talking to the voices about expressing disapproval

12:07 PM 1/11/11

This is how I live my life:

Don't ever express the slightest disapproval. It will cause terrible devastation. They will avoid you and refuse to work with you after that. They will totally distrust you and be totally hurt and will never cooperate with you again.

I am talking to 'them' this morning as I lie in bed. This is because I am concerned about Peter and Tammy's situation, and I took St. John's Wort last night so that I might be able to do some work today. I want to help Peter and Tammy, but I can't do it, and the voices are talking to me about why I can't help them. Mostly, it's because I'm disgusted with their attitudes, and I don't want to express this disapproval, I don't want them to see it on my face, I don't want them to hear it in my voice. As I talk to them, I hear that tone in my voice. I am extremely conscious of the slightest changes in the tone of my voice at all times when I'm talking to people. The tiniest change in my tone makes me anxious. I do not want to express disagreement or disapproval to anybody. I am terrified that it will hurt them very, very badly if I do.

When I hurt them, they turn around and hurt me very badly in response.

In my experience, when people's nonverbal signals, their tone, their facial expressions, their body language, express the tiniest bit of disapproval to me, I am hopelessly crushed. I know to never, ever talk about that subject again. If I try to talk about it again, it is painful, difficult, and scary. I can overcome those feelings if it's necessary to talk about the subject, to be honest about something painful, and I feel better about myself if I am honest about something.

So I don't want to do that to anybody else. I try as hard as I can to suppress the tiny, barely detectable changes in the music of my voice, the prosody, the 'song' that I sing while talking, the tone of my voice, the tension, the feelings expressed, no matter how tiny and subtle they are. I try to suppress my facial expressions too.

I remember becoming aware of this when I was in about seventh grade, when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old. Some kid at school said to me, 'Why do you do that?' when I scowled with my eyebrows. I hadn't been aware that I was scowling. Somebody would say something, and my sincere response was to scowl my eyebrows with disapproval or disagreement. But this kid pointed it out to me, and I became aware that it bothered people when I scowled disapproval and disagreement all the time, because it was a very frequent response. I did it all the time. I reacted instantly in my conversations, over and over again, with a scowl of disapproval and disagreement, or a scowl of doubt and uncertainty. It wasn't a rare thing. It wasn't always disapproval. It was sometimes doubt. Sometimes it meant that I just didn't know what to say. Sometimes it meant that I wasn't sure whether I agreed or not. Sometimes it meant that something just didn't feel right, but I didn't have the words to express what it was. I didn't know WHY I was scowling.

Another time, and it was probably that same kid, and I don't remember who this was - someone pointed out that I laughed every time anybody said anything. I would laugh in response to every sentence that someone said. It was just a small laugh in response. Again, that happened when I didn't know what to say. It would happen if they said something that I couldn't understand, something that meant nothing to me, something I couldn't relate to. It happened if I didn't understand their point of view. It happened if I couldn't imagine their world, if I couldn't imagine why they would say what they said, why they would think what they thought, why they would feel what they felt. If I couldn't understand them, then I responded with a laugh after whatever they said. Kids ask these questions: why do you laugh? why do you scowl? Adults have forgotten how to ask those questions.

So I went around disagreeing with everyone, and not understanding anyone else's point of view, for a long time. I learned to stop expressing it, to try not to laugh after everything someone said, to try not to scowl after everything someone said.

Then I had a crazy boyfriend for several years when I was a teenager, and we were always arguing, and I learned that I can never win an argument with a crazy person, so I don't even try.

Now that I'm an adult, I suppress my disagreement, my doubt, my disapproval, my lack of understanding of someone else's point of view, and I suppress all the arguments that I have against what they believe or what they do or what they feel. I don't even try.

Well, that's what 'they' were talking to me about this morning. Tammy and Peter are both unemployed. Not only that, but Tammy has allowed her car paperwork to all get out of date, and so she no longer has a license, and the car was towed and kept at the towing agency's lot. The registration, inspection, insurance, and license are all gone now. There was no real reason why this happened, either. It happened by default. Tammy has health problems that cause her to have no energy, no motivation, and I know how that feels. I've done the same thing. I've always gotten myself out of it, but my parents have helped me a lot, and I've used my herbal antidepressants. And I won't say 'the voices' have helped me, even though they want me to say that, because many times, they've urged me to do things that I didn't want to do, where I turned out to be exactly right later on - it was, indeed, a bad idea with bad consequences, and I shouldn't have done it.

(I remember arguing violently with 'the voices' back before I realized that the voices came from outside me, not inside. Back then, I thought the voices came from 'another part of my own personality.' I remember arguing with them about dating Eric. I didn't want to. I could see that Eric was an alcoholic and a smoker, and he was loud and obnoxious and impulsive, and that he might be violent or abusive. But the voices made me agree to date him, and then move in with him. Then, later on, 'they' rescued me, by having a long talk with me while I was sitting in the bathtub, and I clearly remember this, I was in the bathtub, which is a place where I usually feel most relaxed and focused, and I was talking to the voices in my head again, and 'we' decided to move me out into my own apartment. If I had done what I wanted from the beginning, I wouldn't have gone into that situation in the first place.)

(It's like the stories about time travel, where somebody meddles with the natural course of events, and the meddling has all these consequences which have to be fixed. Those shows and movies always have the message that even the tiniest bit of meddling in the natural timeline will cause many unexpected consequences later on.)

I am a laissez-faire, hands-off, libertarian, minarchist, or anarchist, or anti-federalist, or pro-intentional-community... whatever you want to call me.

Anyway, I have *just barely* mentioned a couple times to Peter that I might possibly help Tammy with her paperwork. I also might help her get a job. I have been unemployed too. It went on for months and months and months. In fact, I remember using Thought Field Therapy to relax myself enough to go out and get job applications again. But I was always being attacked and controlled from outside, and didn't know it. I don't know what I would have done on my own, totally alone. I'm not sure what choices I would have made, or how long I would have stayed in bad situations, or whether I would've gotten out on my own sooner instead of later. I don't know. I've never lived in a world where there was no electronic interference. Constant interference with the electrical system of the brain and body causes EVERYTHING to function much worse. It causes apathy, stupidity, depression, and just about everything that 'they' claim they are trying to 'help' me with. (*Note: 'apathy, stupidity, and depression' still exist in a world without electronic interference. I'm just saying that the attacks make those things much worse. And also, electromagnetic pollution makes it worse too, and that's not 'an attack,' it's just something that happens as an unwanted side effect of using radio waves to communicate.*)

So I have been in her situation.

But I don't like expressing my disapproval and disgust. When I was in that situation, I hated myself for having this weakness. I hated it that I was too scared to go hunt for a job. I hated being depressed and mentally unfocused and unable to decide what I wanted to do. I hated it that I had to work and that I wanted to have my free time instead of working. I hated myself for being unrealistic. The same things are happening to me now, but it's much less, because I still have ONE job, although my hours are cut, and I need more hours, and I need a second job. So I am underemployed, not unemployed. But I have those same feelings. And I know that if I were talking to Tammy, and hearing about how she doesn't want to do anything until the deadline - when her unemployment money runs out - when all of a sudden it's an urgent emergency for her to find a job - if I were talking to her about this, I would automatically and involuntarily express disgust and disapproval on my face. I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to judge her or make her hate herself even more. But that feeling is there and I can't hide it. So I haven't tried really hard to get involved in their situation. But that is what 'they' were talking to me about today. And it applies to my own situation too.

Well, that's today's issue...