My Own Worst Enemy?

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Hi Laura, I might not have caught on if not for the query serving as post subject. The answer to that is yes. My answer will not be as complete as I would like because I'm far from a conscious knowing how.

I know what the confrontational or avoidant state of mind is. Not the same as self-assertive, even as I had reasoned so. The basic purpose though is to keep order, prevent being poorly treated.

I'm also familiar with the naive. Oh boy, am I ever. First, I have found it be be synonymous with an almost child-like trusting. And, yeah, it can present a hazard. For me, it's my original state in an extreme, because, in my head it is a happy state, and supposed to protect me by neutralizing another person's aggression. Sure, when pigs fly. Add a related addition: I'm in temporary denial as to how rotten people can be, even when I see it coming.

Empathy can graduate to what I'll call extreme sympathy, or, a lack of boundary between understanding and, on some level, experiencing another person's feelings. Maybe we could call it "feeling transference." This lack of boundary, even when microscopic, can become a bond such that one can identify another person's feelings as one's own whether or not that is so to the degree believed, and/or without really knowing enough of the person to make that judgment, but trusting in that bond to the bitter end. It's very hard to know another person, especially a new person, but it can hit the fan after 25 years too.
I think that empathy, trusting and the confrontational or self-assertive all have their place.

That's a study in its own right, which I've pursued in recent years. The results: I'm far less confrontational; can be self-assertive, but am currently prone to shut down in a conversation because of the way I've been treated as an older person. Shall we say I'm misquoted, or not listened to at all, whatever. If I try to correct the situation, I'm told I misunderstood (the h*ll I did), or that I don't know what's best for me but they do (no, that's not right either), or the person (i.e., docs, stare blankly at the wall, and then change the subject). So, I'm looking for situations, which, frankly, are more normal. Ah, to find the normal in an increasingly chaotic human condition.

The thing is, you are what you are, as are other individuals of your inner family. I get that. I also get it that changes are needed. As I see it, this should occur without a sense of loss to anyone.

I made a discovery recently that I don't yet comprehend as well as I would like. So, it's a developmental process. The poles of forceful and more passive energies do have a midpoint in the continuum between them that does not take/push, or receive (passively or actively). That is Neutral energy. What I experienced in another person during a product demo in a hair and skin care store.

I believe that this Neutral demeanor (which can be warm, friendly, and interested, without a falling into the other person or being too forward, and allowing for awareness of safe emotional boundaries for the self in any given situation, without being invasive either in active (pushing away) or passive (absorption) sense), might be part of the answer you're looking for.

Aside from being able to read energy to a greater degree than I have before, which made this observation possible for me, I don't have more of a bread crumb trail to offer. I've gone back and forth like a ping pong ball, as a monomind, because I didn't have a clue of something very real and strong in between. I'm working on finding this in myself in my own way, without it being contrived as how I should be, rather than what I am. Your neutral midpoint could well differ from shawn's or mine. The developmental process, for me, is totally non-verbal, to the point of it being unconscious in nature. I've started to tap into something that feels right in myself. It feels really good. Very much me, but dumping some baggage.

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