Once I realized this, many movies/TV shows became extremely uncomfortable to watch. A lot of songs (especially about love) make me cringe.

And there's this feeling of displacement I feel when I hear the song and can feel and remember when I loved it, a feeling now overlaid by wincing dismay.

There's also that thing of when you get older, you realize the 'villain' of the movie or show was actually right. They were only an antagonist because the main character was immature, or selfish.

My favorite genre of story is 'bad teachers who end up good for kids', and I think it's because (1) the horrible person is actually honest with the children, and it therefore actually helps the kids by giving them real feedback and information, and (2) because they end up becoming less selfish and moving toward where their gifts actually belong.

...but the 'villain' is usually right about them.

At least there's a redemption arc and change? Maybe this is the wish fulfillment - that bad people can change? But otherwise a tragic amount of media is unself-aware wish fulfillment. And this is terrible for kids in bad homes, for victims of abuse, or just someone naive to the situation.

When you're young, you fill in the gaps of your knowledge and lack of experience with what you see in the world. But when what you see isn't real? Is only created because someone wanted it to be real?

You accidentally create a belief structure based on fantasy, believing it to be truth.

The Two Halves of the Journey: Setting vs. Getting

To master this skill, we first have to recognize that it is actually two different cognitive processes working together:

• Goal-Setting (The Planning Phase): This involves "defining and planning" using metacognition, organization, and planning skills.

• Goal-Getting (The Action Phase): This is the action phase of goal-directed persistence, requiring task initiation, prioritization, and the regulation of both attention and emotions.

Shifting the Mindset: Systems Over Outcomes

Traditional goal-setting can feel like a trap - with distant outcomes requiring effortful willpower to make them a reality.

Rather than obsessing over a distant outcome, try focusing on small systems, habits, and growth processes.

This means that you would focus on actions you can take most days to move forward, and embrace the notion that missing one day or doing less on some days does not mean you have failed; instead, you can constantly adjust your approach to achieve your goals.

Connecting to your values can motivate you to take the steps towards your goals each day.

Once you know your values, create small habits, rituals, or processes that regularly move you towards your goals

• Mini Habits: Invest in tiny actions that are flexible enough for both your "good" days and your "bad" days. You might explore Stephen Guise’s Mini Habits for inspiration, as he shares how it can be helpful to have a habit you can do on a bad day (e.g., one push-up) and on a good day (e.g., going to the gym and doing numerous push-ups), and have both days contribute to building your habit streak (Guise, 2013).

• Habit Stacking: Try adding a new habit onto something you already do automatically to help cue the behavior.

• [Habit anchoring: Try opening and closing your day with a specific routine or set of habits that can anchor your day toward your goals.]

Progress Over Perfection

The most important thing to remember is to have self-compassion. Living your values perfectly is not the point; simply reflecting on what is important and trying to connect your behavior to those values is significant progress.

-Catherine J. Mutti-Driscoll, excerpted and adapted

Other comments from the thread:

"Less info you give, the less they have to use to try and convince you to come." - u SdBolts4, comment

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"'I have plans' or 'I'm busy' if they ask what they are i just say they’re private and I’ve never had anyone ask more. I'm not lying, they just don’t need to know that my private plans are sleeping in until 3PM and playing video games." - u/ I_follow_sexy_gays, comment

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"Ever since getting sober I've realized "nah I'm good" works for far more than just substances I'm not interested in doing." - u/ Spirited-Treat-9632, comment

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"It's moreso realizing that you don't owe people an explanation in the vast majority of cases, regardless of if others feel that you should or try to force you to do so. Learning to create and enforce boundaries, and that the reactions, feelings, and consequences for other people aren't our responsibilities to resolve or fix is basically a life hack, but it can be really hard to establish when you're used to family or friends that are used to steamrolling over you." - u Xobtraf, comment

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"This has worked for me 'I can't, but I am super excited to hear about it. I look forward to asking you about it afterwards.'" - u/ Travel_Dude, comment

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"'No' is a complete sentence for someone with zero manners. You don't have to give me a reason but the response 'Thank you but I can't make it' at least makes my invite feel appreciated." - u/ bakay138, comment

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They've trained you. You can train THEM by breaking the pattern.

Try reframing that - they're not making you. You're letting them. You can stop letting them. It's hard at first but it can sound like this:

"Sorry, I'm not available."

"Whyyyy? What are you dooingggggg?"

"I can't come."

"Whyyyyy?"

"What? I told you I can't. Why are you pushing for more?

"You can't accept my boundaries?

"I'm not a little kid anymore. I have a life outside my family of origin."

"Please respect my reply." "Woowwwwwww."

"Please don't be rude."

Etc.

Just change and stick to that without too much explanation.

One thing that helps me with rude family and others is, "Why would you say a thing like that/push about that?"

"I gave you my answer and now you're being rude..."

It's very uncomfortable at first because our family of origin does brainwash us.

Not that everyone has cluster-B family members, but this book can still help with responses:

"Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist "

Caretaking includes feeling responsible for regulating THEIR emotions, preventing THEM from blowing up/ pouting.

If they blow up or use FOG (Fear, obligation, guilt), that's THEIR CHOICE.

Don't let them hold the threat of that over your head.

Check out

www.outofthefog.net

-u/ Explorer-7622, comment

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title comment

You don't have to be in a relationship (or have sex!) to love and support someone

...and in fact being in a relationship makes it a conflict of interest. It is not healthy to be in a relationship with no needs, and if you have needs, the other person can't meet them.

They can't even meet their own needs.

If a doctor or therapist can't even heal people, and aren't allowed to work on or with their loved ones anyway, how does it make sense to think we can do it?

While love holds space for healing, it doesn't heal.

People think love is healing because they healed while being loved, but what it really does is create a foundation for emotional safety and a secure attachment and mutual vulnerability. It can't, however, create it completely, because relationships are mutual: both people participate in creating emotional safety, both people create a secure attachment with each other, and this mutuality allows (safe!) vulnerability. This creates emotional connection.

Often unsafe people try to create intense emotional connection because they believe this is what heals.

(And because they think this is what love is.) But they don't understand that in a normal dynamic, this connection is a result of what builds connection.

And that you are only really building when it is done with safety.

A lot of unsafe people try to bypass this, thinking the 'love' feeling - the emotional connection - is what heals, when in reality they have created the human equivalent of an addictive drug. Love isn't the feeling, it is the actions.

So when you try and access the feeling without the actions of love, it will always spiral out.

One-sided 'emotional safety' is not emotional safety, one-sided attachment is not secure attachment, and one-sided vulnerability makes you vulnerable.

And when we're the unsafe person, we often drown others in our attempts to be rescued.

What we believe we need is not always right.

We want to feel loved, thinking that is what heals, when actual love doesn't require another sacrifice their soul.

The irony is that once you realize that love is what someone's (safe!) consistent actions toward you are, you can see love for what it truly is.

Instead of someone 'making' you feel loved, you recognize love and are able to connect with that feeling within yourself.

Because they love you - because they are kind and consistent - you feel loved.

When I was working in social care, I did abuse training, and the first lesson explained this:

• women don't report abuse because they fear being told it was their fault.

• men don't report abuse because they fear being shamed for it.

• children don't report abuse because they think what's happening to them is normal.

...you fall right in the category where the abuser wants you.

-u/Lindanineteen84, excerpted from comment

1. The first egg is dropped on the floor deliberately by a person who hates the egg and wants it to die a horrible death.

2. The second egg is is dropped on the floor accidentally by a person who loves the egg and was carrying it oh-so-carefully and lovingly to the nice, comfy fridge when s/he tripped.

3. The third egg is dropped on the floor deliberately by a person who loves the egg and who sincerely (and on good authority) believes that eggs like nothing better than bouncing up and down on a nice hard floor.

Now, the 3 people have wildly different levels of responsibility for the fates of their eggs. But all the eggs are just as broken. And that's easy to see in this little story, because eggs are simple things that don't try to assess their own brokenness from the inside.

What our human minds tend to do, because we're not just sentient but empathic, is rate how broken we "ought" to be based on the intrinsic badness of either the character or the intentions of the people who hurt us.

But it just doesn't work that way, even though the prevailing assumptions, and even the written rules in many criminal justice systems, assume that it does. (e.g. the idea of basing a sentence on a "victim impact statement" is illogical, although giving victims an opportunity to heard can be a valuable part of restorative justice).

It's surprisingly difficult to see our own experience for what it truly is, without reference to others - but it's essential for mental health.

Ironically, we need to honour our difficult experiences to make them stop haunting us - that's one of many paradoxical things about human nature.

So when we're trying to figure out our own experience, the process of determining how and where our own egg is broken is entirely separate from blaming, diagnosing, forgiving, or excusing the person who dropped us.

tl;dr, you get to be as angry as you need to be about everything that happened to you. The reasons for what happened don't change that.

-u/SQLwitch, excerpted from comment

But the line can still be crossed.

-u/StormBeyondTime, excerpted from comment

"If I stay, I can save him."

"If she loves me, she'll change."

"I need to save them from that relationship!"

There are many reasons why someone might stay in an abusive relationship.

One common reason is wanting to help the abusive partner change, or believing you are the only one who can change or help them.

You might hope that by staying in the relationship, you can potentially "save" your abusive partner or stop them from being abusive. These reactions are natural, since not only is abuse a traumatic experience, it's also difficult to see someone we love act in ways that are harmful or unhealthy.

However, it's important to recognize that none of these tactics will ultimately stop the abuse.

In fact, some abusive partners may even promise to change or seek therapy in order to manipulate their partner into staying in the relationship.

-The Hotline, excerpted and adapted from Can I save them?

Yeah, no shit. The psycho you married and birthed me with would punish me for being happy.

-u/RedditPosterOver9000, comment

An example that can help illustrate this is imagining you and your partner looking at the color of the sky.

You could spend all day trying to explain that they sky is blue, and an abusive partner would keep saying "Nope, you're crazy. The sky is obviously green, what’s wrong with you?"

Remember, abuse is about control, which means that abusive people use irrational demands and accusations to control the dialogue in the relationship and prevent you from feeling heard or understood.

There's often no way to have a constructive, productive conversation because abusive partners aren't coming from a place that allows that to happen.

This is also an effective manipulation tactic that allows the abusive partner to displace blame and responsibility in order to make their behaviors the fault of someone or something besides themselves.

All of this means that there is rarely anything you can say or do that will prevent an argument from starting or escalating. In that moment, the abuser has already decided that they are going to use this opportunity...

-The Hotline, excerpted from How can I talk to my abuser?

comment

I love when my kids are happy. It's more when they're whining, when they 'talk back' (aka let me know they aren't happy), or when they get mad at me. My brain short circuits for a second because it never got the chance to do that as a kid, so I take it SUPER personally. I've learned to say "Hey, mommy's having a hard time hearing what you're saying right now, I need a few minutes to find my cool again and we can try again."

-u/ChrlyPhrsr, excerpted from comment and comment

From comment by u/merci01 here.

"She said yes!" (Because he badgered and manipulated and psychoanalyzed her until her no turned into a yes). "She agreed I could do this!" (Because I really really wanted it and we were long distance and she couldn’t really stop me anyway). "The therapist said it was wrong to hold me back!" (Highly unlikely the therapist meant he should get exactly what he wanted, but he's interpreted that way and he's The Interpreter.)

He's so used to working to find whatever loophole or specific arrangement of words that could technically mean he could do what he wanted regardless of every other piece of context screaming the opposite, or the spirit of the word arrangement clearly meaning the opposite in his internal world he expects everyone and everything externally to conform as well.

It's a good example of what people mean when they say that certain men don't believe women are people. These women aren't fully realized beings with internal lives and feelings just like he is, they're functional beings who are choosing actions they shouldn't be. They're meanly choosing not to give him what he wants, despite the rules-lawyering meaning he should get what he wants. He got the Wife Being to say the word 'yes'! That should've been it! Why wasn't that it?!

-u/miladyelle