social protectors

Whoa, a lot of this sounded like our social host Johnny, for example, the perplexed experience of people picking up way more friendship or emotional commitment than he felt he sent out. He's figured out how to modify his behavior to a degree over the years, pre-DID-awareness, because he felt like a fraud so often it hurt.

birdsong87 wrote:it is creeping me out a bit. especially the idea of being important to someone I only tried to keep at a distance. that sounds like lousy protecting to me! "I want you to stay away from me, so here is all you need to feel loved. now stay away from me"

I don't think you're being phony. What I think you're describing are actually effective social skills that don't happen to be joined in the same alter with some of the other social skills that a singleton would have. These might include tempering the support or interaction based on how much you're getting or are likely to get back, giving the supported person an idea of how you'd like to be supported back, or modifying your social signals based on whether you're interested in their attention or not.

If you'd had a more normal childhood, you would have developed all those together as a package. A full array of interpersonal skills would be working in tandem and you'd be fine tuning your behavior in the moment better based on feedback from the other person.

If you're like us, when you developed social skills in childhood, giving someone (in our case, the mother) what they "need to feel loved," in hindsight, was protective. We haven't thought of our interpersonal skills as protective but of course they are for anyone, including singletons.

You don't need to be so hard on yourself. I don't think you're a fraud or phony, though we totally understand having that feeling when there's a mismatch between your intention and what happens with outside others. You learned to do what worked for you then. Also, you're able to connect, a skill not everyone learns, so bravo for learning as much as you did. Maybe now you just need to add the fine tuning stuff that really makes it all work for you as well.

those are important insights Johnny-Jack. If I look at Asti or Annett, they do have a different set of social skills, and we would do well if we worked together to balance each other.
just the idea, of having an expectation in a relationship, feels really strange to me. Like, there is a giving back? and people are not getting paid for that because they are a T?

@exploring, I know it is outdated, that is why I am bringing it up here.

food for thought Iain. maybe it is that... the feeling icky about what we did for the mother. we feel that abuse. it's sometimes more real than some of the physical stuff. it has had a major effect on our identities development.

spot on fireheart. maybe I actually need to look at my own needs. we adults often avoid that topic. but if I could stand up for my own instead of just feeding the needs of the other, that might make me feel less like something is terribly wrong.

I sometimes feel like I am twisting myself into someone I am not when I try to match people... it hasn't been so obvious for me but I am learning more about us and somehow I want a more integrated view of who we are as one person and its damn difficult when it feels like I keep changing and shifting to match other people and really don't know who I am. it seems to me the others are more secure in that.

I am still not sure if it is not manipulation. It is just the behavior that was always called out as manipulation when it happened in stress situations. in the clinic report they wrote that I have good social skills. all I remember from the past is being told it is manipulation. and I know it is how things have been done in my family for generations.
maybe we could agree that I am not doing it to harm anyone. I do believe in better communication skills though...

thanks everyone for sharing. I have a lot to think about.