A Dominant I was in the process of getting to know, liked to tell me when I expressed my feelings or thoughts, if he couldn’t understand what I was communicating, that it was in fact because I was wrong. He liked to invalidate my thoughts and feelings because he was too stubborn to acknowledge that perhaps what he was “reading” about me, or what he thought I was saying, was actually not what I was feeling or saying. Rather than taking the time to ask questions and perhaps help me unravel what was there, he preferred to steamroll me into him being right… about my thoughts and feelings.
It took me a while to see what he was doing. I couldn’t understand why bit by bit I felt like I was losing my voice around him. Why I felt increasingly frustrated. Why I felt so unheard and so misunderstood. Why my communication abilities had felt like they’d plummeted into an abyss. Of course, I took it all on myself. That’s why it took so long to see.
I have realised that there are many people in my life that I allow to do this to me. I don’t know when I stopped trusting myself. And I don’t know when I started allowing other people to steamroll my internal knowing of who I am. It makes me reluctant to share myself. I have come to realise that I can’t feel emotionally safe with someone who can’t accept that their assumptions at times may not be correct. This is the issue I have with self proclaimed “empaths.” We can never know how another person is feeling or experiencing something. If they try to tell you how it is for them, you don’t get to decide that’s not how it is… even if you think you know better. I’m here to tell you, you don’t.
