I’m close with one of my friends. In January we reconnected and I’m glad to have her back in my life, but I’m wondering if we’re not compatible anymore. Or maybe we just have a difference of opinion?
She knows that I have parental trauma. My mother is an insecure person. She gets close to people just to exploit personal information, she’ll make snide comments, be passive aggressive when she feels insecure or jealous, etc. Essentially she’s a bully. As a child I made a decision to either (1) let abuse control me or (2) fight to be a good person. Now as an adult I’m very self-assured & confident. I’m not intimidated by people who may be smarter or more attractive. I’m not perfect, but I love who I am. I also prefer being around healthy people.
My friend is vocal about feeling insecure. She’s kind and doesn’t externalize her insecurities, but she isn’t confident yet. I’m friends with her because she’s kind.
One issue I have is interacting with insecure people at work or school. I often get compliments, which is nice. But I’ve noticed how polarizing that is. Some people really like me or really hate me. Obviously people have been kind, but generally speaking, the most insecure people have high positions and are the loudest. For instance, I started a job and by week 2 we were still doing introductions. My turn comes around and I say where I’m from. One of the managers rolled their eyes and said anyone from my hometown can’t be as calm as I was. She said I was pretending and needed to admit to everyone that I was faking it. It was dead silent. At the time I was shocked and didn’t address her. Nobody did.
I quit that job. But dealing with people like that is taxing emotionally and psychologically. Various situations like this happen. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens enough to show a pattern. After that, some people take a more submissive position. I, however, refuse to. Lately I’ve been respectfully quipping back.
Anyway, I’m applying for jobs and explained to my friend that I was on edge about the type of people I’d meet. She got irritated & told me to stop focusing on people and just get the paycheck. Her energy was dismissive. I tried to explain that I wasn’t, it’s just that rude people stress me out. I kinda don’t know if I should keep telling her how I feel.
Comments
Kindly speaking, people who grow up with childhood trauma can often develop rigid thinking as a coping mechanism. Things are black and white without a lot of room for nuance. Compromise can be difficult when people demonstrate such thought patterns. In your post, I’ve noticed multiple examples of black and white thinking, such as people are confident or insecure, being controlled by abuse or fighting back, people like you or hate you, you can either be friends or you’re going to hold back your opinion. It makes moments of friction a lot more stressful. When one learns to be more grounded and nuanced, these moments carry less weight. It matters less when some coworker makes a weird comment in your direction.
It’s not that your judgement is necessarily wrong in these situations. What your coworker said about your hometown is weird. Your friend’s reply is not necessarily wrong but is also a bit short. When you learn to approach things with curiosity, it helps to remove assumptions and provide understanding. My question in that moment would be to ask her what she meant by that. Perhaps she’s responding to something she’s picked up on, such as your black/white thinking. Perhaps she’s responding that way out of concern that you are having difficulty in the workplace and it came out wrong. Maybe her response comes from her own anxiety about finances/career. By learning more about why the person said what they said (at least in close relationships.. might not be worth it with a coworker), it helps you to get more accurate information about the relationship and pushes back against your own assumptions.