In relationships humans mostly learn better through insight, doing the emotional labor and self- reflection, than you directly communicating 🤢with them.
Communication is context dependent but most of us are being groomed into this very “white 🇺🇸 therapy approach” of share your feelings, be vulnerable and communicate your needs and boundaries. 💡What is therapeutical and appropriate needs to be grounded in culture, context and not on the ideal of how humans behave. For all of us psych junkies, human psychology and therapy is THEORY and should be applied as such.
As someone who deeply regrets trying ALL of the aforementioned just communicate your boundaries and needs, I now:
limit who has access to me,
block and delete at the first sign of the ick,
only communicate my feelings and expectations if I like them and we have an established pattern of goodwill.
For example, a woman who was pursuing me as a friend but kept emotionally dumping onto me sent me a message- unsolicited - about how I was passive aggressive because “telling people to go to therapy when you don’t go is passive aggresive.”
I found it to be deeply inappropriate because I did NOT say that (HUGE red flag when people put words into your mouth. HUGE.) I had “directly communicated“ my boundary with her that I didn’t have the bandwith for her problems and that it was good that she liked her therapist because that is what therapy is for. She was also one of those “I like to keep it real” types which I have found to be code for “I’m sloppy and I expect to say whatever I want and for you to coddle me. But if you are direct with me, you are aggressive/mean.”
I was very tempted to respond, “you are aggressive aggressive, you don’t listen well and you don’t pick up on social cues”. Instead I just blocked. I had hung out with her like 4 times so it wasn’t a relationship that I was invested in and I had already tolerated a lot of red flags.
I actually think she was probably following conventional therapy advice. And I laughed because she ended her message with “love and light” which is hallmark passive aggressiveness. 🤣🥶. She was directly communicating but it was inappropriate because of the context.
If I had actually said that comment, then I wouldn’t have had an issue with her message. If she hadn’t already exhibited so many red flags, then I might have just apologized. “I’m sorry. I don’t ever want to make you feel badly.” But I just felt manipulated and couldn’t believe that someone who added nothing to my life felt it was appropriate.
This is a woman who is pushing 50, has a boyfriend who she should be telling this stuff to, supposedly had great friends but felt that I should be her free therapist. She isn’t going to learn by me communicating with her. Look at what happened when I did. She isn’t going to learn at all or she is going to sit and think why do people keep abandoning/blocking me?
Also, “you cannot be friends with people who would switch places with you.” Story of my life is women pretending like they want to be my friend but then putting me in a caregiving/life coaching role.
I definitely think I stayed longer with my NVM ex because of therapy. In fact SIX years ago I started going to therapy because I didn’t want to get stuck in a bad or dead end relationship again. The problem is, the therapists advice seems to be to communicate. Also since you are the only one there the sole focus is on resolving “issues” yourself. Which kinda puts the blame on you. Issues that could be resolved by leaving him! I tried to work and grow through it. The relationship was toxic, manipulative, and emotional damaging. I was being gaslighted by ex, therapist, and myself! Fuck that. I was trying to work on my communication and “anxious” attachment. However my anxiety was a normal reaction to 🚩 bad behavior. I know there is a place for therapy but in relationship and dating, I think you are better off in most cases with FDS principles.
I love that you point out when people put words in your mouth- it really is so telling. And it's ALWAS them telling you something about THEMSELVES to see if you'll put up with it. So this lady's "you're being really passive aggressive rn" is really her projecting saying she's passive aggressive- are you still willing to engage w her? I had a friend do this to me recently, she was distraught and crying over a guy cancelling their second date the day of and asked me if she could come over bc she didn't want to be alone- but didn't want me to feel obligated bc she remembered I mentioned having trouble with boundaries. I never told her I had poor boundaries- the only boundaries I ever brought up w her were in the context of OLD and having learned to drop men earlier. I of course felt sorry for her and invited my crying friend over for dinner where she proceeded to stay two hours after dinner on a weeknight 🙄 til I said "ok it's my bedtime, get out." Since then I scaled back from inviting her over and ho boy, watching her continue to date/set herself up for so much grief is just massively cringe. Since watching this play out it's brought up when she put words in my mouth before- and now I see the pattern and know to scale back and be available as a crutch when it collapses.
I disagree that it is a "white 🇺🇸 therapy approach". The patriarchy exists in most cultures, and many WOC have fled to "white" countries because it was worse where they came from. Therapy is experiencing a crisis of blaming and revictimizing women, and it's worldwide. This is why FDS encourages users to only have female therapists, and to carefully screen them for pickme tendencies.
In my experience, a bad counselor is worse than none at all- and I'm beginning to believe that HVC are almost as rare as HVM.
The three steps you listed are the foundation of boundaries, strong relationships, and a happy life. Just following these 3 will resolve a ton of issues and save so much grief.