Therapy and passivity

One of the things I did in an attempt to prevent myself from making my past mistakes over again was to engage in therapy to deal with a lot of the baggage from my past. Being in a relatively progressive part of the country, finding a therapist who could understand my less than vanilla life was a necessity and thankfully not too difficult. What has proved difficult though is my own understanding of why my past has shaped me the way that it has and how ineffective it has really been.

In therapy, passivity often comes with negative connotations. Submission, humility, passivity...these are words that are loaded in therapists minds because they often carry with them an idea of unassertiveness or that the person is unwilling to stand up for their own wants, needs, and desires. In some ways, this can be helpful for a submissive. Too willful a submissive ceases to be a submissive and ends up being a bratty boy, or worse, someone who tops from the bottom. The key to healthy passivity or submission then, is truly to have a dominant person who respects that desire while at the same time looking out for the subs interests, lest they be left behind.

/rant.

In my own life what I have found is that I actually do stand up for myself in areas where I am not in a D/s-M/s role. More often than not, this gets me into trouble because people who know me take issue with the fact that I'm not submitting to them, even though we have no such arrangement. Yesterday I was having internet issues in our household. After a few drinks and being told it "had" to be my settings (even though mine had not changed, but settings on the home network had been) I became frustrated and went off to the room I'm sharing for the week with my other roommate. My ex has a visitor in the bed that used to be mine/ours when we were a couple. As I lay in bed I was frustrated and upset, because I knew that my behavior and frustration was clearly visible and would be attributed to other things rather than what I felt that it was. I was angry because had the tables been turned and any of the household members other than me were unable to get online, shit would have stopped. Everything would have been done right then to remedy the situation, and I wouldn't be left with the feeling that no one believed me or respected my opinion enough to even listen. Had it been my ex's, even if everyone elses internet worked, everything would have been changed to make sure his worked.

And I knew from past experience that this was never going to happen, because the double standard that always existed then still existed now, even without the power dynamic, and it made me angry.

I don't get angry a lot to be honest. Frustrated at times, usually I hold these thoughts in, or I deal with them through working out. But I slept awful last night, my skin was wracked with inflammation, and I know when I get home today I probably won't have working internet. I'm tired of being passive to people who don't respect me, but when I'm assertive I get beaten down and talked about like I'm the one with the problem. I'm glad I have this blog. Sometimes its the only place to vent or work things out outside of therapy without having to worry about burdening others with my issues. My joints actually ache today, its that bad.

\rant.