Hello,
I'm trying to understand a pattern that has been bothering me for a long time, and I'd really appreciate some outside perspectives. I obviously only have my own perspective, and I'm specifically looking for criticism of my own behaviour as well.
When something hurts me, I often don't actually want the other person to take responsibility for it or admit that they did something wrong. I mostly want my hurt to be acknowledged.
Something as simple as "I can understand why that hurt you" or "i can see that hurt you" would be enough.
What is particularly difficult for me is when I try to explain why something hurt me and the response immediately becomes something like "Maybe they didn't mean it that way", "Maybe you're interpreting it too negatively", or "It's probably not as bad as you think." Or my therapist started to laugh a little an said: "You're really playing the victim, though." (It wasn't an attack but to show me how far away my reaction was, but it still hurt me)
Even if that interpretation is completely reasonable, I experience it as "it's not really that bad, so your reaction doesn't make sense."
And that's where I can become defensive, not always but right now my skin is very thin.
I have a tendency to explain my self when I feel invalidated. But when I finally speak up, I can become intense and overly focused on making the other person understand my perspective. I sometimes push too hard and don't give the other person enough room for their own interpretation. Which is not okay.
Afterwards, I often immediately turn everything against myself:
Was I too sensitive?
Did I communicate badly?
Did I hurt the other person?
Was I actually the problem?
Should I have just stayed quiet?
Am I always like that?
This creates something that feels like a double bind to me:
If I stay quiet, I feel like my own hurt is being ignored. If I speak up, my reaction can become the focus and my original hurt disappears. I try to improve my communication by explaining how I feel and how I perceive the situation right now.
I recently experienced exactly this with a close friend.
I was telling him about my experiences with my therapist. I explained that I often felt that the therapist focused more on evaluating my reactions than on actually engaging with what I was trying to tell him. I've already discussed this with my therapist: that was the situation where he said, "You're really playing the victim."
I gave my friend this example. He responded by offering a more positive interpretation of the therapist's behaviour: essentially that perhaps the therapist was trying to challenge me or show me that things weren't as bad as I perceived them.
I reacted too quickly and too strongly. I told him that I was experiencing the same dynamic with him at that moment and that I could feel my nervous system reacting to it.: I was trying to explain why something had hurt me, and instead of acknowledging that, my friend was visibly hurt by that and withdrew. He fell silent, wouldn't look me in the eye, and his body language said, "Leave me alone."
Looking back, I can see that I handled that badly. I became too forceful, didn't give him enough room, and effectively compared his way of responding to the behaviour of my therapist.
I noticed that, and I then tried to address the problem, but he barely responded. A few days later I sent him a long voice message apologizing. I acknowledged that I had been too intense and that I had pushed over his perspective. I also explained that this subject is extremely emotionally loaded for me and that I can react very strongly because some of these experiences feel almost existentially threatening to me.
I explicitly told him that this explains my reaction but doesn't excuse it.
So I do recognize that I did something wrong here. I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for my behaviour.
My friend had also just gone through a breakup with a lot of conflict, so looking back, it was pretty stupid of me to start such an emotionally loaded conversation at that point. I should have been more considerate of what he was already dealing with. I deeply regret that.
But what I'm struggling with is that I also feel like the original issue gets completely lost once I explain myself.
I can simultaneously have communicated badly and have been genuinely hurt by what happened.
Those two things don't cancel each other out.
I don't need the other person to admit that they were wrong. I don't need them to take responsibility for my feelings. I just want there to be room for the fact that I was actually hurt.
Instead, I often end up feeling that I have to prove why my hurt was justified.
And then the other person's reaction triggers the exact fear I already have: "See? You spoke up, you handled it badly, and now you're the problem. You better leave."
I'm trying to figure out how to break this cycle.
How can I take genuine responsibility for my own behaviour without completely abandoning the original hurt that caused the reaction in the first place?
How do I learn to say "I understand that I handled this badly" while also being able to say "but what happened still hurt me"?
Thank you very much for reading. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts.