Change of Living Situation II

Thank you for your feedback and pointing me towards helpful ressources, too. I hope it is ok to come back to this coaching again after some time and with a bit more distance. The situation got more difficult after this submission and my partner suffered I nerval break down because the tense living situation adding up on his previous difficulties was too much. He got medical help afterwards. We found a sublet flat for O. and spent two weeks offline abroad – recovering. I’m trying to leave these events out of the equations and would want to focus on one specific aspect of the situation, that came up in my thought-downloads and self-coachings. However, they are still quite present in my thoughts and might be semi-consciously integrated in this theme. That’s why, I wanted to mention it briefly.

As you pointed out I was not able to get out of my model, where I was giving O. a lot of power over my emotions. I definitely have people pleasing tendencies and I realise, that part of my distress came from this coping mechanism not being of any help in this situation. I could not appease any of my flatmates or O, apparently. However, I am proud of myself as I was very straight-forward communicating boundaries (which was difficult for me to do and I usual hope, that people will find out themselves) after yours and Mars coaching. I also managed to coach myself into looking at incidents with determined benevolence and found many excuses and possibilities to explain situations in O. favour. I am wondering, if I went to far, because later on we could not help but acknowledge, that she consciously overstepped clearly communicated boundaries and lied to us. I want to acknowledge, that it was a difficult and distressful situation and I wonder, how I could have manoeuvred it better for me.

At times, I was in such distress myself, that I could not control my actions – it was almost an out of body experience. I did nothing to bad but I hammered at O. door after she was already asleep, shouted and made her clean my sink in the bathroom she was not to use as she had one for herself (but she did not want to use her sink for cleaning stuff and forgot the clean up after using mine). This was my uncontrolled reaction of discovering the dirty sink, when I wanted to brush my teeth. I did not even ask, if any of my flatmates left the mess. I clearly jumped to the correct conclusion, that it was her. This is not something, I would have done, if I would have been in control of my actions. My acting out like this also contributed to the huge distress my partner experienced as he has never seen my like that. I have not lost control about my actions for many years but used to have full black-outs as a kid and teen. More recently, I would freeze and have black-outs about very stressful situations but loosing my control is fight-mode was frightening.

I am suspecting, that this rage I experienced is going back to me not trusting myself that this person is treating me disrespectful and not speaking up for myself but instead forcing myself to “adapt to the situation”. And again, I am not trusting myself, if that’s really the case or if I am just buried in the still the same model without realising. Not sure, if you can help me figuring out, which is the case but if you have any hints or tipps, they are much appreciated.

 

Answer:

Taking time and distance to process is always allowed and can be incredibly helpful. You’ve done well taking care of yourself and your partner through this situation. Notice how your beliefs about her being a refugee changed how you reacted to her. It seems kind to give different treatment to someone in that situation, but we can see the result was not one you liked.

You may choose to spend some time and energy analyzing why you reacted with rage if you would like to. I would offer that it may be more useful to instead put that into a new model and decide what you want to think about it now. You have every option available to you. If you allowed yourself to see yourself with love and compassion instead of judgement, what would that look like?

First, take any subjective words out, can you step back like an observer and change “hammered” and “shouted” to more factual descriptions? C: I hammered at O. door after she was already asleep, shouted and made her clean my sink

C: new factual circumstance

T: What do you want to think about you?

F: what feeling would serve you best?

A: how would you show up moving forward? What would you do or not do?

R: What result do you want for yourself?

The reality is, what happened is now in the past. You get to decide what you take away. Episode 69 on Loving your Past Self may help you as you process this.