Posted by Solstice on November 11, 2010, at 8:09:19
In reply to no longer a pariah, posted by Christ_empowered on October 12, 2010, at 22:06:22
Hi -
I haven't had your exact circumstances, but I can relate to the self-experience you describe.
It is very, very weird to experience other people treaingt you differently than you expect to be treated - especially when your expectation is based on a long-term history that has pretty much 'told' you who you are. It can happen, for example, to someone who has been in a long term abusive relationship when they they leave it and are in their first non-abusive relationship. A relatively briefer experience (than yours) for me was when I went from four years of an intense and toxic therapeutic relationship that left me feeling bad about myself, faulted for everything, disempowered and therapeutically hopeless.. to a therapeutic relationship where my thoughts counted.. where I wasn't blamed.. where I could *be* in error about something but not feel shamed.. where my vulnerability was held as if it was gold in caring hands - rather than unrecognized and mowed over. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know whether it was 'real.' I was very afraid to believe it would be there the next time.
Probably the important things are to: one, be aware of yourself so that you don't sabatoge it with the expectations you've learned to have making you react to situations as if you anticipate being rejected and treated as an outcast. Two, let it just exist. Let yourself just experience it, like you did in the grocery store. Don't try to *make* those better social experiences come to you, but take care not to push them away out of fear of believing they are real. Over time, after repeated experiences of being treated like everyone else, they will become your new normal. As they become your new normal, you'll begin adopting the same patterns of social behavior - which will increase those experiences. It kind of builds itself on itself or something.
Those are my thoughts on it. I know you originally wrote this a month ago.. and I hope you have continued to have those weird experiences!
Solstice
> So, I moved a few months ago. Before, I'd been *the* outcast in my small town. Crazy, unemployed, unattractive, drug-addled...I was all around stigmatized and an outcast.
>
> Now, I'm healthier (I got older, but I look younger...weird, huh?), less crazy, and no one knows me, so I'm no longer an outcast. I don't know how to deal with it, though.
>
> I'm so used to having people avoid me, even going so far as to cross the street to avoid me...so used to having people I know (people I work with, even) act like they don't see me in public...that now, now that I'm treated just like anybody else, I don't know quite what to make of it.
>
> Its not like I get treated amazingly well here, either. I'm still a little overweight and I dress in Goodwill clothes (looking for a job AND on a juice fast at the moment), so its not like I get points for being uber-hot or well-dressed. But I'm treated, like I said...just like anybody else. The sad thing is, I'm so used to be treated like crap that I don't know what to make of this. Today, in the grocery store, a store attendant said "thanks, hon"--nothing major--and I burst into a big smile. I was sooo *happy* to be treated with just a little bit of kindness, I didn't know what to do.
>
> Anyone ever experienced this?
>
>
poster:Solstice
thread:965599
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20101029/msgs/969763.html