Some things are much better, others only somewhat

I post one article per month that will remain permanently for subscribers only, with this being the official one for April.

One frustrating thing about all the therapy, meditation and so forth that I’ve done over the years is that a few things feel like they keep getting better and better, while others things improve much more slowly.

Things that have improved include things like the general degree to which I like myself, the amount of ease I feel in social situations, and the extent to which I’m okay with people disliking me.

While I’m still not the most socially confident person in the world and still get unreasonably insecure about some things, it used to feel almost unbearable if I e.g. ended up in an online argument with complete strangers and they strongly disliked me or my positions. These days, I might get irritated at them, but it doesn’t cause me extreme anguish.

Here are a few more things that have changed.

Being okay with “what do others think of me” being unknown. Five years ago, I wrote:

I recall a conversation I once had with someone, when I was still a lot more worried about this kind of thing. When I said I was worried about what other people think of me, she said “but you can’t actually know what others think of you, so why focus on that?”

From where I’m at now, I can understand her confusion.

If you’re feeling secure, what others think of you is just a question like any other, such as “I wonder what they had for breakfast today”. You can choose to think about it, but it’s not intrinsically compelling. If it feels like an unanswerable question that it doesn’t give you any benefit to think about, you can just… not think about it. Why wouldn’t you think about something else? There are lots of more fun things to think about!

But if you’re feeling insecure, you can’t just choose not to think about it. Someone not liking you, or even possibly not liking you, feels on a deep emotional level like danger. It’s much more like “is my partner going to abandon me” than it’s “what did these people have for breakfast”. Because you’re so sensitive to rejection that even a stranger disliking you feels a little bit like being abandoned by a loved one, like nobody will ever love you.

From that frame of mind, my friend’s question of “you can’t know, so why care” felt incomprehensible. There was a sense of “yeah I can’t know, and that’s exactly what’s horrifying and it’s why I have to keep worrying about it”.

Because “you can’t know what other people think of you” felt, on some emotional level, a little bit like “you can’t know whether anyone will ever truly care about you”.

It feels like a sign of having made progress that I couldn’t write that post today, simply because I’ve forgotten enough of that specific insecure mindset that I couldn’t describe it in that much detail anymore.

Likewise, I recall a time - I think this would have been around 2018 - when progress in meditation had made me more aware of what kinds of thoughts I had looping around in my head. One day on a walk, I realized just how much I kept thinking about “what did those people think about me” after I headed home from various social events. I realized that this was a common occurrence - being at some event would reliably make me have those thoughts.

(You might ask, how was it that I needed to discover it through meditation? Because usually I’d have those thoughts, maybe when walking back from an event, and then forget about them once I came home. I had the thoughts, but I didn’t have introspective awareness of having had the thoughts.)

That too is a thing that I couldn’t give you more details about, because aside for this one memory, I have little recollection of having those kinds of thoughts anymore.

Some unhealthy relationship patterns relaxing themselves. About two years ago, I was at an event where I noticed that I suddenly felt a strong attraction toward someone. I noticed that she had a strong independent energy that felt very appealing and admirable. But then I also recognized it as strongly avoidant-flavored. I recognized that this was the type of person who I’d feel strongly attracted to, but couldn’t actually be in a relationship with. Rather, we’d just end up in a classic pursuer-distancer dance, with me as the pursuer.

Knowing that intellectually didn’t make the attraction any weaker, though. It felt quite strong and distinct, and despite all the thoughts of “this would be a terrible idea”, I found myself thinking about ways to find out if she’d be available...

...but then I somehow ended up asking myself the question, if I hypothetically did end up in a relationship with her, how would I expect her to react when I wanted closeness?

What came up was a felt sense of expecting to find the closeness and trying to get it, and failing to. Instead of getting the kind of closeness that I wanted, there’d just be a gaping distance instead.

And then upon seeing that, the attraction seemed to kind of lose its edge and soften and have the tip of it melt away. It felt like an actual physical object softening and melting.

It was as if the attraction itself had realized something about the nature of reality. It understood not only that this person was a poor match for this kind of desire, but that there was a deeper underlying pattern that would predictably always lead to bad results.

And seeing that, the pattern released.

Interestingly, I still really like that person and think that she’s amazing. I still like hanging out with her if I get the chance. That part wasn’t projection or wrong - what was wrong was the child-like expectation of someone who might fulfill all of my needs.

There’s a lightness to being in her presence, now. My mind doesn’t get drawn into thoughts of “what if”. I’m genuinely happy with us only being friends. With no need for her to being anything else than she is, I can more clearly see and appreciate that which she is.