That realization somehow came up in a therapeutic session. The therapist said that they cared about me, and I just could not hold it in and I said that she didn't have to lie. I said I knew what this was about, that I was paying money and she was saying the stuff I was supposed to hear. I got what I was supposed to hear so she didn't have to repeat it over and over again. I got it that her caring about me was what I was supposed to imagine, and I was imagining it, and did not want to be constantly interrupted.
And that made the therapist shocked. And I was shocked that she was shocked. I actually felt guilty, like I don't know, did I hurt her or something? Disappoint? I immediately started regressing to being a child and seeing my mother who says "don't you love me?!". The therapist asked me: "do you really think so?! and do you think in this way about other people too??". And yea.. hell yes, of course I do! Didn't she? Doesn't everyone think so? Is this not thing that no one speaks about but everyone knows about? Is that not that elephant in the room that the whole humanity is walking around and pretending it is not there?
... or is this elephant only in my head? Or, wait is it possible that this feeling of not getting it, of being out of place, of being fooled, of the life being some kind of sick show, of things not being real, of people constantly saying cryptic and nonsense stuff like "I miss you" is because I actually have a profoundly wrong assumption that people are just saying stuff without any intention behind it? I never assign people intention of expression. They just are, they say things, but by any means that does not mean that what they say is the truth. It does not even mean that they have capacity of feeling what they claim they are feeling. They are just saying what is expected for them to say in that moment, how else would they choose what to say?
It is hard to explain my cognitive standpoint, but it goes somehow like this: when someone says something about themselves to me, the message I get is that they want me to behave as if I thought this about them. Not that it is the truth about them - I very rarely even wonder if it's true or not - what is relevant is that they want me, or rather need me, as I don't assume that there's any elaborate plan on their side, to behave in a certain way. And next, I either join that game and pretend what they said is the case, or I don't join it and I conclude they are lying. So in the first case, they are "not lying" because I agreed to pretending they are not - but ultimately they are lying too, of course. Just that I consented to it. Even if what they say is true, it is so only by coincidence. I assume they did not even consider the truth while coming up with what to say. If someone tells me they were just grocery shopping what I understand is that they want me to act as if I believed that now they have a memory of grocery shopping. And since the effort of that is very low: all I have to do is to say "oh really, how was it?", I gladly do it. But if someone tells me they love me - then the decision will always be to conclude that they are lying - which only means that I do not want to take the risk of joining that particular game, because it is too high of a risk. What should be clear by now is that the other person or what they think or feel is not relevant to me I'm that interaction at all, it's all about risk management on my side. Someone will be lying or not based entirely on my decision. I never considered the possibility that people actually may be talking about their feelings when they say they do. I always thought that these are all "code words": "I miss you", "I like you", "I really think so", "this is how I feel". Basically every sentence that could mean that someone is actually being authentic in my head I have been interpreting as "code word".
Think of how hard would it be to identify such assumption? How lucky I am I suddenly saw it? I wasn't aware I was doing it, just like I'm not aware of my internal organs functioning.