No Backspaces

Apathetic Obsessive

How often do I put myself into positions where I can play the victim and place blame on others instead of myself? It’s a good way to hedge my exposure and protect myself from myself. I’ve done that with work, school, relationships, religion etc. I make a big stink out of taking responsibility and ownership, and I do those things, but maybe not in the way that I could be. Not that I need to control and be everything for everyone all of the time, more that I can be more ready to accept being insufficient and not measuring up in that moment, or just not being so self righteous and actually allowing myself to be wrong in someone else’s eyes, and in that awareness I can show grace to myself and others.

What ways do I protect myself and manage perceived risk? How do I manage anxiety?

  1. Prefacing a lot of statements with “I don’t know…”or heavily filtering my social behavior to be generally acceptable, robot-like.
  2. Being generally non-committal when it comes to general goals or things that take more dedicated time and effort.
  3. Or maybe more that I can beat myself up over not obsessing over something and maximizing my time.
  4. Flip back to being apathetic to avoid rejection or failure
  5. Finding reasons not to do something instead of focusing on why I should.
  6. I bounce between extremes of apathetic and obsessive tendencies based on trying to assuage any potential or realized internal or external conflict. In reality I care a lot about what other people think and am very dependent on validation from others.
  7. But then also suffer in silence, push others away etc.

I have a strong fear of loss. I know I have an aversion to vulnerability, but I’ve approached that more from the angle of “where did this come from” and “what triggers those feelings now” or unconsciously “how can I suppress this feeling”, when really the idea would be accepting my faults in a way of acknowledging they exist and not thinking I’m broken for being human. Doesn’t mean i can’t try to do something better next time, but also doesn’t mean i have to reinvent myself at every roadblock.

Face your faults and limitations with courage. Accept, do what you can, move forward. Being and becoming.