Showing your ‘crazy’
Listen, everyone at one point in their life is a little bit crazy. Sometimes it’s deep rooted psychological trauma that I am in no way qualified to help you with her Ma’am/Sir/X, this tiny little blog probably isn’t the place for you. But for the rest of you, the ones who have been called out for being ‘crazy’ by someone who was committed to misunderstanding you: this right here is your place. Come in, I’ll stick the kettle on.
Throwing about the word ‘crazy’ is lazy and redundant and people who do that are trash. I said what I said. People don’t take the time anymore to really truly understand a person they are trying to build a connection with, short attention spans, lack of grace, lack of effort, toxic dating culture — whatever the reasons are, people are very quick to demonise others without ever truly taking the time to step back assess why a person may behave they way they do. How often do any of us hold ourselves to account for triggering a behaviourial reaction from another person? I’ll wait.
Perhaps you’re not crazy? You might be an asshole, but perhaps you’re actually not crazy, it’s just that one triggering asshole who decides it’ll be fun to trigger you by acting in a way which is incongruent with your expectations. In her Small Doses podcast episode ‘Side effects of triggers,’ Amanda Seales says it is absolutely ok to be upset when someone doesn’t meet your expectations when they act like a fuckshit. What is not ok is you internalising their fuckshittery and interpreting that as a fundamental rejection of your value as a person. Anyone who triggers you knowingly with their fuckshittery is not a person you need to be around. Remember Nicole Kidman’s face when she finally got her ass divorced from Tom Cruise?
We all need to aspire to that Nicole Kidman level of divorced from Tom Cruise ecstasy. We do not need to allow other people’s perspectives of who they think we are control how we respond and react to how they attempt to provoke or gaslight us into responding and reacting from a low bar. Some people like to do that — just leave them alone, some people are very good at knowing how and when to push your buttons (i.e your triggers), and they will resort to that to fuck with you — on purpose. You can do one of two things, depending on how committed you are to keeping this connection going. You can either: walk the fuck away, or not walk away but elevate your game and show that MF that you will not be broken by their triggering antics. This requires a certain level of dedication from you to answer honestly if what upsets you is actually a trigger or an idiosyncrasy? Like me: I’m triggered by inconsistency. Because inconsistency for me is in direct relationship to my fear of being abandoned and having to ‘firm it.’ I don’t like when people chew loudly — that is an idiosyncrasy, because someone chewing loudly doesn’t have a direct relationship to my fear of what? A fucking carrot? You see — that’s dumb, not everything is a trigger. So before you react from a low bar, before you react with EMOTION, rather than respond with WISDOM, work out what are your legitimate triggers and what are things that you simply just don’t like. You’ve got to firm your own boundaries in your consciousness and then communicate those — consistently until that MF is tired of hearing them. If you have consistently and clearly communicated your boundaries, your triggers and maybe your irrational dislike of carrots and a person still continues to fuck with you: that person is the toxic asshole and you need to separate and stay away.
Of course, depending on the depth of your emotional or other attachments to a person who derives pleasure from triggering you, you made decide to elevate you will use the opportunity as a springboard to dig deep and do some internal work. You may take the time to really consider how you can rewire your reactions to your triggers. You may discover, that all along, you and only you held the skeleton key to being unbothered and untriggered by someone else’s behaviour. (Some people also genuinely don’t realise that their behaviour triggers you, so you gotta pick when you want to tell them). Instead of reacting over zealously, you could re-train your responses so that you respond to your triggers in a way that positively reinforces your responses, so that the triggers become less and less meaningful? It sounds like a lot of work, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s very taxing to step back and to do all this heavy work and ask questions of yourself, BUT, if you stick with it, you will get to a point where your ability to stay present, unbothered and untriggered will make you bullet proof.
