Asking for advice as it’s affecting all aspects of my life. I had that type of upbringing where you never show emotion and only speak when spoken to growing up. I thought that was the right was to raise a child and that’s how I lived my life but it turns out I was raised by extremely narcissistic parents. I’m now finding myself around people that expect more communication and more emotional availability. It’s really hard and I don’t want to be alone forever. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you
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You have to know that nothing will happen to you. Mfs (or you) have judged others for all of their lives, and nobody ends up legitimately hurt or unable to try again.
Nothing’s going to happen to you. Learn to breathe and be calm when you share your feelings. Learn to identify them (and projections) and where they come from. And again, do not fear opening up
E: legitimately as in physically (or in most cases, extremely mentally hurt)
The key is to process your emotions before sharing them.
This way you are detached from the emotion & the outcome of sharing it when you do. This is how you show vulnerability from a place of security.
* Don’t open up to everyone. Remember that many people will hate and attack you for it. The world is full of people who will claim not to want to reinforce gender norms right up until it mildly inconveniences them. Stick to sharing your feelings with a handful of people you know you can trust.
* Remember that positive and negative emotional expression are not received the same way. When you’re happy and joyful, that “gives” to the people around you. When you’re depressed and in need of support, that “takes” from them. You need to carefully monitor your balance in this regard, or you’ll eventually alienate everyone. Being alive is extremely difficult, but if you only talk about the difficult parts eventually even the friendliest person will leave.
* Don’t overthink *how* you are sharing your feelings. Know that if you’re talking with the right people, they will make space for you to make minor mistakes when expressing yourself. They will not aggressively police you. It is more important for you to be authentic than it is for you to use exactly the right language in the right way. Doubly so with tone – anyone who says something similar to “don’t take that tone with me” or “that’s not the right tone” is not someone you should be sharing your feelings with.
In my experience, I found this hard to do only while I was basically being manipulated for the convenience of others. There’s a whole swathe of mental health adjacent content which can be summarised as “learn to be happy with what you have”. You need to avoid that if you want to feel and work with your full emotional range. Once you find a group of people you can genuinely trust, this whole area is dramatically easier.
I’m judging you right now, so is everyone else. Not that scary, is it?
First of all, good for you for even considering this after the childhood you had. What you’re doing is very brave.
Opening up to someone is a gift for *them*. You are trusting them by letting them see the real you. If it works out, it will allow the two of you to become closer than you ever could otherwise. But the risk, obviously, is that they have power to hurt you in ways they couldn’t otherwise.
The key is that because it’s a gift, it’s okay to *make them earn it*. There’s nothing wrong with taking it slow and going at your own pace. It’s also okay to trust your instincts. The right person will make you glad you told the truth literally from the first moment. If someone ever makes you regret it, you can cut them off cold turkey. No one is entitled to your truth.
The flip side about being more open about your feelings is you can also be more open about the things that please and annoy you. And smart people will be able to use that information to be far more lovable in your presence than you ever imagined.