# The Truth About Feeling “Unsafe” Around People

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Crappy Childhood Fairy
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

People often say they don't feel safe, not because they're in danger, but because the people around them judge them or have different opinions, and I get it. You can't really be yourself when people attach to a critical idea of who you are. You can be yourself, but there's going to be a price to pay. So, you kind of don't want to be yourself, I would say. Of course, we all want to be accepted exactly as we are. But with those of us who grew up with trauma, it can be hard to tell when the anxiety and distrust we feel from people is them doing something bad to us or if it's us wanting validation from them and feeling helpless because we can't get enough of it or we can't make them do it the way we want. So, what is safety really? My letter today is from a woman I'll call Margaret and she writes, "Hi, Anna. Thank you for your channel. I was wondering if you think I should stay in relationship with my halfsafe sibling. I know the choice is all mine, but this sibling is the hardest for me to define. She didn't lash out over my no contact with our parents. The other two siblings did, so it's less clear to me. This sibling is always on the fence, even about politics. I describe her as the contradictor, a social media label where anything you say to her, she will rebut as the devil's advocate. All right, I've got my fairy pencil. I'm going to circle things that I want to come back to on a second reading. But let's see what's going on in Margaret's life. Okay. When I had recently gone no contact with our parents, I talked about some things with her. Here is my history. I came out as a lesbian, then eventually went no contact with my parents who were unaccepting. Then I realized after going no contact that I was dealing with a narcissistic, dual alcoholic, dysfunctional family because of all the manipulation and smear campaigns that resulted from going no contact. My sister doesn't have the same sense of justice that I feel is important to who I am. In my mind, her trying to justify our parents' behaviors means that she's not a good ally to me as a lesbian, nor as a trauma survivor. And I often thought about how if my siblings came out as gay, by or trans, I would try to convince my parents to be more accepting of them. It seems like all three of my sisters let it happen. I guess the non-acceptance and worse, some of them are and she named I'm not going to go into it here because I don't like to get people arguing about politics and religion, but like certain belief systems in politics and religion. She said, "Therefore, our uh relationship exploded. " So, I'll come back to that. Besides her behavior as the contradictor, she will truly rebut any topic to death. She told me that sharing of trauma was too stressful for her and that I was putting her in the middle between myself and my parents. This could be true, Anna, she says. And I can definitely see that. At home, our parents are smearing my name and then she comes to see me and I'm smearing them. So, that's very messy and stressful for bystanders to deal with. The thing is, I don't view this as a regular family fight with two sides that are semivid. I came out as a lesbian and they don't support me. So, I think it's more cut and dry with a clear right and wrong. Also, because they are parents, they have more responsibility in the relationship. I believe the effect of her telling me to no longer talk about this is that I feel unheard, unseen, and unimportant. My nervous system seems unsafe when we get together. I feel my whole body shut down. I feel like my face won't even emote properly. It's like I'm pretending to be another person or putting on a mask. I remember once I let something slip and I said, "Every time someone knocks on my door, I get scared because I think it's mom and dad showing up on my doorstep again. " And she says, "I was referring to a visit where they were uninvited and they gaslit me for over an hour. " My sister let out a huge dramatic sigh and smiled as if it was I was getting on her last nerve. I feel like my trauma is a joke to her. It's something that I'm supposed to leave at the door, but I can't seem to do that because it has caused so much pain, fear, and loss. And I think I'm still undergoing narcissistic abuse to this day because of the smear campaign and everyone hunting me down just to explode our relationships and say awful things to me. It's weird because she gives me pride gifts and at first that made me feel happy and supported, but now it feels very empty. She also asks me if I have a girlfriend yet. Recently, I thought to myself, well, I couldn't tell you if I did because I'm not sure what information gets passed on to the rest of the family. She feels like an informant since the

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

other four family members are against me now. How can I feel safe saying anything at all, anything, if she'll just pass on my personal life details to them? If I did have a girlfriend, maybe she would tell them and they'd discuss over dinner that they hate lesbians so much and that I'm gross or something and that I'm mentally ill, autistic, and need Jesus and that I'll never have anything good because each relationship's ending was my fault after all. We're currently trying to resolve a small hiccup in our relationship. One of those where we set a boundary on a specific topic, say sorry, and make up. But this tiff has led me to rethink everything. Can I handle this half-safe sibling anymore? Or do I need to distance myself? I will be more lonely and with even less support if I decide to cut contact. My family with all five of its members will be gone. I admit I hung on out of fear. I wanted to share that the original plan was not like this. I was actually happy and relieved after going no contact with our parents and overcame a lot of grief and I wanted to give even more time and attention to my three sisters. My narc parents smear campaign made it so my sisters doubted my truth about my coming out. They put all the blame and responsibility onto me. They thought I did this to myself. They reversed it and said that I'm hurting my parents instead of they're hurting me. The other two sisters came to me and said,"I want to ask some clarifying questions, and I was too trusting and defended myself in great detail, and then they turned it into ammo to say a bunch of awful things to me and leave. I feel cautious right now, like it's important to share that this isn't what I meant to happen. What do you think of this half sibling? Thank you so much, Margaret. I wish I had a little more detail on like exactly what happened. Like, what did they say? How harsh was it? And at what point did you make that decision you didn't want contact? Situations like this where you get really like really persecuted for being gay, for being different than the family in some way that they really judge. I mean, it's a little it's not always just being gay, but it doesn't come out of a vacuum there. I'm guessing there's trauma dynamics like in the background of all of that. You're implying to me that they have a religious reason or something, but treating your kids that badly is a is like a dysfunctional family thing and it's not everybody who's religious would do that. Many people are capable of loving their kids. I know you can cut off all contact with your family. That's your option. But I know you want to see like is there another way I cannot do that? At least keep the one sister. And I want to encourage you to find a way to do that if you can like cutting contact. Some people need to do it. There's a thing going on right now where a quarter of adults in the US I've heard are have done it and something tells me that there could have been another way. And I'm not trying to invalidate you or say like, "Oh, you should just put up with, you know, abusive behavior from them. " I'm not saying that. But sometimes for the sake of people who are effed up and not capable of being totally fair or kind or accepting that sometimes we still want a relationship with them or at least we want the possibility of having that in the future. You didn't say how old you were, but since it sounds like recently you came out, I'm guessing you're fairly young. I could be wrong, but you sound it's from everything I can gather from your letter, you're fairly young. And one thing I know about time is it starts to bring more perspective on things. Not just for you, but for your parents. Um, there's a possibility, I'm not trying to invalidate again, that they just kind of went down this road of giving you this terrible treatment, but there's a possibility that they're going to have a softening in their heart at some point. It'll trouble them enough to have lost you, that they'll take a look into it. They'll maybe talk to people. You know, this is possible. It's not a guarantee, but it's possible. And what I would hope for you is that if there's any softening you can do that you would be making that progress too so that maybe there would come a day when you could have contact with them. And again, you don't have to if you don't want to. But I think going through life without a family, you're scared of it for a reason. It sucks. That would be terrible. My family cut me off and I went through my youth with very little contact with my family and s you know they had gettogethers like not far from me without telling me you know never called often didn't pick up the phone didn't respond to things and it was really painful for me and for a long time I tried to be nice enough and good enough and it didn't really work and I kind of let go that's not why it changed but for whatever reason a change happened Um, I used to get a lot of disrespect from my surviving parent and you know, I don't

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

know, there was a I was treated like a black sheep, which is weird cuz I'm fairly functional as my family goes. I'm very honest. I'm trustworthy. I think when I was much younger, I complained a lot. I was sort of cry and demand to be heard and all that stuff. And they didn't like that, but they sort of like wrote me off as some sort of a black sheep kid. And somehow it came to that surviving parents attention that maybe I wasn't so bad. And it wasn't anything I did. I just persevered in trying to stay in touch. I honestly don't know if I had it to do over again if I would just keep trying and pretending that all the hurtful stuff didn't happen. I don't know. Maybe trauma-driven behavior. But the thing is that parent died not long ago and be in the year or two beforehand they had some kind of a melting of their heart. They came to one of my live appearances as crappy childhood fairy. They praised it. They said that was really good. They'd never praised anything I'd ever done in my life. You know, I was very critical. It was my stepdad. He I sent him a copy of my book with a really loving message in it. And when he died, he had that book open on his bed and he had been writing the daily practice. And that moved me a lot. I was really glad that softened like a lot of pain from my whole life since I was eight of not really being accepted. So in that sense, I relate to what you're saying and I'm just telling you I hung in there and things softened in the end and I'm glad for that. But in the meantime, what do you do? Now, to me, I feel like younger people, people younger than me are very quick to block and cut off contact with people. Committing the abandonment can sort of boomerang back and create a lot of abandonment, you know, fear and pain in yourself. Not to mention, it hurts them, of course. And right now, that's not what your concern is. But as the sort of advocate of all people, I sort of go, well, it's good if you cannot hurt people. So, one thing I want to tell you about is this list I made of these things that I call ninja boundaries, just in case this is something you want to use, maybe at first with your halfsafe sister, then with the others. And it's a list of things you can do when you get together with people who are kind of challenging for you, who trigger you, who if you know if you don't watch out and you start just having a relaxed conversation, they say something cruddy. I have these boundaries you can use without anybody knowing you're setting a boundary. I really recommend this. This will sound strange to you because you've been so busy like setting boundaries and trying to go, ha, you know, stay back. But when you do these boundaries that are enforced but not trumpeted to people, they don't get triggered. And it often keeps everything peaceful enough that you can hang out and, you know, not get into something that's going to be horribly upsetting or blow up the relationship. That would be nice. Now, that's not the same as somebody you can totally trust and let your hair down with. It unfortunately many of us don't have that within our families of origin. That may or may not come in the future. It'd be nice if it did, but you can, you know, some relationship sometimes is a good thing even though it can't be your total, you know, person you can be yourself with. And I'm kind of tough love fairy and so again, I say this without trying to invalidate you. I don't know your details, but a little bit like you made this very kind of judgmental comment as if I would agree with you that people who were religious or, you know, political in this way that they were inherently bad and therefore the relationship had to blow up. I don't agree with you. I in this like crappy childhood fairy community, we have people of all political stripes. faiths and none and people who hate religion. We're all here in one happy family. In the membership community, we have this thing. It's a boundary. We don't talk about politics and world affairs. And people are allowed to talk about their spirituality or what or their lack thereof, but not to push it on others. And that goes for nutritional supplements, books, you know, trauma treatments. We don't push anything on other people. We make it like a space where you can come as you are. Believe what you believe. And personally, I think that everybody's personal growth and healing really depends on being able to come to their own answers. So, I would sort of challenge you, Margaret. I want to tell you about my daily practice technique because it's a way to get rid of these resentful thoughts and feelings. And I don't mean to offend you, but I'm calling it resentment that you have this um judgment of people who are if they're this way, they're bad, you know, like obviously you can't be friends with him. In any given belief system, religious or none, you have people who are cruel, you know, and they can't be accepting or loving. And you also have people who are accepting and loving or they can say politely, well, I don't agree with you, but that's okay. I love you. And um so

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

that that's something that you can have with other people. And having a disagreement with somebody is not inherently unsafe. I had to for myself come up with my own definition of safety. And it doesn't have to do like I'm not safe if people are like physically threatening me. Obviously neither are you. But in terms of like emotional safety, my safety lies primarily in my knowledge that I have boundaries which means I'm not going to stick around forever. But um I also have ways to hang out and connect with people even if we don't see eye to eye on something and that I can use my daily practice techniques to write out what I fear about that, what I resent about that and release it and have a lot more space to just be like kind of okay. I'm assuming you're younger than me. And when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, there was a lot more room to have different opinions from people on religion and politics and still be friends. There might be some distance. You know, you didn't agree about something very core. And I understand like being gay, it's pretty core. It's a core thing about you. And from what I gather, their opposition to it is unfair, um, uninformed, uh, a betrayal of you. So, one thing I saw is you have fear. If you talk to your sister, if you answer her questions about whether you have a girlfriend or anything, it will get passed on. So, that's a fear. I'm not saying it's irrational, but just to kind of name it. Okay? So, you have fear and fear. She feels like an informant. You say, "If I did have a girlfriend, maybe she would tell them and they would discuss it over dinner that they hate lesbians so much and that I'm gross or something and that I'm mentally ill, autistic, and need Jesus. " Okay, you're they might or maybe you have fear that they will. Um, you didn't tell me exactly, but I'm just singling this out because it's speculation. It's specul I don't mean to sound like a lawyer, your honor. Speculation. No, but you have fear. This is such a perfect thing. This if this were written in my daily practice, I have fear she's an informant and fear she will tell my other family members and fear I can't feel safe because fear she'll pass on personal details and fear with that information they'll discover over dinner and fear they hate lesbians so much and that I'm fear they think I'm gross. mentally ill, autistic, need Jesus. And um oh and here that I'll never have anything good because each relationship's ending was my fault after all. And so Margaret, that's just that sounds like um it sounds like fear right from your heart, which is a good thing. I'm not judging it. Maybe you have fear you're not going to have anything good because every relationship's ending was your fault. Meaning your initiative. You decided or may decide to end the relationships. So maybe you have fear about that and maybe it's okay for you to sit with that ambiguity for a little bit and know there's you have no obligation to just like run in there and cut people off. You can hang out and wait and see how it goes. You can go talk to a therapist about it. One thing that came to mind for me is what about uh older gay women or men um to go say how did you deal with this? What have you noticed? What do you think of what was said? Do you have friendships with family members who are a little bit like still on board with the parents? This is what I want to say about the halfsafe sister. She doesn't feel strongly enough about what's hurting you that she's going to go cut off everybody too. And she has told you a boundary basically. I don't want to be in the middle of this. She's being empathic toward you as a person and to the parents as a person. And she is open enough to you that she's giving you pride gifts and she's asking you about girlfriends. She wants you to know she's supportive, but she doesn't want to join you in cutting off the parents. And that's one thing where I think I would suggest to you like go ahead and let her have that boundary. Let her continue to have that relationship. And you're going to have your feelings about it. You know, that might feel hard for you. It might be stressful every time you see her, but I would just say try to use your daily practice to get the fears and resentments out about how you feel about that so you have a little more space to just let her handle things the way she wants to handle them cuz she's kind of letting you handle things the way you want to handle them. I would feel very bad for you if you lost the sister who is trying to be supportive. It's a really tough situation when you're caught between family members. And so, yeah, that's my suggestion for you is soften up the demand that people get on board with you to prove that they're on your side. They can be on your side and still not cut people off. That's a legit option. There's so much time in life for you to um discover how you feel, what you want to do about this, say about it, what you want to try to change about it. And it's okay if it evolves a little bit over time. you can just sort of like, you know, see what happens. But

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

as it happens, if you can keep the door open a crack for anybody whose heart softens or if you just become so comfortable in yourself, I can imagine if you just came out, it's a pretty big deal to have people give you grief about it. Perhaps later you you'll be like, "There you go again with your thing about me. " And perhaps you'll have a little more room, you know, just a little more room instead of like total no contact when you do have to cut people off. One thing you can do is think of it more as like not forever, but right now I need to cut you off. I need or I'm just going to have to go no contact. You can take it one hour at a time, one day year at a time. Personally, I'm not a fan of making big plans of how it's going to be in a year unless there's a concrete reason. Like I just really need the other person to know not to expect this right now. I don't know. In my healing sometimes like everything changes and I never want to have some pride. I mean the kind the other kind of pride, you know, just being like prideful like I'm not backing down. I'm going to hold my no contact. I wouldn't want to have that. I would want to be able to decide as needed. On the other hand, some people want to put a time limit on it or a forever thing on it so that they don't back down. They're afraid they will. You get to decide all that stuff. But my opinion is do what you can to hold on to options for yourself. Now, by the way, everybody, if you want to send me a letter for me to answer on YouTube, I don't answer all of them, but if you'd like to get one that is likely to get answered, you can write one. Not too long. The some of the letters they are just very long. I want it maybe 20% about your childhood. Doesn't have to be anything about your childhood. I want the letter focused on what's your question right now. Well, how can I help you right now in your life? Give me a few specifics about what's going on with that. Protect other people's privacy if you would. Don't give me their real names. I will change your real name. Um, but I never want to throw other people under the bus because they're not here to defend themselves. Also, I don't accept letters that have explicit trauma stories um or violence. I don't accept letters that where in which someone seems to be in danger of harming themsel. I will write back to you and say this is something for a therapist, something to be prepared for. If I answer your letter on YouTube, sometimes people will write harsh comments to you and I would never want that to happen to somebody who is very fragile inside. I'm looking for letters that are about work, relationships, communication, standing up for yourself. With the relationship one, currently like 99% of the letters I get are about relationships and most of those are about lirance and a lot of those have a similar question. So sometimes they're great letters. I can't answer because it's kind of the same letter I did last week. So I ask you to mix it up a little bit. And I like to hear about what did people say? What are the specific behaviors? It's like help me out to understand to sort of get to understand what you're going through. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll help you discern is it you or is it them? So that way you know you try to give me good information to do that. You can send letters. Um please don't send them as an attachment a word doc. Send them in the body of the email to https colon slbit period leeccf letters. That URL is right down in the description section in the middle. It says send me a letter. It's not at the top of the description section. It's further down. If you're in doubt about how to do it, you can ask the team at my generic email, hello@ crappy childhood fairy, but they will punt you back and say, "We need you to fill out this form. " Because everybody who submits a letter checks off actual consent for me to read it and that they understand what it is and they're not a child and um the legal obligations I have for you to understand and is not therapy. Um so that this is fair and so that it's okay for me to read it and answer it for the benefit of everybody. It's a really great gift to give everybody to share something you're struggling with the group. But remember, not all about childhood. Here we focus on what's the problem now. Okay? A little bit about childhood's okay. And with that, I want to leave you with the daily practice, the free course where you can learn the specific writing technique to free yourself of that tangle of fearful and resentful thoughts that keep holding you back from being able to see clearly and act in your best interest. And I'll put the link to the free daily practice course on the second link of the description section below. If you like this video, I've got one that you're going to love right here. And I'll see you very soon. It happens so fast. Someone gets sharp with you. And before you can even process it, you're either frozen like a deer in the

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-7dpc4aopQ&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 25:00)

headlights or you're yelling at them or you're leaving without saying anything. Just like pretending it didn't happen.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/42649*