Current Reflections with Shadow Work

I am in the middle of doing the exercises from the Shadow Work Journal. I’m hopefully going to finish and post my answers before my 30 free trial days are up. I don’t know if this journal will occasionally give me free trials, but I would definitely appreciate that to keep my OD alive. I decided to do this to try to uncover my traumas and continue the journey in finding my true self beyond the trauma (if that’s even possible, in some ways I think the trauma has forever changed me and whatever true self there was going to be is dead).

But, every time I remember I have this, I make the mistake of reading a lot of my past entries. And it’s complicated, because on one hand I’m glad they are preserved. On another hand, they keep digging up my traumas, ones I had long buried and forgotten. But then that causes a current spiral that feels never ending. Like…have I really changed? Did everyone who ever crossed my path hate me and are better off without me? Is the entire world better off without me?

But then doing the Shadow Work kind of connects those parallels, that I had an insecure raising, and while I luckily got an ADHD diagnosis fairly early, there was also autism too (some genetic tests have uncovered this). So a lot of what my parents expected of me, I just couldn’t do or be. And I couldn’t properly verbalize why or how I would always fall short. They were abusive and emotionally distant and immature. And it made my other relationships unstable and insecure because what I wanted was to feel superior. I wanted to be the one on top and have control, because everything else about my life was out of control. And I was rightfully chastised for it. But I think another parallel I find was that I would get super attached to people, and a lot of it was to escape how shitty my home life was. I needed everyone else to talk to, whether they wanted it or not, because I feel like others my age at least understood me or general life better than my parents did. But this behavior also drove people away because I also didn’t know how to have healthy space with people without feeling like they hated me. The more it felt like people would leave, the harder I clung to keep them around. And at the time, I don’t think people knew how to let me down easy or say no or set boundaries that I could understand. So they went along with it and made fun of me with other people, or sometimes left nasty comments on my public entries here.

I think in some ways I have improved but in other ways I still feel the same. In adulthood, it was kind of forced on me to give people more space. When I was growing up, while I had swimming and homework, I always made time to make calls to friends too, or make plans to hang out with people. I was usually always dating someone, so making time to be with them was a must. Anyways, the point is that there was a lot more time for me to annoy everyone. The older I got, and as the responsibilities piled on, I guess I finally understood that there was only so much time to talk to anyone or spend time with anyone. I guess in recent times this makes me very anxious now when I hang out with anyone, because I feel like I have to make it count, and I’m lucky if anyone wants to spend their precious extra time with me. But then I get in my head that I’m not worth it, and that I can’t make it truly count. In the end, it feels like too much pressure, and I find myself missing the days where I had people to hang out with and talk to more. Now, all I feel is depression that I’m so isolated and that it feels like no one actually cares about me or thinks about me. I think while I know I did it to myself back then, by acting the way I did and alienating or hurting people, that it doesn’t hurt nonetheless that karma eventually came for me. And now I face the reality that no one is actually very close to me, other than my spouse.

Anyways, I do have a few people still in my corner and for those people I am grateful. I think I just don’t always know how to go forward, and feel like I’m just one bad incident away from losing the last people still in my life. And I often write texts or DMs and then not send them, because I’m too afraid of saying the wrong thing or send one too many messages to anyone and then further isolate myself. So I guess the extreme opposite has happened: I don’t reach out or message anyone, unless I have something very direct and specific to say or suggest. I don’t make posts on social media. I reached out to someone on facebook after not having messaged them for around 10 years. My last post on there was like…several years ago. No response. So either, they didn’t want to respond back, they are busy, both, or that they thought maybe it was my account getting hacked into (although I thought of that and tried to include distinguishing, specific info about myself so that hopefully it wouldn’t be dismissed as such). In any case, nothing hurts me more than a non-response. I feel like, even if someone is busy, just say that. Like, “hey good to hear from you, I’m a little busy at the moment but I will try to respond to this when I get a chance.” Honestly anything, I think I would have even preferred like a, “I didn’t realize we were still facebook friends, let me fix that.” As bad as that sounds, at least I would have an answer.

Anyways, I reached out to that person actually because of looking back on this diary. So again, I feel like it makes me bold and want to reach out to people in my past, to maybe try to either smooth things over or to find some kind of closure. I think I just realized how abruptly things ended for a lot of relationships and again…I think I know and acknowledge that many if not most of them are beyond repair. That maybe even at the sight of me, someone would run the opposite way or try to pick a fight with me. Most neutrally, maybe someone would acknowledge me, but keep it short. I don’t know, I guess I don’t know how to really sit with these. I have been, so much since re reading old entries. I’m just sitting with how guilty I feel, and how much I wish I could take things back from my past. I know part of it was being young, but I also feel like there were many times I actually should have known better, and that many of my peers were far beyond me in maturity.

I don’t know. I think I just feel bitter. Like, that it’s hard for me to make amends and change and try to do better, if there is hardly anyone around to keep trying to grow socially with. In a way, I feel socially stunted because of how little interaction I get. And another theme that comes up is how much I can actually hide behind my AuDHD and my parental traumas. I do feel like it’s been easier to try to separate from the parental traumas because distance and little communication was the best thing for that. I at least feel like I have more autonomy to reflect and grow on my own without them. But I do actually feel very disabled cognitively, and while I know there is a limit as to how much that can excuse things, I also just feel deep down that it actually is a valid excuse. Like, sometimes I don’t know what I could say or do differently and maybe it actually would take me a lot of time for a past interaction to soak in before I realize what I did or said wrong. I don’t know how to make that process any faster, because I have a disability. I just think that the line is very blurred of what is valid to excuse vs. what is not because of the AuDHD. Because I don’t really want to do an internalized ableism thing where I’m just expected to know everything or do everything correct the first time, because the reality is, I can’t.

And okay, I lied a little bit in the last paragraph. I started it by saying that I’m bitter, and I am. I’m bitter a lot of the times because I think my mom shouldn’t have been a mom. And that a lot of my struggles are just…existing in the first place. And being abused and mentally harmed by them (them being my mom and aunt, and sometimes even my grandparents). I just feel like…I can’t go back and just be unborn. I was born against my will. Everyone is, but like…there is so much unfairness to that alone. And then I get saddled with lifelong trauma and feeling lost a lot of the time in undoing and reversing a lot of it. And I want to emphasize: I AM TRYING TO UNDO AND REVERSE IT. I am doing my best at acknowledging what I’ve done wrong in my past, and acknowledging that what was done was done and I likely won’t ever get closure for the majority of people I hurt. I just feel like I’m making little progress because I don’t have a lot of chances to do better where I wasn’t before. And I’m just bitter that I exist, and that I don’t really want to anymore. And no, I’m not like…actively suicidal. It’s more passive than anything and I’m seeing therapy to at least keep me hanging on. It’s also wild to think that I will probably be in therapy for the rest of my life. No I’m not exaggerating. I don’t think there will ever be a time that I will be mentally well enough to not need therapy. Thanks, mom and aunt!

I could probably keep going on, but I’ll end it there. I’m gonna keep trying to get through the Shadow Work exercises and see if there’s anything else deep to uncover. I know I said a lot here, but I think the one take away that I want to remind my current self every time I keep logging back into to this OD….stop looking at your very early posts. You have a general idea what they said, and every time you do this you get into shame spirals that never end. Just…stop doing that to yourself. You sucked, just accept it and move on with your life.