Hate...Anger...Madness...Upset...Irritated.... It is all the same to me.

[EveHarrington]

I’m still struggling with the irritated/upset/mad/angry all feeling like hate. It came up again in therapy today. My therapist compared it to my struggle with explaining to my guy how I needed a liiiiiiiiiiitle more space and him thinking we were going back to being friends who hung out once/twice a month and texted only every few days. See how it’s a matter of degrees, she said...? Yes, I do, but I still feel it all as hate. My guy says he hates using the word “hate” as he’s only ever hated one person and I come nowhere close.

We had a bad fight a few days ago. At the end I was just telling him to admit that he hates me. He said he never would because it was a lie. I told him to go ahead and lie because I just wanted to hear him say it. He never did.

I don’t know how to break out of this pattern.

This is part of why I spiral so fast. Anything to the right of neutral feels like hate.

 

[DharmaGirl]

I see now. I don't have any advice, except maybe to try to label your feelings when you have them. I never knew what I was feeling except for fear, and my T would ask me what I was feeling every time I went. After I practiced for awhile I got better at it. Still not even 80%, but it helps keep me from spiraling.

 

[PreciousChild]

I don't know if these are helpful thoughts, but I was reading in a peer-reviewed scientific article that the human species is evolutionary conditioned to notice negativity A LOT more than positivity. It helped us survive as a species to be cued into any threats in our environment. I remember the article gave as an example, your boss writes you a glowing email complimenting your work, and gives one slight criticism. People are going to remember the one slightly negative thing. So I think even the average person is cued into the negative, and then us ptsd folks have an even more heightened radar.

More recently I read another peer-reviewed scientific article about how humans were evolved also to WANT to be evaluated. It is how we teach/learn skills of survival. Animals only mimic, and do not work in cooperation to hunt or gather. Humans do cooperate and actively teach each other how to contribute effectively, so they need to provide evaluative feedback. We are evolutionary cued to give each other feedback about whether we're doing good or bad. So most people are already sensitive to what people think of them. Then imagine us ptsd folks who had parents who never gave us praise - it is a crippling wound at the very core of our humanity. We need to survive, but we also need to feel that we are helping our whole group to survive, but we are told by our parents that we are incapable of doing either.

I'm intellectualizing again, but it helps me to think this way. The fact that anything to the right of neutral = hate is so sad. : ( Sorry Eve.

 

[shatter eyes]

Thats why i notice bad drivers and not good ones.

Can u share link of paper?

 

[PreciousChild]

Sure @shatter eyes . Here is the one on being evaluated ("The Origins of Morality" by Michael Tomasello in Scientific American): The Origins of Human Morality. The other one I read a few years ago, so I need time to remember what it was called so I can search for it. Here's a Psychology Today article on it: Our Brain's Negative Bias.

 

[EveHarrington]

If it’s an evolutionary thing then all those articles about being blamed for being a pessimist are wrong lol.

 

[PreciousChild]

Haha. Instead of pessimist, it should be called 'humanist'.