Scout’s journal

[Vineeto]

@scout

Hey it’s been awhile. I have a question for Vineeto, whenever you have the time I’ve been practicing while concurrently becoming more severely ill over the past year of my life. I’ve actually found a surprising amount of contentment and joy even as my life has shrunk to becoming housebound and mostly bedbound with a slew of awful symptoms.
There is one thing I get stuck on still and that is love and belonging. Currently I am entirely dependent, unable to cook or clean for myself and living in the care of my parents. They take care of me because they love me. My boyfriend has helped me to navigate the incredibly convoluted and predatory disability insurance system which I would not have had the capacity to navigate on my own (I live in the U.S. where social supports are threadbare and being pared back). I have online friends who share my condition but do not have loved ones (or the large amounts of money you need if you don’t have loved ones), and their illness grows progressively more severe as they struggle with housing insecurity and the inability to find resources and doctors. From my current perspective, belonging actually is inseparable from my actual physical wellbeing. It feels like a reversion to childhood dependency, despite having the mental maturity of an adult. So I struggle to relinquish feeling like belonging and love are core to my security and health as a living being. But I also feel conscious of the intense insecurity that stems from this dependency, and how it leaves me beholden to molding myself to the emotional whims of those around me in constant ingratiation. That’s exhausting. But the consequences of potential abandonment feel worse.
Can you help me see where I’m tripping myself up? Like - I know my parents are unlikely to abandon me on the street even if I stop playing the emotional games they like playing. But it just seems like my life is materially better right now by having people like me and want to take care of me. I don’t know. I feel so much fear around this

Hi Scout,

Welcome back. I don’t know if I can help – you seem to have already decided that “belonging actually is inseparable from my actual physical wellbeing” so you are convinced that your feeling of belonging cannot be changed without endangering your physical wellbeing. As long as that is the case you won’t dare to inquire into even your own feelings of belonging and the need of “playing the emotional games they like playing”.

It’s only when your emotional situation becomes so untenable for you that you are motivated to change it from your end, i.e. unilaterally, and face the “fear around this” that you can slowly work out a sensible way to sort out the situation you have manoeuvred yourself into.

In the meantime, it is good news that you say you “found a surprising amount of contentment and joy even as my life has shrunk” and keep enjoying and appreciating this amount of contentment and joy – and the more you are able to appreciate what you have achieved (without giving way to pride) the more enjoyment is possible.

Cheers Vineeto