Hi ! Welcome to my blog, welcome back if you've been here before...
Day 1/Intro
First post of 2025! I haven't written a blog post in ages, what's different about this week is that the topic isn't something new to me. I have struggled with isolation for a really long time. It's normal to feel lonely and be out of contact with people sometimes, but I get the sense that my situation or at least the feelings around it are disproportionate.
I don't know what is the norm for this topic, but something feels frustrating and disappointing.
Sometimes it feels like the feedback I get from the world is that I am not what it wants or expects. Which is unpleasant, but I don't know what's real and what's just my feelings which makes it extra frustrating.
It was this uncertainty, confusions, frustration that made me look into getting an autism diagnosis at one point, I thought that would maybe answer some of my questions. It's hard to know what the truth is about this topic; my friends say I'm a pleasure to be around, but I barely hear from them or see them... what is the actual reality.
It feels like I have fragments of what the actual reality is, but can't make out a cohesive picture out of it; me and my friends love each other, but I never hear from them, but they live far away from me, but I met a lot of them in particular and peculiar ways and hence the rhythm and frequency of contact will reflect this etc etc.
On day One I thought about the importance of being brave, and confronting things head on. Whether that's being honest with myself, being more grounded in reality, voicing things to people instead of putting it off for ages, especially in the context of relationships and connection.
I like to consult my friends when I'm writing my weekly blog, this is what my friend said when I asked him about this issue:
Put it out into the world and the world will have an answer for you. Otherwise It will be forever inside you.
Reach out to the world for your answer, rather than being so internal with it and making assumptions.
Take the risk before you lose the chance!
And you know what, I do make things very internal. I don't reach out to the world even though it may have my answer.
I think this lack of reaching out is a confidence thing. A freeze response in the fight, flight or freeze chain.
Day 2 - It's not my job
Day 2 is where I thought about control. It's important to honour what is and isn't within the limits of our control. Not doing this can create problems; you are freezing in an area where you actually have autonomy and influence..
...and conversely, spiralling out over what you ought to have done in a situation you have no control over.
Day 3 - It's a self concept/self image thing
Something that I urgently need to stop doing, is reading something out of nothing. I fixate on the gaps, the lapses in information. No one taught me how to ignore things as they ignore me. This is a result of my life experiences, being ignored a lot (sad face).
So why do I do this? The first word that popped into my head was discount. I discount myself.
I feel like I don't have the tools, the resources, the understanding, to view my life and my achievements at the level they probably deserve.
When you discount yourself according to the perceived expectations of others, it's like judging yourself by the standard of someone who has an A4 page of information about you.
But I know it's not my fault that I do this...
I don't know if the discounting was caused by being ignored, or whether I discounted myself first to the point fixate on lapses in information, silences, and situations where I am being ignored.
At this point I'm a bit stuck so I do some art therapy to help better articulate my feelings...
You draw a piece of art based on how you feel and then you interrogate it:
Who are you? Compact and Predictable Short Cuts.
Where did you come from? The requirement to never let things get too real, keep everything malleable and mouldable.
What do you need? To get better at striking the balance. Yes be flexible, be malleable, open minded, daring, but also daring enough to stay grounded in reality, stay grounded in the things that are true about your situation. The truth is always loving, if it is to be accurate.
I think of myself as a dreamer, someone who is always living in a haze.
Why is it then, that when I dream or think up possibilities, they are never directly about myself? Because it's the type of fantasising you do in order to hold out hope for the future and save yourself; a rescue fantasy... it might be causing problems now, but at one point it served a purpose
It's not just a rescue fantasy, it's also a redemption fantasy. Something that gives me the impression I've successfully escaped my circumstances, whether by approval from someone else or direct intervention (from someone else).
Part of me has to discount everything that I am so that the rescue/redemption arc makes sense as a story.
This is the day that I realised I need to come back to earth, be grounded in reality.
I'd compare this rescue/redemption fantasy to setting out to play a normal game of chess, but using a board that looks like this:
Where's the continuity? Don't do that.
When I'm not grounded in reality, and start playing into this rescue/redemption fantasy that's when I start to play small. That's when I don't realise the positive truths about my situation, that's when it feels like my issues with isolation are suffocating me, and I can't think straight or take positive action.
I need to be more grounded in reality. I need to affirm to myself that I don't need to be anywhere else. Everything I am, and everything I am doing, is exactly what it needs to be right now.
Don't get me wrong, it will take work to remind myself to come back to earth. I'm at least aware of my thinking patterns now.
You don't need someone to rescue you if you're happy with where you are and what you have.
Whatever I'm looking for, It's not out there...
Day 4 - Return to Yourself
One of my favourite Youtubers, that I reference a lot for my blog posts, has a video called
There are many points in the vid relevant to this topic. I'm gonna note some of them down, it will feel a bit non linear.
He talks about how so much of what we do is tied to ego. In my specific case I think ego is this whole redemption/rescue arc that I am so desperate to have play out in my life
On Day 4 I thought about re-routing. Thinking differently, adding a new pin to my mental map.
When someone says return to yourself, where does that mean I need to go?
I respond to this question with another question, how would I want to feel regardless of external circumstances?
People don't realise that who we aspire to be is also a part of our identity, and we can be that person right now, if we want. That's what I think.
This is embodying, I think we should experience it as a type of play.
Rather than assuming what people think about you, play with the idea that you'll never know and it doesn't matter. Entertain the idea of not taking things personally (which is tricky because of what I described on Day 3 about discounting myself). Put aside the dependency for people to behave or respond a certain way, how do you want to feel?
I want to be more accepting, I don't wanna take things a personally. I want to exist with less friction.
Less friction, less force.
At one point life felt like an emergency where I had to stay activated, I had to force certain expectations onto every situation, because I was mentally trying to escape. But that isn't the case anymore, part of me just needs to catch up to this fact.
Day 5 - Self Discipline
I think having emotional discipline means having the capacity to pause, and have a bit more a say in whether you want to engage with things emotionally (rather than feeling dragged into it).
Discipline to honour other people's power and agency, (and your own). People have the power and agency to interact with you however, but it's important to remember that you also have the power and agency to decide whether develop a complex around other people's behaviour.
You wouldn't want people to be anything other than what they are, trust me. Think about the implications, it means you can also do whatever you want.
Probably this feels tricky for me because people didn't honour my power and agency for a long time (just a theory). Having to be self disciplined, not take things personally, not read too much into people's behaviour, feels like the domination and lack of agency I constantly tried to escape from in the past.
I say to myself that it's my right to feel however I want about X situation, actually.
But that's not entirely true or helpful. I know logically that some things aren't worth getting worked up about, and that I need to try and hold myself accountable a bit more.
Do things according to what I know rather than what I feel. Behaving in this was is done out of love, it's out of care, but my mind just isn't wired to interpret it that way... this can change with practice, patience, and self compassion.
Day 4 I discussed re-routing your brain, plotting different new routes, more up to date routes, more helpful routes, routes that honour yourself, routes that honour others.
What I'm trying to be more emotionally disciplined about is my grounding in reality. Seeing things as they are.
I saw a quote on twitter that said something like:
There is no disappointment when you accept things or people for what they are.
Day 6 - Accept Yourself
So much of life is actually out of our control, the pay off for worrying about what you could/should/would have done is marginal.
The detail in my iPhone notes app was very limited... borderline cryptic. This is what I think I was getting at...
All of this anguish around isolation, rescue, redemption, control, escape can be remedied by just accepting where I currently am.
It was the strangest thing that made me realise this... try and be a bit open minded.
So there were these before and after plastic surgery photos that went viral on twitter/x recently. Yes, it was confirmed that the after photos were photoshop but it got me thinking, the after photos made these people look like they'd had a different experience of life.
What am I getting at? Everything about me, is the crystallisation of all my choices, everything that has ever happened to me. What is the point of wanting it to be something else or have things play out in a different way?
I have an analogy I refer to a lot when I talk about self acceptance:
It's like you're on a direct train. The route is fixed, you've already committed to going straight to the last stop, no stops in between. People who care for you deeply will be on the train with you, good friends may be on a different train heading for the same destination. But there will be people who didn't realise you were a fast train as they approached the platform, and others who won't engage because your final stop seems like a dead end to them...
This is an analogy about acknowledging that important components of ourselves and identity are fixed, and this shouldn't be a bad thing. When we get frustrated about these fixed aspects, it's like we're setting the wrong goal. Acceptance is saying certain things about me aren't good or bad, they just are.
Accepting where you are also means accepting tricky feelings, and being really honest with yourself about how you feel and why. Allow yourself to feel things, even if they're bad. Get to the bottom of the feeling, to the end of the feeling. Let it have a say, accommodate and integrate it, have a dialogue with it. Then it feels way less like an obstacle you have to get over.
Day 7, Conclusion
So at the start of this week I had different theories from people about what is going on and didn't feel like any of it was coming together as a complete picture.
I think what joins together all of this into a complete picture is the need for judgement free awareness and acceptance of different aspects of my life. I should try and let go of the need for things to unfold in any particular way.
The rescue/redemption story arc might be putting pressure on my existing relationships. It makes the stakes so unnaturally high in situations that don't call for it, it makes me play small, it means I'm unable to let things unfold naturally. What I will say is that being aware of this thinking pattern is really powerful.
The rescue/redemption arc will most likely be around for a while (I am not trying to fix it, I probably can't on my own), but now that I can take a step back and be aware of it without judgement, I get more of a say in whether I want to engage.
I am no longer rejecting myself as a way of having something that feels like control (at the expense of discounting everything about myself).
I am better able to acknowledge the truth of a situation in a way that is healthy. One question I could try asking myself more is, what are the most likely answers? I probably can't answer that question in a helpful way if I don't sit with my feelings though.
There is still work to do around being more honest with myself about how I feel and why... what in particular about being isolated bothers me, what are my triggers, where do I need need advice, where do I need a morale boost.
I think the most important use of my time now is understanding what I can do to prove to myself that there isn't a need for the redemption/rescue story arc to continue playing out.
A big part of that is discipline, having the discipline to respect the natural order and rhythm of things, not allowing yourself to be emotionally dragged in multiple directions.
Having the discipline to ask yourself, what's the most likely answer? And being okay with the response you get back, not trying to twist it into something, or interrogate it to death for no reason.
Having the discipline to know how and when to reach out to the world for an answer. To not fill in the blanks, where not-knowing is actually okay. To be honest with yourself and others. To exercise a bit of patience.
I don't think this will be easy, but I've already made so much progress in this area and believe I can make more.
That's enough writing, if you got this far thank you for reading <3
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