Somewhere I heard that no matter where you start your recovery process, one change will automatically pull consecutive other changes.
I have made one substantial change I think: I trained my brain to stop the inner critic. When I first read about it I thought it's something I'll never be able to do, and I didn't even like the idea. But yes, now it has became a habit to ask myself questions like "if someone else did something like this would I also think about them what I'm thinking about myself?". I'm also giving myself encouragement in my thoughts whenever I'm not sure if I've made the right choice. I tell myself "obviously you did the right thing". I never thought I would be able to do it. I think I've just been collecting the behaviors and sentences of people since reading about it and now I became ready to replay it on myself. And made it a habit.
Few things resulted from this:
Together with the reassuring voices a new voice started to appear: "but how is this situation looking objectively?". Yes I think this is my chance to look at things and myself more realistically. Once I'm not scared of that inner critic I can actually expose myself to finding out the things about myself I don't like, and take it. Still not there, but the fact that this question started to even appear in my head impresses me.
I stopped being nice to people. I just removed the should and somehow I'm interacting much less with them. What freaks me out is that I realise I don't actually want to interact with them. I don't care about their day, I don't care how they feel or what they think. I really don't. Why have I been living my life pretending I did? I'm too busy with my own shit. And they don't care about me. No one comes to me and asks how I am. I don't build the relationships so they're not there. This so much reminds me how I felt from the beginning of school. I also didn't care about the children, I wasn't shy, I just didn't care. And they didn't care about me.
Fair enough, someone may say I deserved it.. but because the old emotions are being replayed quite intensely now, I have access to how I felt back then. And I don't think it was because I was selfish. I was actually .. suffering, horribly. You don't care how someone's day was while having your nails pulled out. It was a permanent torture I was going through. I honestly don't know why I survived. I guess suicide wasn't a thing back then. I never developed the concept of another human being having good intentions towards me. Other people meant potential danger. I didn't learn to bond with people. I don't know how to do it now either. I never did this in kindergarten, I never did this in school, I just never did this. This concept feels as foreign to me as walking feels to a six month old. It's something I saw people do but don't know how to go about it myself.
The brutal truth is: I am incompetent in being a human being. I did not develop completely. I have areas where I lack basic skills and it's unimaginable to most of other people that it's even possible to be this way. So most people will not understand. They will find their own explanations. They will think I'm arrogant and selfish. So far my choices were to cover it up with codependency, or to be completely lonely. I now try to remove the codependency and instead of the promised "discovering of the authentic relationships" I discover that there's no relationship capability at all. It should be happening automatically, like walking for one year old, but I kind of discover that I'm missing a leg.