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Haven't been around the board much; working VERY hard in therapy. Sometimes it's TOO hard and I get in a self-introspective funk that seems almost egocentric. It gets overwhelming.

BUT... that's not the subject of my post, hehe. What is is this: it came up in therapy last week that I hold grudges. I still wouldn't lift a finger to help my abusive ex if he were bleeding to death. If you've seriously pissed me off in the past and neglected to give an apology, I'll laugh at you if you ask me for help.

I've done it. There are even people here, on this board, that I have such grudges against (point is not to stir shit, but to demonstrate the extent of this issue).

We haven't discussed this yet, but I see this as a "victim mentality" issue. Once you hurt me, I want nothing to do with you. Why? Because you do it once, you'll do it again. I think this stems from just that happening, several times. Now that the thought pattern is there, I can't seem to break out of it. Being a victim has been part of who I am for so long, I have no idea what the "healthy" counterpart of that is. Without knowing what's "supposed" to be there, I hang onto the victim identity, because I don't want to deal with a void.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

My experience is that, if I'm confident in my ability to handle hurt, then I can risk the possibility of hurt. The other person doesn't have to be perfect.

It's like, weighing the different factors. Likely hood that I'll get hurt, how badly I might get hurt and how well I think I can handle it, and what the benefits are or might be.

There's one person I know that I just don't like, and am not interested in trying friendship with. Although I'm in a better place to handle how he acted with me than I was before the friendship ended, still, I don't think it will be any different in the future if we interact, and the possible benefit is pretty low.

Another person I like a lot but have had trouble being friends with, even though we've both tried to be friendly with each other, I've only now cut off interacting with him. In this case, I was willing to put up with a lot of hurt in the past because of what I got. Now I don't need (from there) what I got, so, it's not worth it. (Okay, it's slightly more complex than that, but, that is true, and it's the part relevant to your question. Maybe in the future when I am stronger I will again give him a chance.

I think what I wrote on the page about the Vertical Arrow Technique kind of relates. The connection I'm seeing is how emotional defensiveness turns a "might" into a "will".

Thanks for your post. I'll take a look at your post on the Vertical Arrow Technique tomorrow when I'm confident that I'm coherent enough to take it in.

I think the problem with me is that I'm convinced that every and all social interaction I have will end in me getting hurt. I have ONE close real-life friend (aside from my SO) and

1) Real-life friend has inflicted a metric ton of emotional pain on me in the past, and I don't put it past him to do it again

and

2) I don't believe my SO will not hurt me

I have two other friends, who are very close to SO and friend, but I have no intention of getting close to them. I had other friends, referred to me by Best Friend, who ended up seriously hurting me-for the third time. AND the friends I had through SO? Same deal.

I used to give people chance after chance after chance. Like my ex-husband. I like to say that our marriage ended when he tried to strangle me, but that's me trying to save face. The truth is that I was still willing- and tried- to work it out. I don't know if I'm just so weak emotionally that I can't handle being hurt at ALL or what, but I've become a very unforgiving person. I just don't want to interact with people if I don't already know them well enough to know that they're not going to intentionally hurt me.

Although, thinking about my posts in Deep Blue about my ex and my inability to forgive myself, maybe I need to start with learning how to forgive myself before I tackle learning how to let go of grudges.

I used to feel like this, and I had reason to. I figured out that: 1) It was the people I was choosing to interact with. Their actions would hurt anyone. 2) It was the way I was acting that put me with them. People who don't act that way don't want to be hurt by the people who do.

So, I think if one changes their own actions to coincide with the actions of the people they would enjoy being with, that's the answer. Also, to learn how to choose friends, but once one has the actions, the friends just come easily. Then, you know what to look for and what not to look for, using your own actions as a guide.

There is someone I work with indirectly at camp during the summers who I learned is still holding a grudge from last summer over an incident that did not involve her directly and was pretty minor in my mind. I approached her because I have been watching her body language become more and more closed around me to the point that she actually turned sideways when I got up to lead a song. We did a session in conflict resolution during staff training so I figured it was a good time to practice the skills.

Background: This person is the current riding director but she only visited and did not work as the riding director the year I worked as a wrangler, three years ago. She avoided eye contact and did not talk to me much that year but then I am not at camp to make lifelong friends, especially when I am so much older than most of the staff, so it didn't bother me. I had heard from other people that this person was a bit of a problem (she is frequently referred to as "mean") so I figured it was best to avoid her based on the combination of my own interactions with her and what I heard from others. Then last year one of her wranglers rode up to a group I was riding with wearing shorts (definitely an ignorant, if not completely stupid thing to do) and then past a few horses in line while we were loping in order to ride next to someone she thought was having trouble in order to "help" (you don't ever pass horses in line but would instead have the lead horse stop the line to help someone) and continued to crowd my horse from behind after I warned her that his ears were plastered back and he was likely to kick. When we stopped I said something about her "losing control" of her horse because I assumed she would not do something so stupid on purpose and she took my comment to mean that I thought she was incompetent (uninformed, perhaps, since she was from the UK and may not have known as much about riding western since she rides english). She left the group (alone again even though the safety rule is to always ride with another person) and told the riding director that I had insulted her. When I got back from the ride, the riding director told me that I needed to let her wranglers do their jobs and I said "okay" not knowing what she was talking about. Then I spoke to her about my concerns about this wrangler and the riding director basically told me that the wrangler was experienced and that was the end of the conversation. I assumed she would address the safety issues with the wrangler so I did not even report it to her supervisor, although I probably should have reported the incident. The person who the wrangler thought she was helping had been fine until the wrangler rode up next to her so then she felt so stupid she decided not to ride horses again, which I think is unfortunate.

Anyways, when I approached the riding director this past week and explained that I sensed she does not like me, which is okay with me, but that I wanted to be able to work with her without feeling like I needed to walk on eggshells around her, she brought up this past incident as her reason for "avoiding conflict" with me. I was shocked that she would be using this as a grudge and holding it against me all this time. I am the type of person who will do what I can to avoid conflict with others but have not had to resort to ignoring anyone in 3D (only one person online after repeated failed attempts at communication) so I naturally was avoiding this person who was avoiding me. When I got to thinking about it in the context of the bullying session that followed conflict resolution, I realized that this person is not one to go directly to the person she is having conflict with but instead becomes a bully by attempting to gather support around her out of her own insecurities. It became clear to me that she is afraid I could do her job better than her (although I have not wanted that level of responsibility) and she feels threatened that her competence could come into question, which did happen with the riding director I worked with and it is likely the two of them have talked together about what a threat I am to their job security (my riding director actually told me that I made everyone else look bad by doing my job so well).

I suppose this riding director thought that avoiding me would cause me to avoid her in return, which is what happened naturally because she is not the kind of person I want to get to know better based on what I know of her already. The thing is that the "conflict" between us was not really between us at all even though she perceived me as a threat as a result of my interaction with the wrangler and another riding director (who was clearly doing things wrong and was not willing to admit that she was wrong, which caused half our wrangler staff to quit before the end of the summer that year).

Fortunately the result of my confrontation with her this past week is that she agreed to work on having a more positive working relationship with me and she agreed to let me know if there is a problem rather than holding a grudge. My hope is that she will do some introspection about why she feels so threatened by me (because I am pretty certain that her seeing me as a threat has more to do with threatening her feelings of competence rather than a fear of being involved in conflict with me) and that she will no longer see me as a threat. She has already stated that she is not returning next year and I have thought about whether or not I would want to apply for her position, but it would not be my first choice of positions to work at camp. I love working with kids and horses but at the same time it is a lot of work and a lot of responsibility. I also missed being a part of all camp activities each week as a wrangler and I would not want to feel as isolated from the rest of camp as I did as a wrangler, particularly with my daughter being at camp and my wanting to see her at meals (wranglers eat breakfast and lunch near the horses so they only make it to meals for dinner after the horses are fed and put out each day).

I don't know if my sharing my story helps you see a parallel with your own situation but my hope in sharing is that you will look into other options besides holding grudges against people and avoiding them forever. I think that being able to work through issues helps people feel more empowered and less insecure. I don't usually read posts in Deep Blue so I don't know if you have shared more there that might be helpful to understanding your communication in this thread better. I just shared what came to mind in the hopes that you can gain something from my words.