What are your faults?

[Kätzchen]

I have a few faults which have evolved over time. Some of my faults actually help me and other faults leave me in a state of emotional distress or impair my ability to act in immediate ways.

One “Fault” that can be helpful: I seem to have an ability to identify difficult-to-name behaviors. I have been told by others that I seem to have a ‘gift’ for identifying things of this nature, but what others may not realize is that it is not a gift: My ability to do this finds its roots in having suffered on-going issues of abuse in my own family (growing up) and also in a small handful of romantic relationships. I would say that the downside to this ‘gift’ or ‘fault’ is that it slows my ability to develop close relationships. In some cases of particular clusters of difficult-to-identify behaviors, I create an extremely wide berth of distance between myself and these particular individuals; because while their sets of behaviors can be very scary, I take great care to make sure that my personal sense of safety and well-being is least likely to be violated. But really, I see it as an upside to building safe and healthy relationships.

Faults of mine that are not so helpful: I can be rather quiet. I enjoy quietness within my own life at home, but I tend to temper the quiet side of life with random occasions of spur of the moment, over the top, loud and proud. But as I age, I seem to have to give more serious planning to the unquiet side of life. I tend to want it in small doses, repeatedly at times and I’ve been told that it’s annoying when I want to be quiet, rather than the opposite of quiet. I can be rather moody. Moody as in, I come across as rather a spoiled brat at times and if grapes are not peeled the right way with me, more than likely my spoiled side might get a bit out of control. My son’s have seen me this way before and usually call out my spoiled side; but also, depending on my mood, I have been known to make a mountain out of a mole hill and make it incredibly difficult to scale the precipice of my desires. If I experience fear, I will shut down immediately. And once this happens, it takes tremendous effort on my part to dislodge myself from what ever has caused me to become fearful. Sometimes I am able to help myself over come fear in a relatively fast way. Other times, it can be weeks to months – one time it was ten years; but time and distance helped in that particular case of fear.