Dear Jana,

I’ve just seen your message. Please do take care of yourself and have a break from these difficult topics and heavy energies.

And you’re right, the best way is to spend time with someone who loves you and cares about you 🙂

Have a good time off, and I hope to talk to you soon, whenever you’re ready ❤️

Dear Jana,

you’re welcome!

I will look into it also for this reason – I don’t want others to be so deeply effected by my own emotions. I want to learn to take care of myself with peace and some grace… not to overreact as I did… I felt silly after that. And I could hurt others, as well…

You had a strong reaction, but you quickly picked yourself up and could reflect on what happened and why you were triggered. You posted again and self-reflected, not accusing anyone for your strong reaction, but simply observing, stating how you feel, willing to explore.

And that’s a great gift, Jana. If I remember well, you did say previously that you’ve done a lot of work on yourself. And it shows, because you clearly know how to get back to your center, to your observer self, and take responsibility for your own feelings.

And you don’t stay overwhelmed for too long – you get back to your center. So please don’t be ashamed of yourself. You did well. And you didn’t hurt anyone, at least you didn’t hurt me. I appreciate that you didn’t decide to delete the thread, even if it was getting too much for you at some point.

So thanks for being resilient! 🙂

I very much appreciate that you’re willing to explore difficult feelings and reasons for them in your own self, and are also encouraging others to do so.

About that, I’d just like to say that yes, we are all responsible for our own feelings. Sometimes, those feelings are augmented by past trauma and perhaps real abuse doesn’t even exist in the present day. And sometimes, real abuse does exist, and we need to manage its impact on us. So it’s complicated, and we really need to unpack what’s really going on.

And I see that’s exactly what you’re aiming to do. You gave us all the opportunity to do that on this thread, by initiating it and also keeping it on.

Thank you for that, Jana, and I wish you a peaceful time away from the forums! ❤️

Hello Everyone,

I too am withdrawing from this thread. Thank you so much, Allessa—for understanding, for caring—not just for me, but for everyone here. You have such a big ❤️, and I’m eternally grateful. If, later on, when things feel less stressful, you’d like to talk about our past conflicts—or any part of them—in one of your threads, I’d be glad to join that conversation.

I wish you all well 🌿

Anita

Hi Anita

Thanks, I just want to rest a little first if that is okay. ❤️

Hi Alessa,

I know you were feeling stressed and really wanted the conflict to calm down. You really wanted us to reach a “compromise”, although I don’t think that’s the best expression for interpersonal, i.e. relationship conflicts. But yeah, there has to be a common ground, a common understanding of what happened, in order to reach any kind of agreement. And that unfortunately was missing here.

Let me address some of your points:

I feel like the difficulty for Anita might be that she feels like she isn’t being heard at all. That it feels like she has to take responsibility for everything and that her pain hasn’t been acknowledged by you Tee (Sept 7)

Well, the thing is that I’ve acknowledged Anita’s pain back in July, when I apologized for inadvertently causing her pain by suggesting compassion and radical acceptance as a path forward. She refused my apology and started attacking me. And she hasn’t changed her stance since.

She hasn’t acknowledged my pain about being attacked by her – whereas I have acknowledged her pain, caused my ill-fitted advice. I apologized for causing her pain right away. She never apologized for my pain.

So I’ve heard her, but she’s never heard me.

Tee and Anita you both believe in naming harm and defending yourselves strongly.

Okay, let’s unpack this:

Anita named two main sources of pain, i.e. harm:

Pain 1: she was hurt by my suggesting compassion and radical acceptance as a possible path forward. I apologized. She refused my apology and launched an attack.

Pain 2: Anita was hurt by my asking Lori to intervene – which I did to protect myself and you from further attacks. So my protective measure to set a boundary on her verbal attacks was seen as harm to her. Which means that Anita’s notion of harm is distorted: she doesn’t acknowledge that she’s done any harm to me, and she sees my legitimate attempt to protect myself from her attacks as harmful to her. So, flipping things on her head.

I was defending myself “strongly” because I couldn’t accept being blamed for protecting myself. Anita made me into an abuser twice: the first time, when I suggested compassion and radical acceptance (for which I apologized, but that was rejected), and the second time, when I attempted to protect myself from her verbal attacks (for which I refused to apologize, because it was basically accusing the victim of being the abuser, turning things upside down).

Everyone is vulnerable here, everyone is hurt.

C-PTSD, Tourettes and ADHD can lead to feeling being bigger than they normally are for others and last longer. I want to be clear. It is not her fault that Anita has these conditions.

I do believe that a lot of us here have suffered from childhood trauma and have a degree of C-PTSD (myself included), but also that many of us have worked on our healing and made good progress. Anita has always been stressing the progress she’s made in her own healing.

And besides, she has been able to engage with numerous people on the forums, hear them out, and offer them her empathy and understanding. She is very capable of understanding other people’s pain.

But in this particular case, she was completely closed off for understanding our pain. She just couldn’t step out of the mentality that she was the only one harmed.

Anita has indicated that she is willing to compromise (Sept 6).

Well, according to her own words, Anita rejoined the discussion to “reclaim truth”:

I’m sharing this not to reopen conflict, but to reclaim truth.

But that was her subjective truth. She kept insisting on her version of events, in which she was the only victim – the party that was harmed – and hasn’t done anything wrong.

There was no opening in Anita to hear me (or us), to hear and understand our pain. She was still only interested in her own pain.

If one party completely dismisses any responsibility for hurting the other – where that hurt objectively happened – how can there be a common ground? If there is no shared understanding of what happened, there cannot be conflict resolution. You cannot compromise with someone who isn’t willing to give a single inch, but is stuck in their narrative that they haven’t harmed anyone.

I know, Alessa, that you were very keen that we find that common ground. But it wasn’t really possible, because I wouldn’t accept that I was the abuser for wanting to protect myself, while Anita wouldn’t accept that she’s done any harm to us.

And what you get as a result is an unsolvable conflict, with both parties firmly stuck in their trenches. Only I believe I had the right to stay there, because I wouldn’t accept the blame for protecting myself. Whereas Anita refused to show any accountability for her actions. So her staying “entrenched” is a result of a blind spot, rather than of what really happened.

Tee has indicated that she is open to compromising when she feels heard.
Can you help Tee to feel heard Anita? Tee is happy to work towards a resolution with you then.

This is true: I really needed to feel heard, rather than blamed for protecting myself.

I’d also like to address what you said that you felt the communication during the conflict was disrespectful:

I don’t think the conflict on this thread has been respectful. I reported it for moderation and it was decided that it was respectful enough unless someone asks for something to change. It is a little bizarre to me. Not the first time I have seen moderators taking a passive approach. I just feel more comfortable in communities with more active moderation approaches.

At first I was surprised when I’ve read this, because I didn’t feel the conversation was disrespectful. However, I’d thought about it and yeah, it certainly wasn’t lovey-dovey. It was tough.

I do tend to close my heart when I don’t feel I’m being heard, and that my side of the story and my feelings are completely dismissed. Which has been the case in this conflict. Even though Anita said the words: Tee, I hear your pain and your perspective, she hasn’t really heard me. She dismissed the possibility that she caused me any pain.

In those instances, I am in defense mode, I am on guard. And it reflects in my language and my style too. Maybe that’s what you were picking up?

From the first moment Anita re-entered the conversation, she said her goal was to “reclaim truth”. And right from her first post, it became clear that the “truth” she is talking about is her subjective version of events, in which she is the only person harmed.

And so from her first post, I took a defensive stance, because I saw there is no opening for my version of the story and my truth.

Sorry for repeating myself a lot. I’m just trying to clarify my perspective… I hope I managed somewhat?

And I’m glad you’re open to talk these things through and share your feelings and impressions. ❤️