I struggle with self-acceptance and regularly have some sort of relapses where I consider what I ask of others as too much and unfair on them.
I must have heard a couple of times during my younger years that I shouldn’t put what I was going through on to others but my mind working as it does, it translated into “if I can’t manage it on my own, I am a bad person and I am not trying hard enough”.
I have extended this from emotions to anything to do with my disabilities.
(Part of what I was going through was due to my – then undiagnosed – disabilities. I’d say a lot was.)
I feel guilty when I ask that we keep my difficulties in mind when my (long distance-ish) partner and I plan something. We need to keep in mind the noise level, the amount of people we are going to meet ; we need to make sure we have a plan A / B / C for food / rest / quiet / leave.
Most people don’t have to think about that.
This said, most people aren’t at risk of being overwhelmed, leading to crying, shutting down (communication, or even the capacity to do things) or needing days to recover. I am keeping my description soft, it has been worse.
I am feeling like that as I write this as my partner is spending his yearly August holidays with his family and I won’t be joining him this time. Instead he will be joining me for his second week off work.
I used the covid crisis as an excuse – might as well be useful – but it’s a partial one.
Truth be told, ten days with ten other people is too much – at least in the conditions in which we did it.
It was already too much before the confinement, I’d need days or even weeks to recover, but it seems even more the case after two months of complete calm and four and a half without seeing each other.
Yet I feel guilty as he only see some of his family twice a year and I already “rob” him of a week during the end of year holidays – not the Christmas one, I am not a monster.
I told him about my disabilities as soon as we started talking, and we talk about it regularly since. Apparently he doesn’t feel that I ask too much of him.
We are used to working as a team, we communicate and are getting better at being creative in our solutions.
Yet, my mind regularly creates that narrative in which I don’t make any efforts to adapt – regardless of what my close ones and therapist say – and instead ask others to do all the hard work – which consists in being open to having to do things differently (there is also some emotional support).
Maybe I need to listen to my mind less and start trusting my close ones more.
After all, they choose to stay in those relationships.