Protecting the ones I love… from me

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about how well people respond to me, when I am bold and brave and daring and don’t let anything get in my way. I seem to have a sort of mystique about me, that causes people to have innate trust in my capabilities and “powers”… even if they have only just gotten to know me.

And likewise, when I am less than my best, when I am faltering, when I am struggling with my life, and I am in full contact with my failings, people around me tend to get miffed. As though I am intentionally being that way to piss them off. Or I’m being a lazy-ass and slacking off. Or I’ve decided to intentionally not live up to my potential.

What’s more, the people closest to me have an extremely bad reaction when I don’t take the high road — they get a bit anxious and agitated, as though I’m about to eat them, or something. It’s an either-or, all-on-all-off thing with me, this adoration of my “secret powers”, and frankly, it kind of irritates me, that I’ve always got to be superhuman, or I can’t be anything at all.

Over the past week, I’ve been deliberately sticking with my mystique thing – being the bold old soul I used to be, before I had my fall in 2004, and my life went to shit. I guess I just gave up on trying to be sensitive to my own needs, and I jumped off the bandwagon that a lot of my therapist friends are on — getting into the victim mentality and concentrating on my needs… my wants… my hurts… my… my… my…

Okay, so I was a bit into that frame of mind for a while. My previous therapist was really into “helping” me get in touch with my own needs and all that, for fear that I was being trampled by the all-too-needy world. My current therapist is on the opposite end of the spectrum — they’re really into me not going off on my sore spots and getting all mired in them. I’ve been re-adjusting, over the past six months or so, and I think it’s been really good for me. Sometimes, I do wish I could get a more sympathetic ear in my current shrink, but I’d rather deal with a hard-ass than someone who coddles me and turns me into an infant, ‘cuz my inner child needs attention.

Actually, I have to say, I’m a whole lot happier now, and I’m a whole lot more functional — and leaning towards increased functionality — than I was for about a year. That whole victim orientation makes me a little nervous, and I also have to say that getting in touch with my needs is vastly overrated. To tell the truth, I’m so self-obsessed at times (I credit my right-hemisphere brain injury) that the whole rest of the world takes a back seat to my needs. The weird thing is, half the time, I don’t even realize it, ‘cuz I’m so deep in my own crap, I can’t see the fact that I’m being pathologically ego-centric. Truly, I have so many needs, there is literally no end to them… and the more I “get in touch” with them, the more I find I need, and it rapidly becomes an endless cycle of identifying my newest and most novel needs, and trying to figure out how to get them met. Which is a never-ending cycle of self-perpetuating ego-centricity of the highest order.

Sigh…

Anyway, what I’m realizing more and more all the time, is that sometimes it’s not such a great idea to focus on myself. And in fact, if I want to do my friends and family a favor, I’ll take the focus off me for a little bit. Or a lot. When I’m given free rein, I can be petulant and childish, foolish and self-serving, needy beyond words, spiteful, bitchy, cranky, and aggressive. It’s not pretty.

So, this trip I’m doing now, with being the strong silent type and holding my shit, even when I feel like I’m about to come apart inside… (which, by the way, is a trip I was on for many, many years, until some well-meaning but head-injury-oblivious person encouraged me to start thinking more about myself and consider what I wanted in life. Then, my literal head jumped on that bandwagon and we were off to the races)…  well, that old stoicism, that warrior composure, that ability to just remain calm in the midst of everything… it’s actually a very good trip, which has really good consequences, and it gets me back on the good foot, even when everything around me feels like it’s going to pot.

And this self-sacrificing trip also lets me keep my friends and family from living with a madperson, a crazy-ass nut-case who jumps at every sound and attacks their own shadow. When left to my own devices and allowed to act like a child, there’s a part of me that will jump at the chance. But when someone — like my current shrink — pushes me to buck up and grow up… well, even if that costs me my warm-fuzzy in-touch-ness with all my feelings, it does make me a better person.

And that’s a good thing.