Afraid To Be A Woman

[billie]

Wouldnt it be nice if we could all go shopping together!!! Sounds like we all DESERVE to treat ourselves :)

 

[Abstract]

I honestly do not care what is suitable.

Badger, I think what is suitable is an expression of yourself. If fuzzy muppet is that then that is perfect! If fuzzy muppet is about self neglect or fear then that isn't good.

Part of being appropriate for me is being seen as stronger and to stop avoiding doing things out of fear or shame. It isn't about making others happy. For work I do need to be appropriate to the situation too. If I was working in a bank and wore stilettos and fishnet stockings then that would be a problem. Expressing that side of myself in that situation wouldn't be appropriate.

It doesn't sound like anything you do or don't do originates from fear. It does sound like you want to investigate if lack of self care or prioritising you is part of it. What part of your individuality and self are you expressing with how things are? If it is rather just a finger up to the world then is that helpful? For example I have met people who are trapped into being obese because they are rejecting a fattest society. Loosing weight would be letting the other side win so they stay in self defeating behaviours. I think negative motivations are often unhelpful.

billie, I detest shopping!

 

[Badger]

Hmm Abstract, now that you put it that way, disorganised is kind of my style, but I'd rather it looked a little more deliberate, I guess. I'm in good physical condition, and I do agree about negative motivations being unhelpful, I don't go out that much actually, except to the grocery store, and to drop my daughter off at preschool. Winter in northern New York.

 

[billie]

billie, I detest shopping!

hahahaah me too! big time its just a panic attack waiting to happen!!

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

I love shopping :inlove: but realize it's a stress point for me. I do most of it online.

 

[billie]

Yeah, online so much easier.

 

[rainy_daze]

hair dried whilst sleeping or tied back roughly, no make-up, clothes between 3 and 20 sizes too big and too androgynous to suit me. Many baggy layers. No jewellery. Black or grey.

Welcome to my style Abstract. :(. I've been thinking about this thread a lot. Thank you for posting that ^.

That used to be me too...

I wish woman didn't need to think that way

Snap. Ditto. To both realities.

I think the only thing that kept me sane was that I had had the styling session.

Can you share more about that, if it is okay with you to do so? I looked up the Colour me beautiful people, but too pricey for right now. I did love the idea though. I think there will be many websites that can give styled advice, so I'll be on the lookout for free advice ;)

I don't mean people think I am older but rather that they take me more seriously....... She was not dressing in a way that was communicating something appropriate

I would like to feel confident and that I was communicating that. I can see how the way I dress probably doesn't read confidence. I can still be confident when I need to be, and people comment on how they wish they were confident like me, but I really don't feel that way. It sounds strange, but I swear one time I spoke for about 10 minutes about a subject I knew little about on a course I was taking, and everyone was well impressed with me and a friend said how confident and clever I was. I tell you, all I remember is staring at the clock and the door. I reckon there was some auto-pilot dissociation going on, because I seriously wanted to run away. There were too many people and I'd had about 10 minutes to get ready before having to leave that day. It's funny I remember things that seem unconnected, but I was not looking my best that day, so maybe that was a factor. All eyes were on me; I would have felt better had I looked better.

Do you (everyone) find when you care about yourself and dress appropriately you feel more confident than when you were dressed in the layers and so on? Anyone? When I make the effort I do feel nice, but other times I have made an effort and verbally beat myself down before leaving the house. The common phrase is "I look a complete mess".

I look scruffy. I don't look very feminine clothes wise most days. I think I'm going to budget some money for clothes that suit me :eek:. I really feel inspired to work on this now. :hug:. I realise how important it is to me, although it feels wrong somehow :O_o: like I'll be being conceited or arrogant if I make myself look as nice as I can to myself in a mirror :nailbiting:. Confused :confused:. I suppose always looking the same keeps me stuck, and trapped. And keeps my low self esteem and confidence in play. It's quite difficult to admit that for some reason.

Also, I find it confusing that I admire many woman who all seem to take very good care of themselves, especially physically (exercise, relaxation, appearance, not afraid of photographs either!), and yet I don't do that for myself, really. Like I don't have any admiration or respect for myself, but I do for others. Crazy.

Are you different to those around you?

I wouldn't say I as as well dressed, ha, there's that phrase coming up for me again. People have nicer clothes that fit them better. They match. Their hair is prettier and better taken care of or managed. They wear make-up. They don't look like an insomniac. Um.. I guess a bit different. It feels horrible to say actually. I don't want to completely go down the comparing myself to others route though, more the feeling better about myself and not needing to compare to others route of feeling fine with how I look and what I'm wearing :happy:.

It took a lot of work to 'allow' myself to do this. It took a lot of work to tell myself that no one is laughing at me either. I still get nervous about it.

How did you and do you manage this? How do you manage the nervousness you still feel sometimes?

It often feels like I am actually afraid to be a woman, almost like I will be punished for looking nice or combing my hair. I am afraid to be in my own skin most of the time.

This is jumping out at me right now Ayesha, but I'm not sure what to say. I just know that it is very relevant. I will think about it more.

Beautiful woman in your avatar Ayesha :tup:. Would you be afraid to dress like her if you were going somewhere it was appropriate to wear a wonderful dress? You said you don't really wear dresses much do you? :( I do like wearing a dress but I admit I find it difficult to do often, especially in the last year.

Edit: We should challenge ourselves to wear a dress and go somewhere deserving of a nice dress this year :) I like the idea. I might try it.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

I find it confusing that I admire many woman who all seem to take very good care of themselves, especially physically (exercise, relaxation, appearance, not afraid of photographs either!), and yet I don't do that for myself, really. Like I don't have any admiration or respect for myself, but I do for others.

I do this too. It is very confusing.

 

[ms spock]

It's only in the last few years I feel like I have free will. Another thing to think about! What a powerful word; Free will.

My therapist calls me a late bloomer. And he is right, I am learning things I have seen 14 year olds pull off with no issue.

You are so not alone with being a late bloomer.

 

[ms spock]

I am afraid to be in my own skin most of the time.

It is hard very hard to live on your own body. I find this really challenging.

 

[Abstract]

I still wish I didn't have to have a body. I guess I just have to lump it and go along with it but I don't like it.

 

[Promicarus]

We tend to be so unaware of how our early lives set us on a course to where we've wound up, how the things that shaped our developing identities during the crucial early years were responsible in such a large part in our identity even as adults. I know this is true for me--that is, it was absolutely true until I started to deconstruct my identity/sense of myself in attempts to fully understand it...and that's been only very recently, relatively speaking. And I still forget, and find myself "on automatic", simply following the groove worn in my perspective, my reality, over a lifetime of wearing it deep enough to require fairly constant conscious effort to remain aware of my behavior and thoughts, and where they are originating, and objectively question the validity of that, so as to become capable of making conscious choices, rather than the comfortable ones that are so only because they are familiar...despite how much discomfort and futility they are responsible for as a pervasive sense underlying all else, as I kind of "theme music" to my personal movie, of which I am as unaware as any character in a movie would be of the score playing in the background...even though it is clearly identifiable to all viewing the action unfold.

I've been the composer of the mental/emotional "soundrack" that sets the mood of the plot...and even though I remain convinced that I alone am the director of that plot's specifics and at least intended denoument...the accompaniment has been running through the same tracks over and over, for so long that it no longer even registers to me...it can be no less obvious, jarring, and blatantly ill-fitting as it would be to others watching a horror movie set to "Three Stooges" music, or a love story set to music from a bleak Ibsen existentialist dirge. As the student fish said to the professor fish "what's this thing called the ocean you keep going on about?"

I'm still amazed at how completely oblivious I was to something so painfully obvious to even the casual observer. But the explanation is both obvious, and very simple--in order to function passably, it was necessary to blind myself to it entirely, a willful ignorance begun so long ago that it was like a pose held for twenty years--eventually it would not only begin to feel natural...one would become frozen in place.

The reason I neglect self care is because I have 2 young children and I have a tendency to feel guilty. I look sort of like a floppy muppet all the time because my hair is ungroomed and hangs in front of my eyes.

With an identity based early in a need to feel hidden in order to feel safe-I reached adulthood with a deeply seated, yet entirely unconscious need for an impenetrable shell composed for the sake of communicating only inscrutability, an opacity so resistant to breach as to only be convincingly maintained by one's own very real belief in it as the only reality, the one available option. To remain hidden in place sight one must honestly believe that he/she cannot be seen...you remain safe...because eventually the world gives up looking. I was completely unaware of the processes of rationalization buttressing my "presentation" as the embodiment of a personal philosophy, like the threads of clothing I'd woven myself long ago, but which had, through such long and regular wear, become only my standard "going out" suit. Thoughts that I would play on an unconscious level, a chanted spell responsible for fleshing out an illusion of being so pervasive I came to know it only as my only self, myself. And I used casual, superficial explanations as excuses to justify on acceptable terms what I knew I could not afford to have anyone probe any more deeply...My hair hangs in front of my eyes only because I'm too busy...children you know...what better more legitimate justification is there, after all?

Who doesn't understand the hectic demands of the mother of young children. "Why no...it's not because I'm hiding...not at all...what on earth would give you that idea?" In all honesty, that recitation seemed so thin as to be transparent in intent, barely gauze. "The reason I neglect self-care is because I have two small children and I tend to feel guilty"?. Where is the connection, here? Are you saying that you feel guilty for....taking the 3 minutes it would take to brush your hair from your eyes? Really? No, I think the true reason is revealed unintentionally, in a self-hating version of a Freudian slip..."I feel guilty..." Has nothing to do with children, or hair....but rather is a longstanding reason to hide, perhaps--and utterly unrelated to either stated pretense. How do feelings of worthlessness at an early age become the theme music of guilt as an entire personal context...a movie entirely about "hiding", though the star, "in character", and so lost in her role--has only logical, and entirely routine explanations for? She is not lurking in shadow...she's simply sensitive to the sun. Perfectly normal. She's not a hermit...she's an artist, and artists need solitude to work. That's completely common, isn't it? "So what's the problem here? No problem! No reason to focus any longer than a passing casual glance...that's right, just keep your attention moving passed and over, nothing to see here."

Alot of the clothes I own don't fit because I lost 20 pounds after ex and I split up last summer. So I look like a floppy tired muppet in clothes that are to big for it/her

Break ups are depressing for everyone. But it's January. You broke up last summer?...? And this qualifies as a legitimate explanation? Well, it may be: have you actually been too short of money to shop? That's understandable. Well? Ask yourself...honestly this time. Isn't the real reason a deeper--one you only seem to let slip accidentally, in the odd, unguarded moment...as the disjointed end to a sentence it seems clearly not to belong to...almost as though it were a cry of help, escaping?

I mean no one else is going to give me permission to take the time to do this, its probably something I should talk to my therapist about- why I don't put myself a little higher in the pecking order I have no idea.

I wonder-do you realize how revelatory this statement was? You first attempt again to pass off this admitted lack of self-care as no more significant than just a matter of time, and making time for it...then go on to refer to your lack of status, as though low "in the pecking order"...as though these two statements had some apparent and logical relation to each other...which upon any inspection whatsoever, it is all to plain they do not. The gauze wears thinner, it seems. How long can you pretend it's still covering the wound. All the rest can clearly see it bleeding through.

Low in the pecking order is synonymous with a lack of worth, as lack of status....and has no even marginal relation to having spare time. You don't take the time because you've so long felt unworthy of the time, that you feel more uncomfortable doing so. It is THAT which seems painfully unnatural, at this point. One who's acceded to such a position of low status/worth...naturally feels out of place assuming the trappings of one of a higher station. Even though as a competent adult with demonstrable talents abilities and areas of undisputed competence....what is that theme music playing all the while? Why is it that, even while you consciously enumerate your accomplishments and advantages...the music in the background is a lone violin, spinning out a disconsolate complaint of mourning,wistful and thin in its lonely, wandering, aimlessness?

I know in the abstract that I am not ugly and when I dress up I look pretty good but I generally feel weird about it.

"I know in the abstract"...and that is just the point. "Knowing" as a recognition based in intellectual assessment... is always and only that...abstract. And of what real meaning to us is that...the abstract? What real weight does it carry on the scales of our overall experience?

By the time a wound turns gangrenous, rotting from within, the rot only continues until it claims the life of the wounded. It must be excavated, exposed to fresh air, and cleaned--even though its surface may have hardened into an unremarkable patch of brown, innocuous enough looking, at least at first glance.

But having developed the habit of favoring an entire wounded lifetime, finally removing the scab seems at this point seems not only needless, but alien. You learned to walk with that limp. How are you to walk, then, when it's gone? Maybe if you just continue to ignore it, everything will remain undisturbed--familiar. Maybe the rot won't claim your life after all, if you just pretend it away--just don't focus your gaze clearly upon it, at all.

"...Wound? What wound?"