03 Sep 07
Through all this, I’ve come to realize that I cut people out of my life as a defence mechanism.
When someone hurts me, I distance myself from them so they mean nothing to me.
And if someone means nothing to me, they can’t hurt me.
Often it’s an easy choice — just one wrong word or action — but not all the time. Cutting off my mom was by no means a rash decision; it took years of consideration and plenty of chances before she finally went too far.
What surprises me the most is that even though I now know that I have this defence mechanism, I don’t see a problem with it.
I’ve been hurt by enough people, and I don’t want to be hurt any more.
Not sure how I found this blog. Was just wandering around, but this struck me as something that I have done in the past (and still do now). It must have been a difficult decision to cut off your mother and I don’t know the full reality of ‘why’ but I’m sure you didn’t take the decision lightly. As a parent myself I would find it probably the most heart-wrenching thing if one of my children did that to me. The question is, in your eyes can a person redeem themselves or are you too proud to take that step back? Just curious.
I think there are good times to cut people off – if they are manipulative or just just feel they are not a good person to have in your life. I once read somewhere that you should surround yourself with positive people, who you like or admire and to remove from your life anyone who is a negative or who just sucks the energy from you. I’ve done this and every now and again a spring clean is necessary
Set me up for a thoughtful day anwyay!
I feel that I don’t agree with this. Will have to wait a bit for my conscious to figure out logically.
A good thing to recognize. It doesn’t mean defense is wrong even if it is kneejerk or has negative outcomes. It also has positive outcomes. Every mechanism serves its purpose. Always a matter of would something else serve the same purpose and better. And can you distance yourself from the pendulum swing so one doesn’t chase the pendulum but be at peace with it swinging without getting a neediness rising to control the swing of recoil or chase. A harmony with the rhythm, predict when one wants to run. It doesn’t mean one should remove oneself or shouldn’t remove oneself. It’s just a matter of self-knowledge, watching monkey mind cavort from a neutral bench and being wise to the scene enough to yank the monkey out by the arm if it gets itself in too much danger.
gee, that response of mine was long.
and you know that all, but, er. oh, well. what’s spouted is spouted.
@John Cage — There are definitely the right times to cut people off, it’s when a person is close to you that it’s difficult. I surround myself only with good people by refusing to accept flaws in someone, because I’ve dealt with enough bad people in my life. It’s never a spring cleaning for me, it’s a constant re-evaluation of all my relationships.
Whether a person can redeem themselves or whether I would take that step back is somewhat of a false dilemma fallacy, because the possibility of someone redeeming themselves is always there. It’s just whether or not the chance is worth it. I don’t take those things back; for me to get that far means there’s no turning back, and pride doesn’t enter the equation.
@Causalien — That’s funny, because it’s completely logical to me.
@Pearl — “Every mechanism serves it’s purpose.” You’re absolutely right. Being at peace with the pendulum swing is such a great metaphor. It’s definitely a balance between accepting too much and too little.
There’s only one catch. Doing this does close you off; and I’ve seen in years of doing so that it can be both a protective necessity and a tower of isolation in the making. If that person is repeatedly untrustworthy, then yes, there’s no point accepting hurt from them again.
But be aware that people are inadept at life, they are very un-self-aware on the most part, and you are particularly NOT like that, you are by contrast very much aware. Others will hurt you more than they hurt each other, simply by means of your being more sensitive to motive. In fact, a lot of the time, people are just thoughtless idiots wrapped up in their own messes, and slinging out pain on others without thinking. Sometimes that person may come round much later.
How do I know this? because at a certain age, you look at yourself all of a sudden and realize you’ve been exactly that awful to certain of them, and you simply didn’t realize it. Not at all. Even when you were trying to be so noble and good, it doesn’t mean you did the right thing for another, always. Age just brings this kind of thing into your experience and you see things on a much more level ground in the end.
So keep yourself protected, but realize things may change in ways you least expected some day.
I agree.
Sometimes we can forgive someone out of their ignorance, because they don’t hurt others out of malice. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of such ignorant mistakes as well, and I try to be the first one to admit my fault (when I realize it). But there are certain circumstances, as in all situations in life, where this rule just doesn’t apply.
Sometimes, one should know better.
This post struck a chord. I’ve often had exes ask me how I could so easily cut them out of my life and the question often doesn’t make sense to me because it seems natural to do so. Sometimes I wonder if that this was a product of growing up in a household where love was conditional and it just became easy to lift the emotional drawbridges and wall myself in safely. I guess from my exes point of view, they consider this a weakness or some kind of character flaw but I’ve always thought of it as a strength.
Actually, I was also thinking specifically of how my childhood created this defense mechanism. I had to show no emotion, put no faith in my parents, share nothing with them because they wouldn’t care, and it was their indifference that killed me. We’re definitely casualties of our cultures in this sense, at least I feel this way because I don’t particularly like it about myself, but find it extremely difficult to change.
There are two sides to every coin, and what is strength to one person can always be considered weak to another. Neither side is right, of course, but try explaining that to people who don’t understand. The fact of the matter is that we have to deal with this in ourselves; it does exist, and life becomes an adventure in finding out how it affects us, the ones we care about, and the things we do.
For me, part of it was a personal safety issue, as in, more emotion would mean another round with the ting-tiu and I imagine you may have heard something similar growing up, “Why are you crying? Are you a GIRL? Stop crying!” And I remember as time went on, the yelling just faded into the background and I learned to shut down and tune out. I think that I derived whatever “power” I could as a child by demonstrating that whatever was said or done would only receive a stoic silence.
One of the challenges for me lately is to not apply the same dynamic to my relationship, but unfortunately, when I find that there’s a conflict that can’t be immediately resolved, I completely shut down and go silent. It’s been frustrating at times, but I think you summed it up really well in the last sentence of your comment above.
By cutting off, I believe that one makes permanent the effects which that person has on oneself. When one can hurt me like that, I don’t believe honoring them in such a fashion can be justified.
@Jason — I remember my dad yelling at me to memorize math equations, and saying “You’re a disgrace…you’re Chinese and you’re bad at math!”. When I started to cry, he was literally disgusted by me and walked away. From this, I learned to shut down too.
I’m in the exact same boat about not using that dynamic in my relationships. My first instinct is to shut down and hide everything. Sometimes it feels like the situation too overwhelming, and I have to calm myself down first. I can’t believe that there’s someone else who can relate exactly to how I feel; no one else I know has gone through the same thing, or handled it in the same way. Very comforting to know that I’m not alone.
@Causalien — Could you rephrase or further explain what you mean, I don’t quite understand.
Wow, Jason, I thought that was only my math experience…. I still have math-panic thanks to my terrific upbringing…
You’re definitely not alone. One of the things I find really compelling about your writing is how much if it resonates with my own experience and struggles. I often think about how many other people would find comfort in a book or something detailing these kinds of experiences. At least something beyond Amy Tan, heh.
You know, I had no idea who Amy Tan was but immediately thought of the Joy Luck club as the only “universal” American/Canadian-born-Chinese thing that I knew. Then I looked her up, and lo and behold, I was thinking of the exact person you were talking about, without actually knowing it.
Maybe I should try reading that some time; perhaps it would resonate for me as well.
If you’ve seen the movie, the book is pretty similar. The Kitchen God’s Wife and Hundred Secret Senses were good too, but are pretty formulaic. (If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t want to spoil it for you) I think Amy Tan tends to focus on ancestry and rediscovering roots, dealing mostly with issues of first generation immigrants and identity issues of second generation children. Stuff like trying to figure out which side of the line they fall on, Chinese or North American? While some of the stuff resonates, there is a certain elevated and noble tone to the entire thing. While I’m interested in the past I never knew, I’m not sure it occupies that large a space in my life.
I tried reading a book called the Jade Peony by Wayson Choy, but I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters. I’m working through another book right now by Terry Woo that I just bought called Banana Boys (yeah, white on the inside, yellow on the outside) which is sort of like Douglas Coupland meets Amy Tan with vignettes of a few different characters who are students at UWaterloo. It’s a fun read and so far, I find I can relate to it pretty well, but I’ll hopefully post something about it on my now-decrepit blog when I finish reading it.
Your realization about how much importance your history weighs in your life is exactly the way I feel. Even with a renewed interest in my culture in the last year, I know it’s not THAT significant.
Maybe these movies/books are for the parents (first generation immigrants), not the kids. I remember a bunch of my aunts going with my mom to see it in the theater and they were bawling when they came out.
And I read about Banana Boys just a couple of months ago! I think I’ll have to pick that up some time. There’s something about books that are based on local areas, and I knew a bunch of people who went to UWaterloo for university.
By the way, you have to (re)enable comments on your blog!