#keeps taming apex predators because we call them friend shaped and learn their body language and care and feeding instructions

[summertimesadnessirl]

Look, I'm sorry. I used to make 7 paragraphs of excuses pathologizing myself because all my friends and family were inconsiderate and thoughtless and selfish, too.

But then I started working for a real estate office.

And I saw how when people think they're going to get money out of someone

Suddenly they understand how to code switch and treat people on an individual basis and learn their signals and remember things that are important to them or make them feel bad.

Sorry, but we're a pack species and we actually are responsible for taking care of members of our pack.

That's why shunning used to be a death sentence before we invented psychiatric hospitals and the repackaged and resale of fringe subcultures and all that.

Because human beings die when you tell them that none of the other humans are responsible for them.

I'm not saying your friends and family should have to read your mind but if they don't actively work to make you feel safer with them the longer that they know you and actively work to notice signs and patterns and things that comfort you and things that indicate that you might not be okay, that's not your friend.

I bet the reason you're anxious is that other people have a long and storied history of expecting that emotional labor from you and not giving it back, and then it got so bad they hired some magazine writers to tell you that your brain is defective when actually it's just that people have gotten accustomed to dealing with you in a one sided way your entire life.

I bet you're real good at figuring out what other people are feeling and thinking and what they need. I bet you do it all the time, like, compulsively, like most anxious people. And I bet they let you do it. I bet it's something they like about you and call a good quality like being thoughtful or caring or conscientious until such time as it means that they might need to reciprocate that level of care.

Sorry. Everyone is responsible for everyone else. That's why it's basically impossible to opt out of society and go live on your own. Even if you manage to not need them, they need you.

If drugs work for you that's cool, if therapy helps, that's fine. But most likely just admitting that other people owe you just as much as you owe them and there isn't something wrong with you will help just as much, if you the people around you will let you get away with it.

Our society is full of people who pretend to be stupid to get out of doing the work of giving a shit about other people and you can decide it's too hard to know that and believe a lie if it helps you, too.

But I want those people to stop believing it, so I have to post about it.