utopia

Hey. So I've been setting boundaries and questioning my relationships of late. ANd whoa! The resistance and offense people take! It's like this>> Something as simple as removing facebook "friends" I havent seen in years write to me totally upset and then bring out resentments from literally years ago...it fascinates me but makes me glad my minor rejection shows the insecurities and issues in people that I was right to dis-associate with.

I'm questioning why I want to be "friends" with people I dont talk to, people who don't talk to me, people who want to drink and party with me but not sit down and get to know me, people who want to be around me because why, my looks, my talents but not for sharing and caring??whom I have little feelings of connection with, especially now....This feels most of all about ((((I am not responsible for the feelings of others))) I have learnt in recovery that unless I have an open wound it doesn't hurt if salt is thrown at me...and I'm not hurt , just baffled and surprised how easily some people can go from being honey and sweety this to well **** you and you are nasty....like, wow. arent people interesting and so conditional sometimes.


Yet I keep up my meetings...this dark night of the soul passes, the clouds begin to clear, I see a much smaller but much more intimate circle of loved ones around me. I am no longer friends with people who just stroke my ego and me theirs (your hair is pretty, love you....thats it) I am filtering out the people I was connected to out of a sense of guilt or obligation and sticking to the ones I feel I can learn from and that will ALLOW me to interact and give to them.

i guess this is what is meant by "in all our affairs". Im processing some guilt and feelings of being selfish but also feeling this is the first time I've put myself first instead of thinking about their feelings and abandoning the tugs of discomfort at abandoning myself.

pls share if you relate to this as i feel a bit shaky but kinda sure im making the moves to a more healthier circle of support.

breaking away, breaking into something majorly new and unfamilar.

splendra

((((utopia))))

When I quit drinking and drugging I found that it was necessary to stop hanging out with people who liked drinking and drugging. Face book did not exist back then so I did not have that kind of thing to contend with.

I moved away and started a whole new life. I guess some people wondered where I was. Everyone I knew knew for sure that I was getting tired of the scene. There were some regrets over choices I made. I got over it and just started making better choices.

The boundaries that were the toughest to keep were with my family which is why I moved away. My ACOA issues are by far the deepest and most problematic for me. I moved back after nearly 10 years of being away thinking I was healed enough to deal with my family NOT!!!!

Now I am getting boundaries with them again. My mom is getting older and I don't want her to die without knowing that I love her in spite of everything. Being distant was good and it did help me gather some strength.

Now is the time for me to really deal with it. I can stand back from it all and see what I am doing to keep the misery going. I can stop. I have found that boundaries are so much about me taking charge of myself and not putting myself in situations that I know are a problem for me. When I find myself getting ready to take a dive I tell myself to stop stand back. There is always a warning or a red flag and I can see it if I am paying attention.

splendra

bump

GiveLove

Utopia, I am right there with you, maybe just a few steps beyond, but not much.

It was so very hard to "cleanse" my life of toxic people. One of the hardest things for me to do is to risk making people angry with me, and as you're finding out. some people (especially the toxic ones!) can get very angry when you shake up the status quo and decide to move on.

Sometimes, if someone is particularly difficult or whining or angry, I still doubt myself. Temporarily. It passes, as I force myself back to the important work of building a better life for myself.

I can only say that with every passing day, and with the development of new, better friendships with people who truly cared about me for ME, it got easier and easier and easier.

And now I feel as though I can breathe more easily, without the weight of all of that negativity, all of that fake compassion, that artificialness, the ties to old ways of being that don't serve me any more. I hadn't realized how much all that poison was pressing in on me until I got out from under it, and then the air was so much sweeter, the light of the sun that much brighter.

Wonderful. Hard at the times I have to do it, but really the best thing I've done for myself.

Hugs to you
GL

worthyoflove

I can totally relate to what you are going through utopia. I had a friend who was used to me doing for her, which was absolutely my fault. I had no idea how unhealthy my behavior of rescuing was until I got into recovery. She got so used to it that when I started to take care of myself she became physically abusive. I backed far away from the friendship and all this manipulative behavior came out of her. I was absolutely shocked and saddened. I didn't realize how emotionally draining she was either until I paid attention to how I felt after I got off the phone with her. I wound up losing my job, my apt, and my sanity. I don't go near her anymore and don't talk to her on the phone either. It is detrimental to myself and well-being. She did not like the changes she saw in me and was out for blood. I have her listed as a blood-sucking vampire on my list of friends. She wanted to get together and I told her I couldn't and I won't ever again. This was MY FAULT for setting it up that way, but I didn't know any different.

GingerM

Good for you! I know it's not comfortable, or even really happy for that matter, but it is good for you, honest!

About 2 years ago now, I lost the last "friend" in my life who was toxic. She wasn't a real friend, and she had a major hissy fit, told me she wouldn't talk to me again. Gee, what a shame, I will honor that boundary.

But I did feel a sense of loss. The loss, I realized, after a fair amount of soul searching, was not the loss of the friend, it was the loss of the friend I *thought* I had, had deluded myself into believing I had, or was wishing I had. The real person though? I realized that after over a decade of friendship, she had never once been my friend. And that's a bit like a death - and so I grieved a bit. But never did I want her back as my friend.

There have been other "friends" like that one who I either allowed to "not talk to me anymore", or who I just stopped contact with. They were bad for me, and I wasn't exactly helping them any either.

Interestingly, I don't live in a void, so different people are now friends or acquaintances, and those people are people I choose a bit more carefully. Life is less drama filled and more enjoyable now.

It does get better.

worthyoflove

Yes!! That is what I was grieving. One certainly doesn't know who a good friend is until you become your own friend. Thanks Ginger for allowing me to see this. Love ya! :

splendra

I have had a lot of friends come and go. Only one has really stuck with me always. I met Him when I was very young and he is with me today. My HP revealed himself to me and has always been my friend. I call my HP Jesus. I know the angels are with me. I am never alone.

Trying.

I can so relate to this post. Yes I feel exactly the same way and even deleted my FB account because as you say, these people didn't want to sit down and get to know me. Did I want to sit down and get to know them? Oh yes I tried, but I always felt I was perhaps being to deep, people don't seem to have the ablity to talk from their trueselfs. I dont say this as a judgement, more an observation. Recovery can get lonely at times, but sometimes I'm ok with lonely, I mean we can be in a room full of the "wrong" people and feel awful. Thanks for posting your feelings, its refreshing.

tromboneliness

This is a tough one. I grew up on the East Coast, moved away when I was 32, then came back (but not to the town, or even quite the state, I grew up in -- being across the state line was supposed to indicate a, [ahem], boundary, but naturally that has been ignored -- why am I not surprised?).

My dad is the main toxic vampire in my life, at this point. If he and I were the same age, I would have no choice but to kick him out of my life -- but because he's 89, I don't have to do that; I can just wait, because he's not going to last forever. Which is what I'm doing. I interact with him when I have to -- like this weekend, since it's Father's Day, so I feel some obligation there. And, truth be told, it's not entirely black-and-white -- I sometimes enjoy spending time with my dad; don't get me wrong, he's not a bad person per se, just an alcoholic control freak, and I'm his kid, so I got the damage.

So that's how it goes. I keep my interaction to a minimum. My dad says I'm "hard to reach" on the phone -- I like to think he's just too clueless to realize that I'm "hard to reach" because I just plain don't answer the d*mn phone -- it's weird how he could fail to grasp that. The man is a brilliant scientist, who did groundbreaking work all throughout his career -- and even at his advanced age, he's still pretty sharp, so it's not like he doesn't understand the concept of a cell phone. But somehow, I don't think he gets that my phone is in my pocket but that I just don't answer it, half the time. Probably because the way he uses his own cell phone is that he just carries it when he thinks there might be an "emergency," and keeps it turned off most of the time. That's our parents' generation -- they also think whenever the land line rings, you are obligated to drop what you're doing and answer it.

But I digress.

One does need to cull the Facebook friends list from time to time -- and one needs to cull the real-life friends list, in the same way!

T