Assholes Can’t Grow Ears
I’m taking a break from social media. I’d already cut way back on Facebook and deleted my Twitter account, but I mean from all of it. I need to take care of myself and constantly worrying on behalf of other people—from strangers to close friends—isn’t helping me do that.
I don’t mean I’ve stopped caring about actual things, but I’ve stopped making it easy for my brain to imagine horrible scenarios I have no way of verifying.
So if you’re seeing less of me around the internet, that’s why.
It’s unfortunate I’m losing my damn mind while I need to fundraise, but whatever. Not the first time that’s happened and likely not the last. There’s probably some connection there, but it doesn’t serve me to dwell on it.
On Saturday I think it was, I listened to that Tara Brach podcast episode on Embodiment like six times. I’m finding a lot of stuff in there to ponder, helpful stuff. I think I’m chipping away at my anxiety. My IBS pain is going down too. I feel less like an overinflated kickball.
While contemplating my past traumas (two early psychological abuses) it occurred to me that the reason trying to heal from them now wasn’t working is that I didn’t need to. I had already done the work. Digging in again because I thought I needed to #MeToo my way out of a soggy paper bag was overkill. I was retraumatizing myself for no real reason.
See, I developed coping habits escaping those relationships that became habitualized. And that’s the actual problem.
For instance, while imagining a plan of action for dumping the first “I’ll kill myself if you leave me” guy (I was young and didn’t know) I would repeatedly have conversations in my head where I’d imagine how to escape the controlling and manipulation without being the impetus to someone’s suicide.
That coping mechanism worked back then, helping me build up the courage to end what was hurting me and envision a different kind of future. But now that overactive imagination is just a habit fueling my anxiety, not a creative way to choose a solution. It has me trapped in my own head.
I want to be clear that I’m not making excuses for any abusers. They are still assholes. But what I realize now, finally, is that there is no creative way to make an asshole listen—assholes can’t grow ears.
Anyway, this anxious imagining eventually translated to me obsessing about how best to describe my physical symptoms at doctors’ appointments. But by rehearsing my conversations in advance, I implicitly accepted a burden that wasn’t mine. I was losing a lot of sleep, and I mean that in the most literal way possible.
It takes energy to imagine. No wonder I’m exhausted.