'You've always seemed so serious to me'
Posted on August 22nd, 2017
Someone I have felt painfully rejected by in the past said it to me recently. And now I got something! Here I wrote about feeling too big as an older sibling. Come on, saying that I am too serious to pleasantly interact with is exactly behaving like my bullying cousin.
Isn't it fascinating how we put ourselves in situations and which people who resemble our traumatic experiences?
We have recently addressed exactly this bullying cousin memory in the schema therapy, and it seems that subconsciously it helped. I am happy I have no reacted typically to his words. He said I was too serious and I took it with curiosity. In the past I would rather freak out thinking I am disgusting, don't fit in, and should die - and this reaction would be very logical, taken into the consideration the trauma. Logical, but not helpful. Now I tried to be helpful to myself.
And again, boom! Being too serious - isn't it a result of growing up as a parentified child? Isn't it just another wound I got in the course of my CPTSD childhood? Yes, definitely, that's it. I do not have to rebel against the idea that I am too serious anymore (since I personally do not identify with this), and I feel this idea coming indirectly from many other people too. Yes I behave too serious but it is not who I am, this is what I was trained to be. Even more, I probably do not even have to be serious if I do not want to.