As an adult, I get into a lot of interpersonal conflicts.
Thankfully, I didn’t get to 35 without some self-awareness. I know I am different. I know I am what some polite people call an intense personality, or a difficult character, and what more honest people call unhinged, weird, or crazy.
But you know what? I survived infant and childhood trauma that would make must people gag to hear about and irrevocably other me through an impenetrable lens of alienation and pity. Of course, I’m going have boundary and self-awareness issues after the shit I’ve been through. I’m going be a little neurotic: a little bit off or maladroit. My whole operating system was corrupted by malicious code and destructive values and I never got the updates.
The small amount of self-awareness that I do have (gained from the countless repetitions of social conflict and painful social rejection experiences) lets me know that I live a lot inside my own head. Living within and reacting to my own projections – I am always going to be slightly out alignment with the social consensus of the reality of any given situation.
That means a lot of my behavior is unconscious, and arises in reference with my self in isolation rather than in alignment with others. Meaning: I know that I am an unintentional arsehole despite sincere efforts not to be. All the friendships and connections I’ve lost or that never had a chance to be: I truly truly lament.
Years of therapy and constant vigilance have helped me come a long, long way. Learning to ask kind, emotionally healthy people how they perceive a situation, or their opinion on how they would act (the chief life hack you can pick-up from therapy as a dysfunctional adult) has helped me colour myself much more within the lines. But, there are still blind spots.
It always goes the same way. A few weeks after a generally favorable first impression, people start talking, and in general, collectively come to the conclusion I am not normal despite how hard I try to pretend I am. Then, if I can survive in the job despite the rumors and the gossip, I still usually get myself into trouble.
An interpersonal conflict happens. If I survive the first one, then another happens. In general, it takes some time (and it’s been getting longer and longer which shows improvement) a rejection event or expulsion happens. My longest stay in a job so far is almost 9 months, and I’m proud of that. However, this is why I’ve had to keep moving and keep reinventing myself to keep my head above the water – despite my own desperate need for stability: for a home.
As a dysfunctional adult, and there are many of us out there, it seems functional people don’t really let us into their private lives. We can have dysfunctional relationships amongst ourselves, or simply seek a life of peace with our own company and find connection with nature or animals.
What’s more important however is how functional people respond to dysfunctional adults in a professional context – because without income we end up on the streets. Yes. We are the homeless in capitalist society. If you are too dysfunctional to act in ways that prioritize your long-term wellbeing over short-term reactions or impulses then you end up with nothing and no where to go except out of everywhere and every place – which is literally the “outside”.
It’s not black and white. If you can be professionally functional and keep your dysfunctionalness private you can get by. There are degrees. It’s a gradient. For the more functional, if you can keep to yourself and maintain a professional persona and keep interactions to a minimum and orientated around your business function you can get by. For the less functional that can still offer some sort of value, you can find remote, online or home based jobs that minimize or completely eliminate interpersonal contact from your job.
I never really considered going for a remote job. Maybe I never had enough self-awareness of myself as dysfunctional to take the path of least resistance. I mean growing up in conflict, interpersonal conflicts seem to be the norm – like a self-perpetuating self-fulfilling expectation I was blind to because of its sheer consistency.
I’m not sure why haven’t considered the remote job option. Maybe something in me resists it because it would mean finally admitting I am crazy, that I am a failure, or it could be that I am not ready give up on this healing journey.
It is exhausting pretending to be normal, and continually adjusting myself – however, I also feel if you do go for the route of isolation you not only stop your healing journey, but by cutting yourself off from life, interaction, and connection with others, you will make yourself worse: even less functional. I am sure many of the elderly and alone become so dysfunctional in their later years because of being cut off from others.
Either way, my current lived experience is that most functional people respond to me (in a professional setting) in mostly neutral or negative ways – and that it is those reactions which mean I have to work twice as hard and produce so much value to just keep my job.
Very rare is it for me to find an open minded and open hearted colleague who will take me into their heart and into their private life as a friend. Each and every single one has been a blessing. Some friends also consider it refreshing or entertaining to have a crazy friend.
Most people tend to disregard me as a person or as someone else’s problem and I get the standard freezing out of the social groups that also share some level of their personal lives with each other.
However, once I am collectively recognized as being “different”, I become an easy target for scapegoating: both emotional and professional. If there are employees under me, they usually feel they don’t need to respect me and start being difficult. Or sometimes there are peers, who out of ambition or insecurity seek to improve or confirm their social status as part of the social group by othering me. Standard simian social-sexual hierarchy shit. Eventually concerned bosses step in and deem me not a “good fit”.
I get it, you can’t just provide value, you have to conform socially. If you are excluded socially from the group your business function and value are irrelevant. No one will want to work with you. And there in lies the hypocrisy and prejudice of our rational society. Being good a your job isn’t good enough, your very survival depends on social conformity. Being jobless and eventually homeless isn’t because you don’t work hard or provide value, it’s ultimately because society is not emotionally mature enough to accept your existence and hasn’t created an option of you. You should be able to opt out and still get by.