Understanding my own denial

kristyrose
i found a book about working through an AP style toward secure.
i am sure it will reveal your patterns as you enter into and engage in self destructive relationships.

have you read it?
www.goodreads.com/book/show/690495.A_Secure_Base

i am certain that understanding his behavior is a very small sliver of the work you need to do to heal your attachment injury, you only need to understand how you participate in relation to him. he steps, you step, dance dance dance.  
LEAVE THE DANCEFLOOR.

please continue to do all you can to examine your own patterns so you can stop the pain.
i applaud that effort.
i discourage focusing on the FA pattern because you are not FA and you are STUCK in your AP pain.

if you read her original post you can see clearly that that is NOT the support she was asking for. 

read the original post and you can  clearly understand the support kristyrose was looking for so she could understand HER OWN PATTERN.

yeah, whatever works.
i’ll step back lol

she just said he fits the description of a sociopath.
she said he fits the description of NPD.
she knows how to take him off a pedestal from what i can see, endless threads are devoted to that.

so one thread where she comes her asking for insight into herself, and her question was turned around to him.

i don’t see her feeling a lot better since i got here, but i trust you guys to know that AP trap better than i do and i will step back.

As an FA, I have experienced how it feels to be on the AP side of the anxious avoidant trap, so I'll explain a little of what the pattern feels like from my experience.  It might help to see how all this pain becomes so difficult to escape from and why it's not so easy to focus on yourself without a process.

This person, for whatever reason, becomes some kind of salvation for you. I am not sure how this happens, but I think certain people trigger and the push / pull creates some kind of chemical reaction and once that's been triggered then it's like losing all sanity.   If they are nice to you / affectionate that day, you feel wonderful.  If they are cold and rejecting that day you feel completely anxious, devastated, can barely think of anything else and wonder what you did wrong.  You want to do / say anything you can to please try and get their love / affection back because without it you feel like you can't breathe or function.  You become completely obsessed with what they are thinking, how they are feeling, why they are doing what they are doing.  you're incapable of thinking about what you want or feel and instead become completely obsessed with them and what they feel.  There is desperation from needing them to speak to you /reach out that it's like a heroin addict or something.  To you, that person seems perfect.  Even if they treat you with callous actions, you actually can't see any bad in them and just think it's your fault.  The entire fate of your life's happiness rests on whether or not you can get them to give you love.  There's not even 1% of your mind that thinks about the logic of it, it's like obsession.  You can't sleep, work, relax or enjoy any part of your day and nothing else seems important. Their rejection feels like it proves every bad thing you ever thought about yourself.  If you can only get them to stop rejecting you then everything will be fine again.  Like a completely compulsive feeling where this person's love and validation is the only thing that can ever take the pain away.  

I guess this is hard to understand unless you have ever been in it (I think all anxiety is irrational and hard to understand unless you have ever been in it) but this is how I felt with my ex and I think I have seen these same desperate emotions reflected from other APs at times.  It's not very easy to say "oh look what I have been doing wrong" when you're in this state of mind because you are kind of ruminating constantly anyway about what you're doing wrong. And most of the time that's not helpful.

I think it's in this desperate state that people go and buy the books and join the websites, because they are just absolutely desperate to do anything they can to put right this situation and get this love they are craving.  This one person has achieved such a God-like status in their heart that they can't conceive of the possibility of ever being happy without them.  Their rejection is proof, of course, that they are better than you, that you are not good enough and that everyone will leave you.  Which perpetuates the trap I think even more because then when they come back offering breadcrumbs (as FAs do) then you just lack all the strength needed to tell them to go away and leave you alone.  In fact that's kinda the last thing you want to do because your crazy brain takes over and tells you that this time there is hope.

I am not sure what the cure is, but for me it definitely starts with no contact (which allows the anxiety to fade) and also taking the ex down off the pedestal.  Taking off the rose tinted glasses and stopping blaming yourself for someone else's weird behavior. For me, that was the first step to being ready to let go.  It's okay to take responsibility for your own behavior and attachment disorder, but not to believe that something you could have said or done differently would have magically healed someone else.  And I think APs believe this to be true (hence why I get messagesfrom them asking me what to do as if I have the magic answer that will "cure" their partner and give them happy ever after")

Yes, it's easier for me as FA than it is for APs because as you say, I can "switch off" and let the avoidant side take over but I remember when I was in the anxious /avoidant trap is really did feel like being a drug addict because I had absolutely no ability to see the wood for the trees and just logically say "this relationship is NOT how a good relationship should be and I have been really unhappy since I have been in it".  I really didn't see or feel that at all, the attachment compulsions were just way too powerful.

I hope this helps to give you a little idea anyway of how that feels, and how incredibly difficult it is to stop being in pain until you can really "see" the relationship for what it was (painful and unfulfilling), so if it seems like I ex bash, it's only to try and help Kristy to get to that point.  In terms of longer term healing of her attachment wounds, that's a different thing.  I was really just hoping to help her break out of this cycle with this guy so she can have room to breathe and think about herself.

she acknowledges the relationship is painful and unfulfilling in her original post and i think you are justifying derailing the thread.
that’s how i see it because your arguments deny her original post.
she seems clear in that post that the relationship was unfulfilling.

this is not helpful, to argue.

i will let it be. i don’t agree with you.