The mental and emotional affects of abuse can mess with you on so many levels. For me it has created a huge lack of trust in so many unrealistic ways which can cause someone to live a paranoid life. This unfortunately leads to not allowing anyone into your life close enough to count as a friend of any kind. The constant awareness of what you say because you are on guard of how they could turn that against you someday. By allowing someone to get close enough to you and let your guard down is taking any protection away and leaving you vulnerable for back stabbing, lying, manipulation, cheating and the worst is they will become impatient with you once they know how you really feel about things and what goes on in your head.
I am constantly analyzing peoples reactions and responses to identify if they are real and can be trusted or if there is some underlying agenda.
This has been a huge detriment/savior at work. I was recently fired from a job because there was an agenda/scheme from co-workers. They didn’t like me because I fought for my team and especially one team member. She was heads and tails smarter than them and it basically pissed them off. She had her shortcomings as we all do and they tried to focus on those but because her work didn’t lack they could never “get her”. Instead they decided to focus on me, knowing that if I left she would leave as well. They still couldn’t find anything on me since my work didn’t lack either. They eventually took conversations I had with them out of context and added their own details to show I was scheming.
These conversations were my attempt at “being social” at work and trying to get along and be more friendly and reach out for work relationships and try to be normal. This totally back fired and now I regret ever trying to play nice and get along like a normal person. This is not healthy but my only time trying this since my abuse has completely backfired on me. When I thought I was building work relationships, they were really using things I said to try to find anything that could get me fired. When this didn’t work they resorted to lying and manipulation. They thought this would strong arm me but to their surprise and my continued detriment, I do not respond to that anymore. I have worked through those issues and can remain calm and collected when confronted which just pissed them off more. This was a lose lose situation for me but I was able to come out of it with no anxiety attack nor stress issues. I was able to come out of it knowing that I told the truth and upheld what I know is right and am not concerned with their intentions for their actions anymore. This was a huge breakthrough for me as before I would have had an anxiety attack of sorts and probably started crying and freaking out.
I am thankful that I can finally start to see the progress of all the hard work I did in my counselors offices and on my own.
I know that God does not give you more than you can handle but sometimes it seems really close to that load maximum.
DaisyVine 