hi hello hello hi I'm Leif E. Greenz and welcome back to my channel if you've been
here or welcome for the first time if you have not and be sure to subscribe to
my channel for twice weekly ramblings from a professional crazy person give
this video a big thumbs up if you're into my tie-dye sweatshirt with the wolf
on it my lone wolf sweatshirt did not even mean to do that
cool halloween season is over and we're back to that usual shiz so today I'm
going to record a video that I've been thinking about since I started my
channel one that I haven't really wanted to record or one that I wanted to wait
to record until you know we got to know each other a little bit better and you
wouldn't like you know judge me immediately and run away with your tail
between your legs it's not like that it's you know it's not the most
comfortable topic in the world as you know by now from the title today we are
talking about why I don't really have any friends most importantly though
we're going to talk about the impact my mental health has had on particularly
friendships chances are if you have experienced trauma you are probably
going to find that you have difficulty maintaining or being in stable
relationships and that's like most other things mental health is on a spectrum
some people have an easier time with relationships than others I would say
I'm probably more on the extreme side as in extremely not good at maintaining
relationships I have had some periods in my life where I feel like I had a place
in a scene or in a subculture you know when I was a musician I felt like okay I
have a role in this friend group I have a friend group holy shit but as the
years went by you know those those friend groups faded away I think in your
late 20s / early thirties that's when you start to kind of pull away from
subcultures you know maybe start your own family or
just focus on your art or your work and that's definitely the place I'm in
although I would still say like I am more on the extreme side of that because
my mental health is bad enough that I can't work in public spheres I can't
work with other people really I am too sensitive
like I basically need a quiet room all to myself and that is the only way for
me to really get work done or to be present or to feel safe and right now
like being able to do that being able to spend all my time alone that has really
stabilized me in a lot of ways so I would say my lack of friends is half by
choice and half just a consequence of my own actions I have pushed a lot of
people away in very big ways in enormous sometimes scary ways I rarely end
relationships quietly I do the bottle up and explode thing where I let
frustrations build and build and build and then finally I'm like you stop doing
this to me you've been frustrating me for four months and I'm over it and
goodbye like that's kind of what ends up
happening I think a lot of us have fears of abandonment a lot of us have felt
like we can't use our voices to assert ourselves and so we get in these
situations where we're silent silent silent silent silent until we can't take
it anymore and then it's like Dragon Ball Z Kamehameha everything seeing
explodes and falls apart and you end up looking crazy or I end up looking crazy
that's usually what people have to say about me in hindsight like yeah she was
nice and cool sometimes but she's not so childhood abuse or just you know PTSD in
general really shapes a person there are a number of symptoms that can
really interfere with relationships like emotional instability which is kind of a
hallmark of both PTSD complex PTSD and even borderline personality disorder
being someone with unstable emotions means I can be pretty unpredictable and
a lot of people don't like that they want to be friends with people who
present themselves in a certain way and can kind of maintain that during all
encounters people who are emotionally unstable can't really offer that's
people you don't really know you know when they're going to have a panic
attack or when you know they'll be in tears some people want a sort of
predictability that I can't really offer them my boyfriend happens to be very
patient and very tolerant of mixed emotions probably because he also
experiences them like if you're going to put something out there you should
probably expect it in return so there is kind of like a mutual exchange of
unstable emotions in our relationship that's okay
like we're both kind of used to that I think when people are being fully honest
about their emotions there is always a certain level of unpredictability and I
think that's what scares a lot of people and that's why a lot of people won't
face or address their emotions people with BPD and PTSD just happened to not
really be able to control them and there's something really beautiful about
that once you get to a place where you like and accept yourself you also may
learn to like and accept those giant emotions because they help you give out
empathy they help you help other people they help you feel for other people they
help you feel for nature they help you enjoy just being alone because
everything can be a beautiful like emotional experience for you I feel like
I'm at my most emotional and most connected to myself when I am alone
especially when I'm creating art alone that is when I feel the most free to let
my emotions out because historically letting my emotions out has a allowed
people to take advantage of me or be freaked people out and
I've just kind of created a safe space in myself in this aloneness there's
really nothing wrong with preferring like a long time there's nothing wrong
with being okay like not leaving your house for four
days even though that is greatly frowned upon by maybe medical professionals but
like honestly it keeps me out of so much trouble it keeps me out of traumatic
situations it keeps me away from abusers it keeps me productive and creative I
take in so much of my surroundings like I'm an energetic sponge basically if
someone's feeling an emotion I will start to feel it and that is so
exhausting for me to try to appease people based on my perceptions of their
emotions which they aren't even talking about or even maybe aware of but I think
that was like a you know early 20s attempt to fit in or find my place then
I just have realized over the years that I don't really care about youth culture
I don't really care about being part of a scene or being seen or being popular
like I don't really give a shit I would much rather create art by myself in my
own tiny little corner of the universe and cohabitate with the plants and trees
and my dogs and just have silence and I think it's okay to go through
fluctuations in life for example I don't think I will be like this forever there
may be a time in my life where I'm like let's you move to LA and like do the
thing let's do it for a couple years live in the city enjoy that and then
I'll probably be someone else one of the comments that people make about
borderlines a lot is this lack of identity and like there's something so
wrong with that first of all I don't think people with
BPD lack an identity I think it is that our identities are so enormous and
multifaceted and vibrant that it can overwhelm people and they can't
distinguish between the different parts of ourselves because it's just too much
to take in but I think if you start to embrace that part of you you will start
to see this massive adaptability that leap is
this ability to become different people to slide in and out of different
occupations or personalities or ways of being and there's something really cool
about that because if you're only going to live once
why not experience being all different types of people there's really nothing
wrong with that and somewhere in that though is a core personality for example
no matter who I am and I've been a lot of different people
I value honesty I'm freaking weird and I have like a crass childish sense of
humor you know there are little hallmarks of you that you carry through
all these different personalities and I think that's important to remember and
it's important to take your power back from psychiatrists and therapists who
tell you that you have no identity and that you need to build one just you know
it's already there you just have it maybe put words to it or fully
discovered it yet I have had a lot of big falling outs
with people that is partially because I've chosen toxic relationships to be in
and that is partially because I just get to a certain point where I feel like
people are getting too close and I like lash out and want them to get away from
me because I do think there is some fundamental like core darkness in me
that I haven't worked out yet and I don't like to let people in far enough
to start to see that like even my boyfriend I keep at like an arm's length
so yeah I've talked about this and probably some other videos but I did
lose two really good friends this year both around the same time both in
periods of massive stress and I would say that that is one of the biggest risk
factors for pushing people away or losing friends is periods of like
immense stress because that's when you're going to be at your most volatile
or your most emotionally unstable and you might end up lashing out at someone
and that's kind of what happened here was I was so overwhelmed with my life we
were in the middle moving I was just in a really bad place
with my mental health and it was like two big fall outs at once one where I
was like dude you are too much you need to get away from me I cannot deal with
this right now another that was like I was staying with this friend of mine of
like five or six years and her husband started creeping me out and I wasn't
gonna tell her I was just gonna stop staying there but I ended up telling her
she called me sick she called me a liar that was probably the biggest blow of
all and I was so suicidal after that happened like I did not know how I would
go on with my life that same person emailed my therapist behind my back to
tell my therapist that I was delusional and very sick and needed help and my
therapist had Forrest come in with me to be like his leave sick we're all like
nope not sick like telling the truth that felt like a big betrayal but no one
probably wants to admit that their husband is potentially very creepy so I
get it to an extent but we're not friends anymore that's not an unfamiliar
situation the specifics of that situation are very unfamiliar but that
kind of like chaos big explosion is not unfamiliar that's partially because of
my own symptoms and my own instability and that's partially again because I
pick friendships with toxic people or people who haven't worked their own shit
out you know I'm repeating my own patterns just as they're repeating
theirs and seeking out people who are maybe unhealthy for me to be hanging out
with but this pattern definitely extends further back into my past and I would
say like 75 to 80% of the people that I have had big fall outs or burnt bridges
with were not good people for me to be friends with maybe they weren't bad
people but the combination of our personality
ended up being destructive in some way the problem is that I was like
gravitating towards those people in the first place the problem is that I wasted
energy on those friendships in the first place it's good I think that I
eventually got away from most of these relationships but the goal would be to
avoid that in the first place so that I don't keep having these huge dramatic
chaotic falling outs which again can kind of be a hallmark of BPD and PTSD
there are so many factors that contribute to this there is the
emotional intensity there's also suspicion a lot of us have
problems with trusting people because you know maybe your caretakers or you
know people in your early life or people that you have really trusted maybe put
your whole heart and soul into have betrayed you that kind of thing can make
it almost impossible to trust other people people who have experienced that
type of trauma can often project or can see things that maybe aren't there or
that other people don't see it in terms of being suspicious or questioning
behaviors or you know reading too far into something someone said a lot of
people have a lot of nasty things to say about that kind of behavior but if they
were to take a second to think about it and think about what trauma means trauma
is really fundamentally a betrayal of trust that makes it almost impossible to
trust other people no matter how hard we try and I wish there could be more
empathy there on behalf of people in relationships with folks with PTSD and
BPD but apparently that's too much to ask I think another thing that
contributes to not having friends or losing friends is a fear of abandonment
often we are so afraid of being left that we will run away first and oh my
god that is like that's my hallmark I am a one hundred thousand percent runner if
I start to get comfortable somewhere I'll run if I start to get uncomfortable
somewhere I'll run if things start to feel too hard I will run if someone
seems like they might actually be good to me I'll run
I am a runner again this goes back to the distrust of people no matter how
close I get to someone there will always be some amount of distrust there just
because that is like ingrained in my system now if that fear that someone's
going to leave me gets big enough I'll shoot first maybe someone doesn't text
you back for a few weeks and you interpret that as oh my god this person
doesn't like me anymore if I am in a situation like that sometimes I'll be
like well I'm gonna follow you on Instagram I'm gonna delete your phone
number and that is completely irrational I realize but it is just that
trauma-based got instinct of I have to protect myself before this person hurts
me really it is a frantic effort to avoid abandonment via abandoning other
people and if you do that your whole life which I have I've lived in twelve
or thirteen different states I'm not gonna count right now it will be very
difficult to maintain a consistent friend group again like I said I have
friends around the country but I never see them because I've run from every
place I've ever really lived in like even now I live outside Minneapolis and
I've lived on and off in Minnesota for the last six years but I don't have a
consistent friend group here because I've always left right when things get
boner Baal and gone somewhere else and then come back and you know hid out I
live 45 minutes from Minneapolis I only see grace pretty much grace as my friend
so I have one friend that I'll just show myself out cuz yep they're starting to
see me up they see me up they see me it's like as soon as things get Mull
nerble or as soon as my demons start to come out
I've run and I go somewhere else and I repeat the same cycle and then you know
I scare people again and then I run again and it's just like failure after
failure after failure and the police I'm in right now is like not even going to
try just not gonna go in the public I'm going to like stay in this house and
just like decompress and in the process you know I haven't
had any big chaotic explosions in a long time and that feels really good and if
that's what I need to avoid that then by all means I'm ok with it I think one of
the main reasons I started this YouTube channel is because I didn't have any
friends I didn't have anyone to talk to I didn't have anyone to express my
feelings to because again like I don't even fully open up to my boyfriend the
only times I fully open up are in writing and I just wasn't able to do it
for awhile like that wasn't calling to me and video was so I gravitated towards
it and here I'm able to open up in this confessional sort of way because no one
else is in this room with me right now it's just me and me and I'm basically
talking to a mirror expressing myself but then like there is a certain amount
of distance I feel when I you know I make the video here the vulnerability
time is over and then I upload it later and it's very different than speaking to
someone face to face it's like an imprint of something I've already
processed that I'm offering to you because I have to process at first I
don't even know what I'm talking about I'm a nut case the reason I chose to
make this video this week is because I had a friend it was very close to her
for like a year we met in an English class and then we had a huge falling-out
she's one of the people I had falling out with class or earlier this year we
both said a bunch of terrible mean things to each other a couple weeks ago
she started coming up for me again because the experience like a weird
trauma together last year where someone passed away I found myself thinking of
her as I was thinking of that situation and trying to deal with that situation
so I reached out to her and we exchanged a couple of nice emails and I was like
oh maybe maybe sorry I'm like playing with a box out there on the ground
maybe we're mending something like maybe we can fix this in some way and things
can get better but let me put this bug outside Oh
he jumped did he jump and I guess I was just probably kind of like delusional
about it because in a weird way like if someone drops a grudge against me I'm
fully willing to drop a grudge against them but then like two nights ago
Forrest was really sick and he went to bed early at like 7:00 and at 10 o'clock
I was still awake and I got an email from her and she was like it sucked to
lose you as a friend - but I don't think there's any coming back from the things
that were said and done and I was like okay well I tried that's awkward that's
embarrassing I just I feel so delusional sometimes
like why can I get over certain things so easily like am I just like completely
delusional am I just like fully pretending that none of that happened I
feel like my memory is just kind of bad anyways to be completely real like
they're definitely people out there who hate me who think I am so over the top
so freaking crazy so unpredictable so untrustworthy I think my friendship
record has just been so bad at the last decade I've kind of eventually decided
you know what I'm just gonna take a break from this because I'm not good at
it I'm not getting much pleasure out of it everything I try just ends in chaos
and shit so let's just take a break that's still basically where it Matt I
think the more we challenge and let go of these standards that inform our
choices the happier we will be with ourselves and the more we'll be able to
contact our true selves and figure out what authenticity looks like for us I am
comfortable not having friends where no having a very limited number of friends
or having friends but never really seeing them I'm comfortable with limited
communication with people I am confident that I can maintain my most important
relation chips even with limited communication
isolation is a survival mechanism for me and I think it is how I'm able to
produce creative work if I did not spend all this time alone my output would
probably be minimal and I know but I'm like when I spend a lot of time with
friends I am drained I get exhausted to the point that I have to rely on
substances in order to keep it up I was never someone who could live in houses
with other people I've never succeeded at having a roommate I was always
terrified by punk houses because they just cannot imagine spending that much
time with people especially dirty people and especially people who judge her
every move that just sounded awful to me I did live in a squat for a little bit
when I was 18 or 19 and just left home and that was too much you know I didn't
even talk to my roommates but I can feel their energy and it overwhelmed me you
know wasn't all bad energy but it was still too much for me to the point I was
overloaded and paranoid I am always someone who has fared best
just living with a partner because for some reason I am able to open up to
partners more than anyone else but other than that like it is impossible for me
to live with other people it's almost it's basically impossible meat for me to
work with other people and I think what's made me so miserable throughout
my life is my refusal to accept myself where I'm at and once I started to
embrace these tendencies embrace this introversion and this craving for alone
time and limited friends like that's when I started to feel safe and that's
when my head stopped spinning so much and that's only been a very recent
development that's only been living out here in the country that I've been able
to feel like that prior to that I was living smack dab in the middle of
Minneapolis super loud super busy my head was constantly swirling and then
boom had those blow ups broke up those friendships I maintained
relationships best with distance and that's not going to be true for everyone
there are extroverted people with PTSD and BPD out there who will benefit a lot
from seeing people regularly and that is completely great again it's about taking
yourself where you're at being honest about where you're at and letting
yourself be there and embracing it and not fighting it let me know down in the
comments what your experience with this has been do you have a lot of friends
have you had a lot of falling outs are you someone who's prone to burning
bridges tell me your experiences I'd love to hear from you and if you enjoyed
this video please do give it a big thumbs up and subscribe to my channel
for twice weekly ramblings from a professional crazy person I hope you had
a good time here I hope you I don't know can at least relate to some of this I
love you all very very much and I will see you on Tuesday going back
to toolbox Tuesday's on Tuesday bye I'm pretty sure I'm doing crazy not crazy
and love but crazy like out of my fucking
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