A post-event analysis
The Saturday barbeque wasn’t entirely stress-free. Although I managed to kick my appearance up a notch, the anxiety was almost overwhelming. Nothing had changed inside and it took every last once of willpower to hold things together. The negative self-talk was as strong as ever. I suppose I should have been proud of the way I handled things, considering my self-defeating belief system was unchanged and still very much in control.
Later that night, after analyzing everything to death, I came to a few conclusions:
For one, I felt as though I had picked up some positive truth. No one laughed or made me feel inferior. I felt like one of the group (I hadn’t felt like this…well, ever). This truth would serve to re-program my warped belief system very slowly over time.
The other conclusion I had drawn, was that I could have done better and accomplished more. After all, this was my immediate family. But something prevented me from expressing myself fully – for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I thought back to the afternoon barbeque. I played things over and over. It should have been a fairly happy, comfortable, and anxiety free afternoon for me, but there was something…
Of course, my sister in law – that was it. That was the missing piece of the puzzle. She always seemed to get the better of me – she didn’t even have to speak.
Yeah, a lot of it was just my overactive imagination, but at the same time it was obvious by the comments she made that I wasn’t held in high regard. She seemed to go out of her way to point out my faults or any mistakes I made. In fact, she seemed to take extreme pleasure in belittling me whenever possible.
She always put on a sort of mocking grin whenever I came near her. I always felt as though she were laughing at me – humoring me, in a way. Now, the fact that I was currently unemployed and living at home with my elderly parents, didn’t help matters.
At the barbeque I had a constant feeling that she was watching me, wondering what the family hermit was up to. I sensed that she could read my mind and that she was laughing at the feeble attempt I was making. “What a freak,” I imagined her saying to herself.
She had the bully mentality and this reminded me of all the abuse I had endured in school. I wasn’t physically scared of her, but she had a very aggressive personality that made me extremely nervous – I think she knew this.
Leave a Reply