Don't make the nightmare real

When I'm panicky, frightened, or angry, I really don't want you to sympathise. As soon as you see the same ghosts as me, I'm sunk. You've made them real for me. Sympathy is attack: it victimises me, treating me as a powerless pin cushion in a world of pins.

When something happens, and I tell J, he listens. He doesn't add anything to it. He might ask, if the situation commands a response, 'So what are you going to do about it?' He's not unloving, in fact he's perfectly loving, by not letting the situation activate and explode his own baggage like a glitter bomb.

In meetings, when there is someone sharing crazy or aggressive shit, maybe redirect or shut it down. Who knows. But maybe just let it burn itself out and say, as you would with anyone else, 'Thank you for sharing,' and quietly go onto the next person.

Trying to fix, change, control, or regulate the person puke-sharing actually makes their nightmare real for them. Reacting or otherwise dramatising basically says to the person, 'That's some mighty heavy shit you got there Little Missie [or Mister]!'

By contrast, simple letting the narrative run itself out, with zero reaction, allows the person (eventually) to realise: there is nothing going on here beyond stories, narratives, case-building.

If I react, I'm making the nightmare real for them ... and for me.

When I'm triggered, it's a gift.

What is unhealed in me? Why can't I just sit and listen to this without reacting? Why am I intolerant or impatient? What's my plan that's being interfered with? What don't I want to look at in myself?

If it's shut down, I never get to experience the situation where I am forced to answer these questions.

If the meeting becomes tricky to sit through, that does not mean it's unsafe, particularly online: literally nothing is happening, except someone is voicing their perception of their experience. Even in physical meetings, actual incidents involving physical attack are vanishingly rare. There is no actual danger. The only danger is what I might see in the mirror if I look.