Feeling Dirty While Others Aren't

[Kieran]

Can anyone else relate to this? I have been feeling so bad lately, that it's hard to wrap my brain around this.

After so much abuse, I feel dirty. I don't feel innocent. When I meet someone or try to make friends, I see and feel their "rare innocence" and feel like I don't belong because I'm dirty and damaged, I'm the one that doesn't belong because they're just so pure and I'm not.

How do you cope with it, if you can relate?

 

[Kubash16]

You have no idea just how much I feel exactly this. It’s like I don’t deserve to be their friend and have them discover just how bad I am or they will feel horrible themselves just by associateing with me.

 

[Ronin]

... By challenge me, with what is issue, if we are friends.

As in I will be here when it is dirty, mud, and dark days for everybody else, too. And not judging them for their own petty dirts. Just give me the courtesy of not treating me as a lesser human, and we are good.

So, to turn it into advantage / tough skin / mud that is as well useful as camo.

It is when people are uppitty about purity and nonsense things irk me, and I detach. If their biggest problem is assigning value to some would be cleanse categories in life, then no thanks, I will pass, that is not someone I would call a friend, or want to do things for.

 

[Kieran]

You have no idea just how much I feel exactly this. It’s like I don’t deserve to be their friend and have them discover just how bad I am or they will feel horrible themselves just by associateing with me.

Well put, this is exactly how I feel! I thought I was the only one. It's rough.

 

[Strangelongtrip]

Wow, I feel this exactly. I avoided having “good” friends for a long time. I still probably will. I don’t feel clean like they are, and I hide a lot of myself from them. But I have a friendship now with someone who always seemed spotless to me and have confided in her and she isn’t running, she even isn’t as “clean” as I thought, having battled with depression too. I find I can’t really be friends with people who haven’t had to deal with a deep problem, be it their health, sexuality, or financial issues. I can’t connect with them.

 

[Friday]

There’s a fantabulous quote I remind myself of from time to time....

Never judge your insides by someone else’s outsides
- Modern Proverb

 

[piratelady]

I feel exactly like this too, even with my husband. Therapist tells me part of loving someone is being vulnerable with them. I guess that means letting them see those parts of ourselves and not having them run away. I hope one day I’m brave enough to try it

 

[c.e.s.]

You have no idea just how much I feel exactly this. It’s like I don’t deserve to be their friend and have them discover just how bad I am or they will feel horrible themselves just by associateing with me.

You have no idea just how much I feel exactly this. It’s like I don’t deserve to be their friend and have them discover just how bad I am or they will feel horrible themselves just by associateing with me.

I feel such shame/contamination, lately, I'm afraid to be near friends, let alone hug or touch them. If someone touches me, I worry that they will feel disgusted (if not immediately, then later), or somehow troubled. My ptsd is in its worse flare up, in 17 years. I'm stuck in shame, self-isolating because I'm not good company. I don't want to risk burdening others but loneliness is just worsening depression. What to do with this?

 

[Friday]

I'm stuck in shame, self-isolating because I'm not good company. I don't want to risk burdening others but loneliness is just worsening depression. What to do with this?

This is one of the things I love travelling for... because the people I inflict myself on? Will be different, very soon. It lets me be many different degrees of social, without the long term consequences attached. So I can practice on people I don’t care about, or just be myself -whatever that happens to be this second- with the same end result; I’m a helluva lot ore social on the move, than I am at home.

When I can’t travel, and I’m stuck in one place? It becomes a bit of a catch22... because I don’t want to f*ck up the relationships I have, I end up f*cking up the relationships I have, by not participating in them. >.<

 

[PreciousChild]

I can totally relate. I'm better about this now, though I still see the glow in others that I don't think I have. For me it helped to fully embrace that side of me that felt dirty and bring her into the light of day and cherish her. It took a long time and took a lot of reading, reflection, and therapeutic support, but I've gone a long way in integrating the unwanted side of me. From reading, I learned that this unwanted side is our true needs that got buried away and twisted up to feel ugly, bad, stupid, awful, demonic etc. so that they don't surface and get us in trouble with our parents who we urgently needed to survive our childhoods. The challenge is to recognize that they weren't wrong and bad in the first place. That for no good reason, I spent decades demonizing what was perfectly natural in me. The problem is the same core needs are now tied up with hugely bad feelings, so that it's hard to even tolerate, much less embrace that side. When I went down this path after reading Heller, I spent a solid 6 months to a year enduring feeling like the lowest piece of s**t every moment of every day. But eventually the revulsion began to diminish in intensity and continues to.

 

[Missing Mermaid]

Yes. I very much relate to this. Some days I isolate myself as I don’t want to contaminate others. I feel like people can tell my aura is dirty and gross. Like my history Is written there for all to read. Doesn’t matter how many times I shower. Ashamed to admit I have thought about drinking bleach more than once to be cleaned. I haven’t! And I do not suggest this at all.

 

[bumbles]

I can relate to this a lot, and I honestly feel relieved to see others who have similar experiences (though I am sorry you have to cope with it too). It can be such a gross, oppressive, and isolating feeling.

My therapist is urging me to "fact check" in situations like this, but I can't quite figure out a tactful way to ask someone if they think I am awful and tainted. There probably isn't one?

I am not wonderful at masking my vulnerabilities, it always shows in my posture and how I interact. But! It helps me sometimes to think that it is better to be trying to communicate with someone who seems "less dirty" than me, and potentially give them a weird vibe... than to be interacting with someone who is maybe picking up on the signs of vulnerability with negative intentions.