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Excuses vs Reasons - what’s your take?

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This thread is intended for all who have a tricky time of explaining their inabilities to others from one day to the next. Perhaps we can knock down some distorted thinking together!

I also hope to gain perspective here, cuz my view is such that anything I can do one day and not another is a failure/weakness —->excuse. Seeing that I don’t assign the same standards to anyone else, I get that it’s a distortion. One that is super well coded for me, sure there have been times it’s useful to use when getting my butt mobile. There are many times it’s not, cuz I’ll push myself outside my window of tolerance without knowing it and forgetting to harness myself into the rope. Then....the fall. Weeeeeeee. (Which can be super fun btw, but only if you know how the anchors set, length of rope, condition of eqpt, etc....)

It was recently explained to me that excuses are tangled with guilt, shame, judgement. Reasons are what we provide to others, if they are interpreted as excuses —-> that’s a judgement from the other person. If we call them excuses——>we’re judging ourselves.
when someone says it don’t accept that excuse’ ‘what’s your excuse’, it’s a judgement (using the above rule as explained to me) or if we say ‘my excuse is....’ we’re placing judgement on ourselves.

What I have a very hard time accepting is that I can do anything that’s required given the right circumstances.....simple example:
I may be entirely triggered before going into a very crowded area and want to avoid every possible interaction with it. But, if someone is injured/in danger or needs something that I can assist with, trigger gets pushed aside and I’ll go. There a consequences of course.

So, if I can function without entering into collapse or extreme avoidance under certain circumstances, my brain judges harshly when I ‘abandon a mission’, so to speak, cuz I can do it if I just bash forward and keep
moving.

What are your thoughts on excuses vs reasons?
There are no wrong answers
 
My boundary is, super short version:

Excuses = not full truth, could do but for some reason don't want to

Reasons = honest truth for why something is, or is not, possible.

I may not be willing to provide reasons, either, but I try for my "cannot doo" to be more reasons, less excuses. More honesty, less (even if white or merciful) lies.
 
I don't allow myself excuses. I'm super hard on myself. I've just come to the point where I don't feel I have to hold myself to previous standards. I keep thinking I need to go back to work, and I finally gave myself permission not to. I can't. Even though I'm mostly stabilized, I'm still fragile. I used to keep a journal, I want to start again so I can write out the feelings I have with not completing a task and seeing if I am using reasons.
 
I've just come to the point where I don't feel I have to hold myself to previous standards.

Curious, and sorry I don’t know much about your history....did you maintain those previous standards because you felt you had to for others? Is there something tangible you can identify as to when/why you were able to drop that standard?

Thanks....lots of thinking.
 
@Ronin that makes sense to me and on reflection I’d say I do similar. There are very few, 1 buddy with work related injuries, and Trauma T that get reasons.....everyone else gets excuses. Cuz I automatically expect them to judge me. So if I’m already judging my own explanations for why ‘I’m failing’....then when they do it, it’s not so frustrating.
 
So much of this resonates with me:

triggered before going into a very crowded area and want to avoid every possible interaction with it. But, if someone is injured/in danger or needs something that I can assist with, trigger gets pushed aside and I’ll go.
my brain judges harshly when I ‘abandon a mission’, so to speak, cuz I can do it if I just bash forward and keep
moving.
accepting is that I can do anything that’s required given the right circumstances...


My brains not very useful at the moment though and the reply i want to write out is too much for my brain to process at the moment.
A lot.

I'll come back though. This excuses vs reason thing. making excuses. so ingrained in myself. Hard to tell the differences myself sometimes.

good thread. ty.
 
did you maintain those previous standards because you felt you had to for others? Is there something tangible you can identify as to when/why you were able to drop that standard?

I just had to be the best. I guess I was highly competitive. When I worked as an RN in the hospital, I decided I wanted to be the most nurturing nurse, and got lots of cards and letters from patients. I think I identified this kind of behavior as "all or nothing" thinking and it took a long time to convince myself that I could do things because I enjoyed doing them, not to hold myself up to my own perfection. Now that I don't work a normal (haha) job, and homestead instead, there is no one to compete against and homesteaders love to share info and ideas so it is a different culture. If I build a coop that's not right, I can take it apart and do it again.

I do have a problem finishing things. Now I make a list and am able to finish more. I don't know if there was a single thing, or time when I dropped the standard, it was a 8 year journey to let myself be me, to identify and do things I wanted to do, and let go of the pressure of being "successful". I will think on this and see if I can answer more clearly.
 
I understand and I am the same . You put it really well. I can do amazing things if I can get comfortable.

I finally understood though that it’s a matter of degrees and no explanation is needed. I work my way around and hopefully out of it somehow, without saying anything, it’s no one’s business.

You want to talk about CSA with me? I didn’t think so. People are a lot more worried about themselves anyway, they don’t have a lot of time for me and that’s good.
 
cuz my view is such that anything I can do one day and not another is a failure/weakness —->excuse
There's been some interesting work done on exercise physiology that shows there's good reasons that's not true, at least for exercise. Your ability to do something is affected by all kinds of things. Time of day, amount of rest, what you did yesterday, with or without caffeine (or other chemicals). None of us are exactly the same person from minute to minute. You can call "I didn't get any sleep last night" an excuse, if you want to, but I think it's a provable fact that it matters. I also think the same concept applies to a lot of things. I'm learning that I actually find communicating with other humans to be kind of stressful. (Duh?) Seems like I have a kind of limited capacity to deal with it. So it's entirely possible that's a legitimate reason why "listening to one more voice mail" might seem like a bridge too far. But, the cool thing I'm noticing is that if I recognize that I'm having a hard time listening to the message (there actually IS such a message on my phone, right now) because I've expended a lot of energy on other kind of hard stuff, it's helpful. More helpful, actually, than calling myself names, which is what I've usually done. (I know. I really SHOULD listen to that message. There's a chance it's just a scam phone call. But it COULD be someone bringing up something I don't want to deal with....)
It was recently explained to me that excuses are tangled with guilt, shame, judgement. Reasons are what we provide to others,
I think that's a good point. From a practical standpoint. Shaming yourself into trying to get something done might work, but I don't think it produces anyone's BEST work. And, sometimes, it doesn't work at all. Maybe because if some part of your brain is really getting into calling you names, you help that part out when you give it more reasons for name calling? IDK
But, if someone is injured/in danger or needs something that I can assist with, trigger gets pushed aside and I’ll go.
That's what adrenaline is for, right? But we can't actually live in that state all the time.
 
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