I read a review of a new TV show in the NYT yesterday. It's a show that follows couples in therapy and the writer quotes her own therapist, who, in discussing someone in the writer's life (I forget who) told her "he's reporting the vicious facts of life as lived by him."
The idea was that our experiences are often minimized by others, but they are real to *us*. It is something that I think about a lot. So many people in my life, from childhood on, wanted to deny me that lived experience. I am not sure it was so much gas lighting (though there was some of that) as it was the idea that just because, on the outside at least, I appeared to have many things people want, that somehow denies me the right to unhappiness. I never quite got it but I also did not challenge it. I let other people convince me that was true. I think that is part of the reason I am so mistrustful of people now. I am constantly on alert for that sentiment and will shut people down (and out) at the first whiff of it.
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