Hey, I don't know what you're going through but I hope you stay safe and find some peace. Best wishes, be kind to yourself
Ok, so my heartfelt thanks, Anon, and I understand the wishes, and accept them for what they are, and I am safe, but I don't have peace, and I can't have that right now, or for a while, for some very specific structural reasons in my head, and external to me that I can't control, or ask to be changed. But know that I've rebuilt myself from this sort of thing before, but this one is the worst I've done so far, and I will probably hurt for some time, unfortunately, because the way to stop that hurt is _very_ specifically unavailable to me, both by my actions and those of others. But I can dull it down maybe, as I have more tools now?
Forgive me, Anon, if I use your kind response to rawdog through, in a general way, how I got to this low place, why I'm screaming into the void a bit, and what I'm doing about it, with links.
Know that it's really, really hard for me to be kind to myself, as I'm coming to understand, for reasons of historical trauma, that I thought I had a handle on, but obviously not as much as I hoped. My ADHD diagnosing psychaitrist was Stunningly good (I've come to realise I had the sheer luck to know someone who knew someone who is a world authority in workplace mental health at the international governmental level, who just happened to be in NZ in 2023. Privilege, eh?) But anyway, as I say above about kindness, he noted this:
As anyone who follows me will have noticed these past few years, I'm adjusting to getting an ADHD diagnosis in '23, and that unzipped, and gave me words, for so many things in my life that I'd previously just assumed were standard human emotions and behaviours. And they are, just not neurotypical versions of them. And I do, fundamentally, _enjoy_ being me, with all the intensity issues I have, both positive and negative, or I wouldn't be able to do the things I do, and that people know me for, so I will live with this, and hope it tones down.
I have to note to myself that This isn't actually about the triggering event/person/thing/trauma, this is not for them, they have their own Very Sensible reasons, which are for their peace and safety. This is for me, because I have to live with me, whereas the source, be it thing/person/event/process, whether good, bad, up, down, sideways or otherwise, is orthogonal to me, and (with luck) doesn't have to live with or be around me, (unless there is a very great degree of life change), because it's done, and it's past, I'm just stuck on dealing with it. And I have to deal with it in a way that doesn't damage me any more, but also doesn't damage them, or people around both of us, more than has already been done.
The ADHD diagnosis was really useful, because it gave me words for things I've felt all my life but wasn't aware were not just general common emotions, but often specific fellow travellers to neurodivergence and the effects of childhood traumatic experience. Chief among these is RSD, which in my case occurs when I fear I've failed someone, driven them away, hurt them, exploited them, failed to live up to promises, or my own expectations. This expresses in me most usually as a physically intense anxiety attack, particularly with adrenaline-ish chest pain. It sucks, _especially as the perceived rejection may not necessarily exist at all_.
However, what this also leads to is a lot of intensely damaging internal analytical rumination and analysing of where I may have gone wrong/how I could have avoided a situation/how I could fix it. This is a compulsion, akin to, and sometimes part of OCD diagnoses, but I don't have that, but I do compulsively ruminate about my problems and intrusive thoughts, and I've been in therapy for things like this on and off since the '80s, and I have to say, now it's bleedingly obvious that for me, and maybe for many people with ADHD + trauma responses but with intact emotional intelligence, traditional talk therapy methods _make_this_painful_rumination_much_worse_ because they are all based on describing, analysing and being mindful about said intrusive thoughts and ruminations, which is just Ruminating again, and thus catastrophically bad as a managment and intervention, and now that I know that it's one of the very first things I'm working on right now, via some of these linked materials.
Closely related to the RSD, and the painful compulsive rumination on my (percieved) failures, but different from it, although often causing it, is my anxious-avoidant attachment style, hypervigilance, desire to find, and defuse, conflict before it may hurt me. This is, I think, not specifically associated with the ADHD, but rather is deeply associated with the trauma of the effects of an emotionally immature, moderately violent, father, whose idea of love was always conditional, damaging, affection with hooks in. This left strong hypervigilance, a sense of needing to spot hurt/hurting people and fix them, before they damage me. I think I have a normal, or slightly above normal, amount of empathy. But I have military grade over the horizon radar emotional hypervigilance on constant alert, which has often made me a good agony uncle, but less so for my own problems, and that is difficult to keep under control, useful as it has been for spotting danger, and has literally saved my life (Remote Area Mining Industry!), or enabled me to notice people who are hurting and need help.
This difficulty with love, attachment and friendship because of past trauma, means I have to deal with a propensity for strong crushes, both platonic, and romantic - the concept of limerence is useful here, but the commonly recommended, very trad heteronormative therapeutic practices about Limerant crushes, are, actually, Catastrophically bad for me, as most of them boil down to one or other versions of non contact/avoidance/revulsion therapy, which translates into compulsive rumination again, see above, but also more on that below.
Where does that leave me now, Anon. Well, basically I thought I'd worked through a difficult crush on a friend back in '23, by means of a well defined boundary from them, and by methods that do work for me (and that isn't non contact or avoidance, it's just being normal about them. )
I have multiple people that I have platonic or romantic crushes on at all times, all my life, since I was _4_ years old, of varying levels of intensity. Some of them are good friends, some of them have been romantic partners, some of them are just platonic feels for people I look up to but am not close to. I can be around them without being weird, but I have to work at it, and it's best if, even if they know I may be a bit intense, and if a romantic entanglement is off the cards or finished, I get the space to just do a normal friendship, communications or professional relationship around them if that is possible. Just yesterday I had a chance meeting with one person who I have a very intense crush on, and we talked about our respective sciences, and that was fine, and last night I engaged in a long conversation about some cool archaeology with another who's both an intense crush and an ex romantic partner. And that was fine.
But a year or so after I worked on toning down that intense crush from '23, that person actually came to me for help. Which is immensely humbling trust, and I _Think_ I did help them. And that led to a much more intense and intimate friendship, and some of that went places that you should only go if you have a good, and well founded, sense of self esteem, and self worth. And good impulse control. ( we neither of us have good impulse control, I think.)
But life and employment change, and they had to leave town last summer, so we had one last trip to move gear back north, and I didn't quite realise that while the increased intensity of our friendship was fun, (I think, I desperately hope), their motivations and intensity were not the same as mine, and other things in their life from before I knew them well, from work, study, living situation, were very traumatic, and intimately associated with the town I live in, and I _know_ what it is like living in a place where you may come around a corner, or enter a shop, or go to an event, and have someone who traumatised you be there. Being on eggshells all the time like that is how I grew up, and it is fractally debilitating to one's mental health, and while I noticed, and helped, with other things they talked through with me that were problems, I didn't pay close attention to the other traumas that were also there, in part because they did not ask me to.
And there were plans to return, but I felt them increasingly withdraw over that summer, conversations became one sided, events were declined, methods of communication reduced, and reduced again, right down to nearly nothing.
At which point I hit a nadir, and the rejection dysphoria that I'd been learning to control spiked, so I strengthened my requests for contact, I explained my motivations too much, I went through why I was scared of their clear retreat from me, of the fear of loss of their friendship, I described how I was working on dealing with limerance, and that it was less of a problem than before in my life, how the rumination and RSD is actually far more damaging, I reiterated my concerns and hopes, but also offered that if needed, if it was best for their well being, I would understand a non contact or much reduced acquaintance. During this time they got the chance to drive back to my town and I helped them pack the last gear, they returned a couple of keepsakes that were inconsequential when given, but difficult to receive back. That was hard, and then they left.
And a day or so later, sent a clear, well reasoned, polite acknowledgement and statement of cherishing our past friendship, explanation of the strong traumatic events prior to our close friendship that had gnawed away their ability to move back here without constant stress, explanation that had affected their ability to set boundaries and led to dependance for both of us, and then a clear acceptance and detailed request for the conditions for indefinite non contact, and wished me well, and that they are doing ok.
So now I'm having to do the things that I have done before, to bring to a close a close friendship and my memories of that. Which for reasons described here as to how my brain processes emotion and memory, is Brutally Hard to achieve, because so many of my memories are attached to or triggered by objects, places, things, smells, noises and tastes.
But the non contact/avoidance method they have asked me to go through with, and as is recommended by most normative therapy practices for ending such attachment only really works if you go through your head and not just crush every little thing, place, memory, that you have, but also you need to find some reason to crush those feelings and hopes - something to induce revulsion, or dislike, or distance. Which is exactly the procedure of compulsive painful rumination, which I am trying to stop. An intervention built around the core of my anxiety and rumination problems is not a therapy or intervention at all, it's just torture. This isn't their fault, I don't think this would particularly have passed their mind, or if it is at the recommendation of a practitioner, both the practitioner, and my former friend, may think they are following best practice. Just not for me, because I've been here before.
And I have none of those things about this person. It's easier when I've had intense feeling before, but discovered on more close acquaintance that there was something about a person that was disastrous to my feeling for them. And in this case, there is nothing, and I will not ruminate and examine every little part of this finished friendship to find some one awful thing I can use as an excuse to engage in such destruction.
It's smooth. There's no handle here that I can turn into a technicality to induce indiffernce, dislike, anger, revulsion or hate about this person, nor do I want to.
And I Will Not. Because that method is, actually, Fucking Awful to do to your head, because I've done it before, it is fractally bad for my mental health, both because for all our history that is both good and bad, this person is genuinely an excellent person. not a perfect person, not someone I should put on a pedestal, nor want to, but nobody is. But they're not someone I wish to cauterise out of my mind, for they've done nothing wrong.
Additionally, that leaves me no way out. For the other option in this case is also, once again, compulsive rumination upon my own motivations, to find some reason that I am, indeed, awful, and also a reason and source of trauma to this person. Which is also, A Fucking Awful thing to do to my head without either evidence or statement from them that I am or have done such.
I am in a cleft stick of my own making, probably for a good long while. I'm doing the only things I can at the moment:
I've removed all methods of easy communication with them, shared social media connections, etc. (This sort of thing was, of course, far easier in pre-digital ages)
I've archived, zipped, filed and air gapped from my devices any media we made together, photos of projects and events, and so forth.
Because they got to return those inconsequential keepsakes, but asked me not to return any to them, I've asked a trusted person to hide those that are too precious to discard, but too painful now to keep.
There's a number of things we made together for various hobbies that are worth money, but that are too painful for me to keep or use, so I've monetised those, and will return their share of the sale price.
It's easier if one can completely change living situations and towns, but I can do none of that, as my family, etc are all here, and we have no reason to leave. So I'm completely rearranging large areas of my house, both for changing configurations that have too many memories, but also because Renovations anyway.
the pain of loss imbues too many of our shared hobbies and social groups, so that's a problem, and a big one, as I'm a main supplier of equipment and materials to several shared reenactment groups. But it's too much, so I'm going to sell a lot of kit, I think.
We had talked of many future projects or ideas, many of which I had begun acquiring materials for. All of which are ashes to me now, so I've been finding each of those materials or things, crushing the hope they represent, and selling or giving them away.
The money from some of the things that are now too painful to keep is also a problem. I don't feel I can keep it, I may put it in some sort account I can't touch for a long period of time.
Not much else to say, really. I'll post this now, it's take about 15 hours to think about and write, and it's approaching 4 am.
