Hello Alessa,

I understand you and I know it must be very hard.

I really appreciate your insight and your effort to be respsonsible for dealing with your emotions healthily. You don’t use your conditions as an “alibi” in conflicts and it is very important and commendable. ❤️ You are wiser than you know. You are actually wiser than many people without autism or cptsd.

However, I know that this might not possible for all people with serious troubles – there are many factors – intelligence, emotional maturity, attitude, age, … which make it impossible for them to get this insight.

Or what is your opinion / experience?

🦋

Hello!

“I think you raised something I have and suspect many feel at times when conversations have led to misunderstandings and or silence. It can feel like the only way to keep things safe is to hold back part of ourselves which leave us feeling alone and unheard. Even naming this tension feels risky as I worry it might sound like conflict.” (Peter)

I do understand.

“As you wrote, the commitment to compassion and respect can feel lonely. I suspect the best we can do is hold that tension with the same compassion and respect we hope to offer others. Which I know does not resolve that ’empty feeling’…” (Peter)

I really hope that with more effort and practice in self-compassion and healthy boundaries we could fill this empty space. ❤️

“We are all feeling, deeply caring individuals and it hurts being ignored, when someone rejects a genuine desire to connect.” (Alessa)

Yes. It is very important to realize that we cannot genuinly connect with others through our own trauma or difficulties. There is only a hunger for validation behind this “connection”. This hunger will never be satisfied, because validation doesn’t come from outside world… then being in a loop of endless oversharing is getting us only further and further from others… because oversharing is draining and unhealthy pattern (there is a big difference between healthy sharing and oversharing). Many adults suffer because their own parents used to overshare their problems with them. There’s no difference when we are adults and we have a friend who only overshares… they just left us being totally drained with feelings that we are not really important and fear that we cannot say anything. It’s a problem connected to what Peter shared about save spaces…

Lucidity, thank you a lot! I don’t know the concepts you wrote about. I might look deeper into it. I really want to think about this more:

“We can act respectfully while respecting ourselves whatever that may look like to us but if we don’t respect ourselves and self-sacrifuce, this is noted by others. Its opens doors to how it can be used to manipulate and exploit us, it can be seen as a sign of weakness by others and be judged, it can reveal different degrees of alliances that we have with different group members.”

Do you have any specific experiences with this?

Sending ❤️

🦋

Hello everyone,

I’m very happy for such a useful discussion. ☀️ I have to sort it all out in my head a little more before I can properly answer. Sometimes it takes me a long time to formulate my thoughts into words…

Now, I just have these short thoughts:

trauma / issues / difficulties explain, but they don’t excuse
healthy spaces should cultivate balance between comfort and discomfort / agreement and disagreement
boundaries have to protect everyone

🦋