Feelings of Alienation/Disenfranchisement

[GrungeGuy]

For the last few years, I've been engaging in some deep self-work dealing with the effects of abuse on my personality. For a lot of this time, I've disengaged to a large degree from general socializing, with the exception of a couple of amazing friendships that are really enhancing my life. I have walked away from abusive and unhealthy relationships and continue to do so when people in my personal life show a willingness to treat me poorly, or just don't share my values. Recently, I have been engaging in more of a social life, through going to school and also doing yoga, and I plan to continue both for the benefits that these activities provide and in the hopes of possibly meeting more great people, especially a romantic partner. Something I have been finding, however, is that I often experience feelings of alienation, distance, disconnection, disenfranchisement, cynicism, and trouble empathizing, etc., when I interact with many people in the general social miieu (this is also true in my graduate program for mental health counseling, an environment I would expect to be of higher quality than average).

What I am wondering is if other people have similar experiences, how they understand it, and how they deal with it? Thanks!

[Flake]

People experience those things for different reasons. Why do you think you experience those things?

[MarisaO]

I can definitely relate to how you're feeling, Benjamin. I noticed that after becoming invested in FDR and separating myself from friends and family, I had a very hard time making satisfying connections with people outside of this community. The more I think about it, though, it seems like my difficulty in building new relationships and breaking with family and friends was a result of the same kind of perspective shift that happened when I started listening to a lot of Stef's podcasts and reading On Truth. Stef has a lot of compelling arguments for making the choices he's made and I remember being convinced that most people on this planet, including those who were closest to me, are corrupt and fundamentally unwilling to change. I suppose there's the hope that new people wont be as defended because they don't have to own up to any damage they've done to us already, but like I wrote above, there's reason to believe everyone is going to be defensive because they all have their own families to protect. 

I'm not really sure what the solution to this problem is. Personally, I've had some success reaching back out to friends and family and trying to figure those relationships out a little better. I think I got a little too caught up in Stef's catch phrase, "Everybody knows everything" and didn't give myself or important people in my life the opportunity to work out our grievances. I suffered a lot because of this and so did they. I'm not totally sure about this, but it seems reasonable that I couldn't start new relationships because I didn't really understand what went wrong with the old ones. I guess I would encourage you to think about the relationships you broke from prior to FDR, especially if you can think of any that you once got a lot of enjoyment from. It might be helpful to try and pinpoint what changed in you and/or in that person that made the relationship intollerable, or simply not worth your time anymore. 

I'm not sure how helpful this is. I wish you all the luck in making satisfying connections. Having a support system is essential to success and happiness in life. I hope you'll keep us updated on what you decide to try and how it works out. 

 

 

[Freedomain]

I'd love to talk about this when we chat Ben.  It's a very interesting and important subject.

[GrungeGuy]

Thanks for sharing, Marisa. If you would be willing to share, I'd be really interested to hear about what happened for you with the relationships that you decided to break off and then had some success going back and repairing. Whatever you'd be comfortable sharing, if anything, would be great, but in general I'm curious what the relatinships looked like in the past, what happened that you decided to break them off for a time, what happened when you decided to try and reconnect, and what those relationships look like now. Also, if there were important unresolved conflicts in any of those relationships, were they acknowledged and dealt with, and how were they dealt with? Thanks!

[MarisaO]

 

Thanks for sharing, Marisa. If you would be willing to share, I'd be really interested to hear about what happened for you with the relationships that you decided to break off and then had some success going back and repairing. Whatever you'd be comfortable sharing, if anything, would be great, but in general I'm curious what the relatinships looked like in the past, what happened that you decided to break them off for a time, what happened when you decided to try and reconnect, and what those relationships look like now. Also, if there were important unresolved conflicts in any of those relationships, were they acknowledged and dealt with, and how were they dealt with? Thanks!

 

Sorry for the delay in response. I wanted to take some time to think about the questions you asked and consider what might be useful/appropriate to share. I don't feel very comfortable sharing a lot of the details about the various conflicts I had with family and friends. I don't see the details as particularly relevant, because the changes I experienced affected all of my relationships the same, despite the fact that the issues were quite varried. That was the point I was trying to make with my previous post: that something changed in me after listening to a lot of FDR, which made it very difficult for me to relate and communicate with people outside this group. Not only was my relationship to people I knew different, but my relationship to strangers and people in general had changed. 

I was aware that this change had taken place, but I assumed I was changing for the better. After years of isolation, however, and after many of the relationships I tried to make within FDR failed, I began to question whether or not these changes were really benefiting me. I looked back at my past life, easily socializing with most people, and I really missed that part of me. When I got back in touch with that part of myself, I remembered all the fun and support I got from many people I'd rejected. I rediscovered why those people were valuable in my life prior to FDR. 

When I defood, I felt very hurt and angry. I felt unappreciated and I think a lot of those feelings were genuine, but in retrospect, it seems like those feelings nearly took over my entire experience of relationships. Without realizing it, my perspective of the world became very black and white. I could see very little good in others, while maintaining that people who shared my values (people in FDR), were mostly good and worth getting to know. Over time (nearly four years), I realized that this black and white perspective didn't actually fit reality. My idealization of people within FDR was the first to go, and more than a year later, my demonization of the outside world finally faded. 

For sure, the relationships I've reconnected are not perfect. I can say that most of the important unresolved conflicts have been addressed, but there are still a few things that I'm not sure how or when to bring up. Fortunately, my family and most friends were very understanding when I reconnected. My family was very apologetic that we were in a place that defooing felt right for me. My mom explicitly apologized (unprompted) for being so controlling and not encouraging me to be myself growing up. I also discovered how completely solid a few of my discarded friendships were. They jumped at the chance to love and support me again. 

I think there was some fear in me that my integrity would be compromised by reconnecting with these people. I think this idea came from Stef, who I remember saying something along the lines of, "It's not very honorable to have statists and religious people as friends and family." I also may have been a little trapped by the problems portrayed here with "agreeing to disagree" - something I believe we briefly discussed on Facebook, Benjamin. I am still an honorable and respectable anarchist and an atheist, and can openly share my ideas with anyone I choose. However, I have let go of the idea that others are only respectable if they end up agreeing with my worldview. 

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions. 

[TheRobin]

In very general and broad terms: trouble empathizing and cynicism usually indicated where there was some unprocessed or unacknowledged part of myself, that I haven't empathized with. So the cynicism and lack of empathy worked as a kind of shield against my own pain in those areas. Or at least that's been my experience usually.Alienation, distance and disconnection: I'd guess this stems from wanting to connect but either failing to do so or not trying. So my first question would be, is this disconnect in regards to other people something that has factually occured or is it just a feeling?My experience with socializing with some random meetup groups where often, that there was quite a lack of curiousity on the part of most people towards me. Like I could ask them for 5 minutes about their life and listen, but they would only ask a question in return and after a sentence of me as an answer move on to something else. Though I didn't feel disconnected or alienated in that situation. It was more a "sober realization", not really a feeling of disappointment or distance. So I would guess, that maybe these feelings might stem more from an unfulfilled longing on your end than on the situation experienced.Though this lack of curiousity is also something that I only recently noticed having myself a lot and I found this also stemmed from a lack of empathy and unprocessed history on my part. And I found I was quite needy for the empathy and sympathy of others especially in the areas where I lacked it for me myself. Which was probably not very satisfying for the other people involved. And I'd argue that depending on the degree people will subconciously catch up on that and feel the neediness, which will make them want to distance themselves instincually, which might alos be a reason why you end up feeling that way when socializing. Though that is mostly based on my hypothezizing without any evidence about you, so I have no idea how helpful that is.So I would recommend as a short to do list that might help figure it out for you:-write down the facts of the interraction you have with others-write down your expectations/needs/desires you have for these interractions-compare those and see if that might already explain some of the emotions you experience-furthermore I would recommend trying to figure out why your expectations/desires are the way they are. Basically why do you want these things out of social interractions?-compare those to your history and see where you had those same needs/desires in the past. Maybe you find some correlation or pattern there and maybe there's some unprocessed history there or unfulfilled needs.I hope that was at least helpful to some extend. I'd be happy to hear if it was or not.

 

[GrungeGuy]

Marisa,

I'm not sure that your experiences resonate very well with mine, but I appreciate you sharing. I'm very interested in how damaged relationships get repaired, and I understand just how personal this topic is. I'm glad to hear that you have found that some people in your life were willing to address conflicts with you, and I hope that that process continues. I'm sorry to hear that you weren't able to find solid relationships with the people that you tried to connect with through FDR. I have had some negative experiences as well, however, I have had some very positive one's as well which have turned into close friendships.

[GrungeGuy]

TheRobin,

Thanks for your feedback, I think you've given me some good stuff to think about. I do think that some unresolved psychological patterns are at play for me here, relating to problematic experiences in my childhood, and I have some ideas about how they may be playing a role in these kinds of experiences. I also think that most people that I run into are not going to be available realistically for the kind of relationship that I would want, and I have the goal of getting more relationships (particularly in romance and professional colleagues). In general, One of the challenges for me is in differentiating between my automatic expectations of how people will react to my honest self-expression, which is related to my history, and what is actually probable with whoever I am interacting with in the present. Am I picking up on some cues that tell me this person is kind of aggressive/reactive, or is this just my transference? How much can I safely (safe from emotional reactivity) and productively share here, and how does that compare to my goals with this person? I think this can operate in matter of degrees as well, perhaps they are aggressive/reactive, but my experience of them is as more aggressive/reactive than they are. Another thing I have been trying to do is to integrate the new reality of how much safety I am in. My defenses developed in a time when I was tiny and dependent and that informs them, but now I am an adult who can support and protect myself and doesn't need the approval of others more than myself. I do think that when I am having trouble empathizing with people around me, it is because I am having trouble empathizing with myself.

[Stephen C]

I would very much like to talk about this topic with any or all of you. I'll be waiting for the emails

[MarisaO]

I'm sorry my experience isn't more helpful. To be clear, I also have developed a few great friendships here and I still consider a couple of those friendships closer than any I've had before. As for repairing damaged relationships, that is obviously very tricky. For starters, there has to be a willingness to repair it on both sides - which I think has been missing on my end (although not consciously) having to do with my new FDR-enhanced worldview. I tried to reconnect with my brother about a year ago unsuccessfully because I had a requirement that he see things my way (which is why I brought up the agree to disagree thing). I was very sad and frustrated with this experience and it opened my mind up to the possiblity that I might need to broaden my perspective if I want to feel close to my brother again. I wanted to share this because what you posted resonated strongly with how I've felt at FDR. Of course, you need to trust your own thoughts and feelings on this and I appreciate your consideration.