left alone, my mind was under constant attack. I live my life ready to defend against all comers.

I am finally starting to recognize these limitations about myself and working through them hasn't been a pleasant experience. Trying to explain my issues to another person has ruined more than one recent attempt at building a relationship. After causing a lot of pain and receiving much as well, I find that I am really wary of trying to build anything with anyone, at least not until I improve my emotional fluency.

At the moment, it feels like I will never be able to be a part of a functioning relationship, but I hope that is just the depression and anxiety talking.