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Radical Vulnerability (November Lil' Guy)
161 Plays1 year ago
Trigger Warning: Open conversations about depression, grief, trauma, abuse.
I haven't been able to see my therapist in three weeks and am having a nervous breakdown. Come along while I try to practice radical vulnerability and express what's been going on in my life this month. I tried to say everything I could as honestly as I could, I already know I missed things, forgot things, didn't say everything properly. I'm trying my best, that's got to be good enough.
November is Men's Mental Health Month. If you or someone you know is struggling, please use the resources here to get the help you need.
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Transcript
Trigger Warning and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Just before we get into the episode, I wanted to put a little trigger warning here at the top. I get really deep into discussing mental health, depression, grief, trauma, and I basically cry through the entire episode. So I just basically kind of wanted to forewarn you ahead of time to kind of prepare yourself. So thank you so much for listening. I love you and see you in there.
00:00:29
Speaker
Well hey there sweet peas, welcome back to Friendless, I'm your host James Avramenko, back with a very special November Wrap Up Little Guy episode. So November has been an absolute fuck of a month, and if I'm being completely honest, I am not well. But I'm popping in to talk about the month, talk about what's going on, answer a couple listener questions, and give you some insights into what's been going on in my life.
Mental Health and Vulnerability
00:00:54
Speaker
sneak peek it ain't great but i'm doing the best i can to get through um and so let's uh let's dive in to a little review and talk about mental health so november is uh national men's mental health awareness month and um in kind of keeping with that theme i wanted to discuss as openly and vulnerably as i could uh my experiences my my my process and um
00:01:24
Speaker
kind of where I'm at with my own personal health. To try and start things off on a bit of a positive note, I am, as of this recording, 52 days sober. I'm really proud of that accomplishment.
00:01:41
Speaker
I also feel like it couldn't have come at a better time because there's so many elements of my life that have just completely fallen apart. And I am in such a deep burnout that I know that if I was drinking still, if I was using still, I would be doing even worse. And so I feel very grateful for this accomplishment and I feel very proud of that.
Sobriety and Loneliness
00:02:10
Speaker
It's really lonely. It's really lonely getting sober and it's really lonely feeling like because of your sobriety I have lost so many aspects of my life that I thought were consistent and constant and now are just gone. What that sobriety has opened me up to is having to really face
00:02:36
Speaker
Not only just, you know, they call it, you know, your shadow self and things like that, but just facing the breadth of experiences that I hold within my body. And it's really opened up my nervous system to be forced to really look at and process the grief that I carry within me. And there's a lot. And it comes in these big, huge waves.
00:03:02
Speaker
I'm trying really hard to find the right words. You know, it's ironic, as a writer, as a podcast host, you know, you'd think I'd be really good at expressing myself, but I find that this is kind of what I love about this arts is that it gives the spotlight to someone else, you know, and I just become sort of like the curator or the host, you know, and I can just kind of tease it out of someone else.
00:03:29
Speaker
It's actually really quite difficult for me to truly express myself authentically and vulnerably and that's something that I'm trying really hard with recording this is I'm trying to lean into this sort of concept of like radical vulnerability and truly open myself up to
00:03:47
Speaker
showing what's going on.
Authenticity and Vulnerability Struggles
00:03:50
Speaker
I don't have a lot of models for vulnerability and I don't know if a lot of people do, especially men. I don't think we have models to follow. I think a lot of us, speaking from my own personal experience, I think I missed out on modeling what authentic vulnerable behavior is and
00:04:11
Speaker
I don't even necessarily trust that this is a healthy form of expression. It's the way I've got and it's the way I am trying to get to the bottom of what I'm feeling. I process vocally and I process through kind of turning it out of me and trying to look at it and find the right words for it and try to describe it. So hopefully,
00:04:37
Speaker
That's coming across and will continue to come across my therapist says The only way to truly live is to be vulnerable and the only way to be vulnerable is to risk being hurt And the thing is that at so many times in my life when I've tried and and believed that I could be open and believed that I could be vulnerable It's ended up burning me
00:05:00
Speaker
So it's really scary and I've gotten to the point now where I just feel terrified of trusting and I feel terrified of believing people, believing them at their words, believing even their actions. It's so hard to trust that what someone says they're gonna do, they will, when in my experience, the vast majority of people
00:05:26
Speaker
will say one thing and then do the opposite and at the very worst they'll then accuse you of the bad stuff that they've done and that's happened to me more than once and it that shit sticks with you you know it stays with you and it and it doesn't let go very easily
Relationships and Self-Worth
00:05:49
Speaker
One of the things I've been trying to really work on with myself and to heal is recognizing the deeper core wounds that exist within me that are manifesting in, whether it's my connections to people or how I'm showing up in the world to people who I love.
00:06:06
Speaker
or just really just how I'm showing up in the world is so directly affected not just by my current state but the things that have gotten me to where I am and it keeps on circling back to realizing that
00:06:23
Speaker
With this show, I often say in interviews, I talk about how the central question is, have I been a good friend? And as I start to get deeper within myself and I look at my attachments and I look at my wounds and my trauma, I recognize that that question in itself is actually a mask. And what I really realized is that what I'm actually asking is, are you my friend?
00:06:50
Speaker
so many autistic people who i speak to and i have this lived experience to is you know if. If you teach me the rules i will follow them and then i will be the good person and then you will choose me and that's what has been so central to my desire is to feel chosen.
00:07:09
Speaker
And I've been looking for it outside. I've been looking at it. I've been looking for it from relationships, from family, from anywhere but myself. And I've recognized that in so many ways, the way that I have betrayed myself in service of keeping relationships that don't choose me or just betraying myself and serving someone else's needs first,
00:07:39
Speaker
is rooted in that question of please choose me even though I don't choose myself as I have alluded to in previous episodes and as I've discussed not super openly but you know trying to keep it as respectful as possible while still expressing my personal experience with the whole matter is
00:08:02
Speaker
you know i had a relationship and recently and it was really traumatic and really chaotic and really destructive for the both of us and a lot of really awful things were said and a lot of really awful things were done and i carry so much grief around that and so much pain because of it.
Grief, Trauma, and Healing
00:08:21
Speaker
And I also recognize that so much of the chaos of that relationship had very little to do with how I was showing up for them or how they were showing up for me. It was that we're both deeply traumatized people who were trying our best and just weren't able to be as safe for each other as we initially wanted to be.
00:08:44
Speaker
And that hurts that breaks my heart and I recognize that you know the pain that I brought to that relationship and the pain that I experience in the ending of that relationship is not.
00:08:59
Speaker
Because of them, that trauma was already there long before I ever knew this person existed. And this whole chaos of this last month and getting sober has really opened my eyes and it's really
00:09:15
Speaker
opened my nervous system up to being able to actually tap into way deeper grief that has been tamped down and really numbed by drugs and alcohol. Someone just said to me today, as I was talking to them about sobriety, they said,
00:09:35
Speaker
alcohol wasn't my problem it was my solution and that really struck me because you know in the process of getting sober I recognized that yes I am an alcoholic you know I hadn't lost my home I hadn't lost a job yet but I would drink to get drunk I had no other intention but to get blackout I had no intention other than to numb myself and I realized that
00:10:02
Speaker
There's no real reason to party other than to lose reality, and I don't think that untraumatized people need to lose reality. I heard it described this month.
00:10:20
Speaker
I have been unable to see my therapist all month. I had upped my therapy to weekly and then immediately my therapist had to cancel a bunch of sessions. And so I've basically been raw dogging the whole month therapy-less and doing the best I could.
Emotional Waves and Burnout
00:10:36
Speaker
I heard that described as being dry drunk.
00:10:39
Speaker
And that really made me laugh because it really does feel like it. It feels like I'm still fucked up and I'm still like, not, you know, I'm still kind of numbing the pain, but I'm not drunk. And it's been really scary and really, really hard in the process of allowing my nervous system to open itself up.
00:11:00
Speaker
I've had this really really difficult process of going through these sort of like waves of grief and what's been happening in my body has been there's been these moments where I feel absolutely nothing. I feel completely frozen and numb and dull and you know
00:11:19
Speaker
in some ways i feel grateful in these moments because there's no grief there's no sadness there's no pain it's just that there's also no joy there's no happiness there's no excitement i'm just this blank page like just frozen but then there's moments where something kicks in and suddenly my entire body is just flooded
00:11:39
Speaker
With every emotion. It's not just the grief. It's not just the pain It's everything and I become just as a mobile I become just as paralyzed because my whole nervous system becomes completely saturated with emotion and I've come to understand that this is You know an element of autistic burnout It's just that I I don't know what to do with it and I become
00:12:05
Speaker
really terrified in those moments because I want to move and I can't and my brain is just going a million miles a minute and every thought is just kind of like dog piling over each other and it just completely overloads my system and I just become almost vegetative
PTSD, Trauma, and Self-Identity
00:12:30
Speaker
And the reality is that I carry in me so much shame and I carry so much embarrassment around how I've behaved in the past, how I've acted when I was dysregulated. And I know I've caused harm. And at the same time too, I know I've been harmed and I've been burned over and over again. I was diagnosed with complex PTSD last year.
00:12:56
Speaker
And that manifests at times in really, really chaotic, embarrassing behavior. And, you know, coming back to that question of, have I been a good friend, you know, and masking it as just,
00:13:12
Speaker
Are you my friend makes me really reevaluate everything I've been trying to do with this show and with my entire sort of creative impulse and output.
00:13:28
Speaker
Because it's really hard to describe the actual experience and the actual ramifications of trauma, of gaslighting, of emotional manipulation, of breadcrumbing. It's so hard to describe it to someone who hasn't lived through it.
00:13:47
Speaker
I continue to struggle to find the words. It's just left me feeling so empty. It's left me feeling like this husk. You know, there's these, there's mornings when I wake up and I just, I have no idea who I am. And, and, and it feels like I need someone else to remind me who I am. And those are some of the scariest mornings because I'm alone. And, and so I have to force myself to re-identify myself.
00:14:15
Speaker
I've been working through this dialectic behavioral therapy workbook and it's really helpful and it's also really overwhelming. It's sad and it's scary and at the end of the day, I want to lean on people. I want a partner who supports me and I want a friend group who supports me and I want to have people who see me and validate me and
00:14:42
Speaker
book keeps on saying basically like not that you can't have that but like you're only really gonna get that once you can start doing that for yourself and this process can take years so I've been continuing to try to like cheat cheat it and like jumpstart it and like kind of game the system and you know really like kind of whip through it but
00:15:05
Speaker
It just doesn't work. It doesn't work like that. And because of that, I keep on falling really flat on my face. And, you know, I do these regulation exercises and I get really clear and then I'll try to reach out and I'll fuck up again, you know? And like, I mean, like that just happened literally this week again. And I'm just like.
00:15:24
Speaker
I'm really scared that this is just who I am. And this is how it will be for the foreseeable future. And that feels really overwhelming and embarrassing. And I keep on having these thoughts in my head of like, well, who cares? You know, like there's there's.
Personal Healing Amidst Global Issues
00:15:44
Speaker
You know, the earth is burning and there's children being murdered in the world and there's genocides and there's wars and there's all these fucking problems. And then there's just me, you know, in bed with my microphone saying, boo-hoo me, you know, woe is me. And it's like.
00:16:00
Speaker
It's like I can't do anything about that. I can learn about it, I can be aware about it, but I can't cause world peace, I can't solve world hunger, I can't solve the climate crisis, but I can try and solve me, which I guess in a way is another element of recording something like this, is that I can do my best to try and express this sadness and this sorrow and this grief and maybe
00:16:29
Speaker
in one direction, maybe hopefully find a connection out of it and maybe in another direction, hopefully, you know, maybe somebody will hear this and hear that they're not the only one who's feeling as scared or they're not the only one who's, you know, it's hard for and maybe that'll help them feel brave too, you know, and maybe that'll help them feel not so alone.
00:16:54
Speaker
You know, I mean, fuck's sake, even in the depths of my like burnt out grief, I'm still people pleasing, but.
00:17:02
Speaker
you know, hopefully maybe this will help someone else too. It feels very cathartic to say these things out loud and to express myself. So I really hope that it helps hearing it. I don't know. I've been doing a lot of inner child work, which kind of relates to this like silly TikTok thing that I did. But, you know, I talk to my little inner child, I call him my little guy and, you know, and I try to comfort him and I try to heal his pain.
00:17:29
Speaker
And, um, you know, often when I, when I let him speak, um, he'll talk about how like every friend, every person who said they loved him, every family member, like they've all left and, um,
00:17:47
Speaker
he's always kind of found himself alone at the end and and it's scary to keep going through that again and again and again and always having the same results and it becomes this like internal minefield of like what's real what is like um
00:18:07
Speaker
like what is the trauma speaking and what is reality and like what is the abuse that's being put on me you know and like who's safe to tell that's the thing that's it keeps circling back to is that it's like it just i feel so unsafe and and i've tried reaching out to people and then that's
00:18:30
Speaker
made things worse and that's been really unsafe and and I've been like it's a hyperbolic word but it's true like I've been kind of betrayed by people who said that they were safe and and and and I don't feel like I always have somewhere to turn and what's funny is that leads me to a couple of weeks ago I I
Viral Moments and Life Effects
00:18:52
Speaker
you know, just kind of impulsively put up a TikTok thought and it was just like a couple of seconds of something and got a couple hundred views, maybe a thousand views, something like that. And I thought, well, that was fun. That was nice and easy. So I kept doing it every day, just a little like, you know, a dear friend of mine blew up on TikTok because of doing something like that. And I thought, well, you know,
00:19:13
Speaker
I mean who knows if anything will come of it but I'm just gonna keep doing it and like maybe 10 days ago or so I I just literally middle of the day put up a funny little thought about like having little guy days because I was thinking about my inner child and I was thinking about healing and processing and I put up this tiny little thing about how like work should have little guy days or something like that and then didn't think of it again and went about my day
00:19:35
Speaker
And now a week and a half, two weeks later, whatever it is, it's like over 700,000 views and it's really amazing and it's really scary because like I had no plans around this. I had no intentions of like being perceived in that way and the internet just kind of took hold and did what it does.
00:19:58
Speaker
And as exciting as it is, and as validating as so much of the response has been, it's also caused some backlash. I've had people in my life be really cruel about it and say really cruel things and create their own narratives around my intentions and create their own narratives around what I was trying to do or what I'm trying to do with it. And it's really opened my eyes to realize that I can no longer,
00:20:27
Speaker
hold people in my life who don't offer me authenticity and vulnerability and accountability and who aren't going to just jump to their own conclusions without communicating with me.
00:20:43
Speaker
I've spent so much of this last month begging people to hear me when they're showing me that they don't want to hear me and I've allowed my anxious attachment to kind of override my instincts and to override what I see to be true and instead I've let that anxiety take hold and I've been just begging them to see me and they won't and I don't think they ever will.
00:21:13
Speaker
I've had to recognize that that's okay. I mean, it's not okay to treat me like that, but it's also okay to not have them in my life anymore. And so I won't, which is really sad. And at the same time too, it's not me closing a door. I saw a thing just recently that was saying, you know, I'm not closing a door on these connections. I don't have any doors.
00:21:36
Speaker
I'm not the one shutting things down. It's that these people in these connections are afraid of living authentically with me, and that's okay too. I can't change them. I can't make them heal. I can't make them see my light. I can only live the best way I can, and if people are uncomfortable with that, that is the
00:22:00
Speaker
their problem to deal with. I can't monitor their feelings. I can't do the work that they need to do. And so I'm really just leaning in on, I'm going to stop defending myself from people who don't have any interest in actually hearing my story and my experiences and are just going to create assumptions. One thing I was reminded of
00:22:24
Speaker
through experience recently, something that I've learned over and over and over again and keep forgetting and keep needing a reminder is that you don't get closure from the people who hurt you. You can't ask the people who hurt you to help heal you. And I forgot that.
00:22:39
Speaker
I am really glad that I re-recorded this episode.
Clarity and Listener Interaction
00:22:43
Speaker
I had done one version last night and I was super dysregulated and I basically just battle-cried through the whole thing and I took the evening and I breathed and I re-listened to it and I came back and I've re-recorded it here and I feel a lot clearer about it. I still don't think I've hit all the points I want to, I still don't think I've expressed myself, but I think this feels a lot clearer and a lot cleaner and I'm glad that I did this.
00:23:06
Speaker
I really hope hearing a few of these thoughts was helpful for you. I've got a couple questions from listeners. They're kind of off topic, but they're really fun. They've been on the Backburners since like two months ago. So I want to come to them and answer a few and kind of like shift the energy a little bit because as sort of cathartic and nice as this is, I think it is a little bit heavy. And so I want to kind of like lighten the mood a little bit.
00:23:30
Speaker
So here's, I've just got like three, three questions that, uh, that I want to answer from listeners like you. And Hey, if you've got a question, um, you can always email it to me, DM me on Instagram, or if you see one of my stories pop up that asks for listener questions, please feel free to comment and I will answer it in the next little guy episode. The next one's going to be Christmas themed, so it'll be extra fun.
00:23:58
Speaker
So the first question here is, what are your fashion staples? I don't have many, but I will live and die by cardigans. Absolutely, absolutely cannot live without cardigans. In the summertime, I like to live by what I call cabin rules, which is swimsuits are an acceptable replacement for underwear, as long as they have that inner lining.
00:24:25
Speaker
and then just light, light, light fabrics as few sleeves as possible because my other fashion staple of the summertime is just being cranky because I absolutely hate being too hot.
Light-Hearted Reflections
00:24:41
Speaker
I far prefer the fall, I like layers, I love long johns, I love heavy denim, I love the good queer uniform of hoodies with flannels over top, cuffing everything. One highlight of my former relationship is that they did teach me some very, very good queer clothing etiquette and I will always be grateful for that.
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah, hoodies are a must, flannels are a must, cardigans are a must. Those are my big staples. The next question is, if you were to get a wrestling centric tattoo, what would it be? You know, I don't think I would. I've thought about it every once in a while. Like, I've got a couple wrestlers who, you know, either current or through my life, I've really loved, you know, Bret Hart, obviously, Mick Foley, in terms of current wrestlers, someone like Kenny Omega, Eddie Kingston.
00:25:38
Speaker
but I don't want any tattoos that are like crazy super detailed like I would never want a face I would never want something like I've seen people with like cane masks and stuff and like no way um maybe if I could find something small like a little symbol or maybe like a good catchphrase but um that would have to be pretty special and it would have to be a deal because I don't think I would want to spend like tattoo money
00:26:03
Speaker
that kind of tattoo I don't know maybe like have a nice day you know for Mick Foley I don't know but but yeah no I I can't see myself you know bang bang that might be a fun one I don't know that's actually the epitaph for my upcoming book so so maybe maybe if the book does well if it ever gets published then I will get that tattooed but until then I
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, probably not. But, you know, never say never. The next question. Oh, I've actually got four. The next question is, did you ever have a favorite Care Bear? And I don't think I did. I remember really liking the Care Bears.
00:26:47
Speaker
But the thing was that at recess at the time, the girls would always make me be beastly, the little like minion who got like care stared away. You know, I got really good at it, you know, and I'd like, you know, cab has and and then I would get blasted away. But like, I guess maybe the lion, because he's the only one I can picture right now, maybe the sleepy one. I bet the sleepy one I really liked at the time.
00:27:12
Speaker
The thing is, in relation to Care Bears, I have it kind of linked in my head was I really loved Counter Planet. And my favorite was Heart, you know, the Mati, right? Or Mati, I forget how you say it now, but, but, you know, there was the planeteers who all had their power rings and it was the elements. And then there was the fifth guy who came in and went, Heart, you know, he was my, he was my boy. I loved him. So Care Bear adjacent, I loved the Heart planeteer.
Interviews and Listener Engagement
00:27:42
Speaker
And the very last question for the month is, what are you enjoying most about your interviews? And this is a big question that I really do love because for me lately, these interviews have been so special because, you know, I feel really isolated and I feel really disconnected from people. And, you know, I see the friends I have trying. One of the biggest problems that we encounter is that not many of them are in the city.
00:28:07
Speaker
so i don't really get a lot of like physical touch you know like i am deeply touch starved and so even though these interviews aren't touching me um hopefully uh it's still it's a chance at least to connect to someone new to hear something unique um you know novel to kind of tickle my ADHD and i really cherish the opportunity to like
00:28:30
Speaker
help other people feel special because so many of the people who have come and gone in my life, I've never had the chance to hear their stories and get to know them and give them the spotlight and let them feel like the special, unique, incredible person that I see them as. And so it's a really beautiful experience for me to listen to them tell their stories and get to express some genuine connection and some genuine love to them.
00:28:54
Speaker
And so, yeah, that's the stuff I love. I did this thing in August through September. I recorded like 20 interviews. Like I'm pre-recorded until like the beginning of March at this point. So I don't even need to be recording interviews for a while, which is probably why if you're listening to this, if you are someone who I interviewed in the last month or two, I'm really sorry that your interview has been delayed. It's not delayed. It's just in the queue. So it will be coming. But
00:29:20
Speaker
But yeah, it's funny that I did this month or two of just like blasting interviews and now I don't really do many right now. So I'm back to feeling isolated. But what I do get is I get to re-listen to them as I edit them. And that's really nice. But yeah, no, I just I love the opportunity to connect to people and hear their stories and get them, you know, give them a platform to be heard and be validated and be loved if it's only just for an hour at the time.
00:29:47
Speaker
Those are the questions for the month. As I said before, if you have any questions, please feel free to DM them to me on Instagram at from this pod or you can email me from this pod at gmail.com and I will read those in the next one. There will be a call for more questions coming out in the next week or two that I'll put on my stories. So please keep a look out for that.
00:30:07
Speaker
And that is it for the episode, so I'm gonna
Mental Health Support and Conclusion
00:30:09
Speaker
wrap it up here. I hope this wasn't too heavy, and I hope you're all feeling safe. I have included resources for mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out. Get the help you need. You're not alone in your struggles, and the only way we're gonna get through all this
00:30:27
Speaker
Horrible experience that is called life is by banding together and helping each other out. If you want more friendless content, please be sure to sign up for my weekly sub stack. You're going to get top 10 list of things I'm proud of this week. An ever growing monthly playlist that I add new songs to you every week. Recommendations for books, movies, music, all kinds of fun stuff. It is always free. You can pay me if you want, but you are always going to be able to get that newsletter free.
00:30:57
Speaker
So please sign up for it in the show notes. But that's it for me. So I'm going to wrap this up here. Thank you so much for listening through. And I'll I'll be back. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. And I really hope to catch you there. But hey, I'm not going to worry about that now. And neither should you because that is then. And this is now. So for now, I'll just say I love you. Fun and safety, sweeties.
00:31:35
Speaker
. . .
00:32:08
Speaker
you