Reasons to Avoid People

Avoiding people is something that I’ve been doing all my life in one form or another. If practice does indeed make perfect, then you could say that this is something I’ve perfected…

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(which in my case includes everyone, so to make your judgment of me easier start with you as I’m probably jonesing to avoid you when I’m with you…

ps. I could be jk-ing)

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except I don’t feel as though I have perfected it, partly because I often wish I wouldn’t do it and that causes a crack in the perfect facade and execution of a trait.

Avoiding people is a reflex that is stronger than I am… that statement is incorrect as that reflex emanates from me, so I am stronger than I am? Let’s just say that sometimes I would like to override the reflex but the reflex isn’t so keen on my doing that and my reasons for overriding it aren’t as strong as the ones for sticking with it.

Most of my thought out reasons for avoiding people come from the same place where my thought out reasons for not avoiding people often come from – experience of other people and their effect on you.

You know that thing we all do where we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t do what we want to do because other people have repeatedly told us that the way we are is not the way that we should be being (or at least it’s not the way they want us to be for them and that’s all the reason they need to tell us that – UR doing it wrong), so we end up doubting ourselves, disfavouring our natural inclinations in favour of unnatural ones which we think should be natural and we may conclude that what is natural for us is abnormal versus some parameter of ‘normal’ that… may be a parameter of normal that no one except one person does naturally but we all think everyone does it except us.

That’s one of the main reasons I avoid people and also why I think I shouldn’t avoid people.

There are just so many times you can listen to a lecture on – What’s wrong with you – according to someone else (who is of course totally not being hypocritical and is telling you this vitally important thing they must tell you because they’re helping you, fixing what’s wrong with you… which is really rather kind and considerate, empathic (they’d love it if you did this to them, right), of them… as long as you don’t take a time out from listening to their lecture to examine them and their words, deeds, etc, closely) before you find yourself  (full of holes that leak your individual life force out and away from you) becoming increasingly anti-social (because they’ve drained you of your energy, you need to retreat and recuperate, but they still want more of it and… soon this too will become something they find wrong with you – why are you always so lethargic (around them)!? What’s wrong with you… (them)!?).

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(I like how this all began with – please remember that not everyone is the same. Why is that something we forget (when it comes to everyone but ourselves)?

As an INTP I have to admit this is fairly accurate considering it’s an unisex one-size-fits-all analysis. I’m always a bit stunned at how well generalised INTP stuff fits me.

I would like to add that INTP’s may tend to appear less socially awkward when we’re angry, in fact we can come across as suddenly being rather more sociable than usual because we’re more detached from what happens, we’ve ‘switched ourselves off’, don’t give an F, and superficially may seem more likable, more polite and socially correct. In other words we’re no longer rebelling, asking curious questions, questioning you and your version of reality, will say what you expect people to say, will agree with you, and seem interested simply because we’re not.

Or maybe that’s just me…)

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Speaking of being a certain way around someone (and that someone assuming that the way you are with them is how you always are)…

When I first met my partner (almost two decades ago), and we were in the full swing (-ing on a star) of the honeymoon phase of a relationship (much to the annoyance of those not caught up in the intoxication of falling in lurve), my mother (dum, dum, duh… ugh!) got very angry because she felt left out…

Amongst all the tantrums and tiaras which she threw at the time was – insisting that she have some alone-time with my partner. She was very cross that he had not requested an audience with her, after all she was the ‘expert’ on me (more so than I was) – why did he not seem to understand that!!!!

Being as sweet as he is, he obliged her and they went for a dinner alone together without me. It was a very weird scenario. This was not a test which this Capricorn (a sign notorious for testing people) had designed for my partner but since it happened – he not only passed it with flying colours, he blew me away with how he dealt with it (bloody Virgo’s will surprise you every time with how independent and unique they are).

He was forced to socialise with someone he had already concluded was… in buzzword lingo… toxic. In the short time that he’d had the pleasurable displeasure of knowing her my mother had played every game in her arsenal of arse.

Her bottom line focus was on killing our relationship because I belonged to her, she didn’t want to be alone and since she’d managed to alienate everyone in her life except me (because I was suffering from Stockholm syndrome of a sort)…

and she had tried every trick in the ‘I care for you (more than anyone else even you)’ manual of ‘not caring about you at all but disguising self-interest as interest in another’s well-being’… on me and it hadn’t ‘worked’ the way she wanted it to – to get me to alienate the only person brave (crazy) enough to love me for who I actually was…

Since she couldn’t get me to get rid of him, she decided…

To make him want to alienate himself from me by telling him during their private dinner that I was – prone to ‘black moods’.

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(this sums up what confused my mother about the love which had developed between me and my partner… we didn’t need her and she only knew how to relate based on ‘need’.

She was also a Leo trying to meddle with two Earth signs… when will Fire signs learn that Earth doesn’t burn like that)

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What my mother did not compute was that my ‘black moods’ were something I only had around her.

I was not like this with others.

The only times when my partner has experienced my ‘black moods’ over the years that we’ve known each other has been when I’ve had to deal with her and have had to recover from that kind of no deal ordeal.

But of course people never see you when you’re not with them (unless they stalk you and observe you from afar… and even then they may still project and transfer their own stuff onto you because you’re an ‘object’ of their affection and objects take on the forms/meaning we give them) so they tend to assume that who you are when you’re with them is who you are. Full stop.

And some people never consider if their perception of you is actually you or just their perception of you, because… their perception of you isn’t about you it’s all about them and that’s all that matters to them them. Their version of you is reality and fact as far as they’re concerned. Their view is the only view all other views will be nullified.

There really is no way of dealing with someone like this… other than avoiding them if that is possible.

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(what if you kill more than one killer a la Dexter? You may still replace the first killer you killed and become a killer yourself but if you kill more killers surely the stats don’t remain the same… replies on a postcard to I’m not planning on doing this as a career move, I’m an avoider but  just asking because Batman brought the subject up and … questions)

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That incident with my mother was not unusual… except for the fact that that was one of the times that I didn’t ‘let her win’.

Growing up with her was one of many influences which made me prone to beign what is now sometimes termed – an avoidant personality disorder (some disorders may be caused by trying to bring some order to chaos).

My father wasn’t any better when it came to influencing my approach to ‘socialising’ with people.

My parents were narcissists – or at least that’s what that type of personality is called these days (as long as they aren’t the ones calling the shots and themselves, because they’d call everyone but themselves narcissists and other pleasantries like that).

My parents hated people – ergo their child had to hate people too (and since their child mainly only experienced people through them this was a relatively easy thing to do).

The real problem with me is… I don’t actually hate people. Never did (however I could hate the people who told me I had to hate people because they hated them and needed others to support their hate, the more the merrimiserabler). Never could toe the family line about that… especially when it came to people outside of the family sphere. They were actually far nicer than I was told that they were…

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(INTP’s are often labeled as being ’emotionally inept’, unable to understand or handle emotions or even be aware that such things exist – this is a misinterpretation. A bit like when people think those with dyslexia are stupid (I have dyslexia, when you tell someone this they sometimes start speaking to you really slowly or talk louder… or they inform you that they know someone who is ‘retarded’ like you are and are good with people like you… sigh!).

INTP’s are ‘analysers’ – the analysis on certain ’emotions’ may result in realising that those ’emotions’ aren’t emotions at all but ‘e-notions’ – emotions born of thought. For example – someone didn’t reply to my text therefore I must now work myself up into an ’emotion’ about that by overthinking a situation which is far simpler and more logical (they’re busy or have nothing to say) than I am going to let it be. I am now ‘angry’, ‘upset’, ‘offended’ because I think I should be.

That’s not emotion – that’s you thinking yourself into emotion and then creating a drama out of nothing but an e-notion which you now expect everyone to bow down to an apologise or empathise (if they’re not your latest cause of your emotional drama).

In those instances I am going to end up offering practical solutions – like take a chill pill and stop seeing others as the servants of your ego’s needs. And I may end up siding with the person who upset you because… I can see that we’re headed to me being just another person who has upset you, so… I’m one of them rather than one of you.)

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and frankly those who hated people were far worse than the people they hated more often than not.

Even though I’m more of a people-avoider… and have been that way since probably always…

I still fanatsised about being not an avoider of people.

One of my favourite games as a child…

an only child not by choice… so please try to be kind (even if you have no experience therefore no understanding therefore no personal point of reference to enable intelligent empathy of the only child status) when judging only children for their onlychildness… if it had been up to me my parents would have bred like rabbits (hopefully without their children having to deal with myxomatosis) as then I would have had plenty of buffers between me and them (parental* attention may be a desired thing when you have to share it with siblings, but everything has a flip side… *differences in parents apply).

… when I was left alone in homogeneous hotel rooms (if left alone at home I did other loner things) to babysit myself while my parents went out socialising (something they loved to do… but hated doing, especially based on what you heard them say before and afterwards in front of non-existent invisible you-child), was to unplug the phone and use it as part of my play in which I pretended that I was working at hotel reception in charge of answering the call of many people who needed things… and it was my job to solve their problems, feed their needs for them…

it was a very weird game to play (but then again, in retrospect,  it sort of expressed what it was like to be a child of narcissists) considering that when phones ring I don’t answer them unless I have to and feeding need is something I’ve learned leads to more need needing feeding and nothing you feed it is ever enough for such hunger…

but the innocence of youth or the insight of it…?

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(we all are born with warning signs – human – but we don’t tend to heed warnings)

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Someone recently asked me on this blog, on one of my narcissist posts: As you have suffered like my husband [edit – by being the child of narcissists] can you tell me would you criticize someone who loved u in pressure of your family if at all u believed that someone truly loved you.

That’s a good question but can one person answer it for another?

Especially when the person you’re asking to answer your question about someone else doesn’t know you or that someone else…

Can I speak for INTP’s, Capricorns, children of narcissists, other avoiders of people… or can I only speak for myself?

With this sort of question I tend to offer my own experience (please remember that not everyone is the same – like the INTP Anger excerpt pointed out),

and I may, depending on how… INTP… I’m feeling and what I’m feeling from the comment, also suggest that the person asking that kind of question review how they’re being experienced by others (by their significant other) and also how they’re viewing others and what they perceive others to be being and doing…

What I mean by this is – when I avoid people I know why I’m avoiding them and it often isn’t about them but about me (the history of me), but others may perceive my actions as being about them (due to their own history or herstory), and therefore they may react towards me and my behaviour based on that and… we get caught in a cycle of I’m rejecting you because you rejected me (with both sides perpetuating this over time, thinking the other person started it, even though maybe no one is actually rejecting anyone and everyone is just reacting to the perception of rejection and the e-notions which go with that).

Maybe the person who you think is criticising you isn’t criticising you, they think you’re criticising them and reacting to that as you are reacting to it… or maybe they’re criticising you because they’re passing on what someone else has done to them and this is how they’ve learned to communicate, they don’t know any other way, may be too afraid to try another way…

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in case doing things another way brings about everything they’ve tried to avoid…

but doing things the usual way may also make what you’re avoiding happen too…

which brings me back to sometimes trying not to do what my reflexes tend to want to do.

Still trying to work things out in my relationship with myself, so please be patient with me if you want a relationship with me and… I’ll be patient where vice versa is concerned. Let’s see whose patience runs out first (mine is ruled by Saturn).

And no… I have no idea what this post is about anymore… just #blame it on Brexit.