m wondering if any other waywards have had issues with percieving that their bs is yelling when it turns out they are not?
Yes. Or thinking he was mad when he wasn’t. And this happened throughout my marriage until that last few years.
What changed?
Our perceptions are how we view our environment. And for EVERYONE, not just a ws, it’s filtered through our past experiences.
Most people start this view in childhood. I walked on eggshells for the first 18 years of my life. I would tune into the moods of the absusers in my family like a radar.
And then I just continued learning to placate them by trying to be perfect.
I get married and the scanning for moods was still very much a thing. If I am honest, to a certain degree even after extensive work the scanning still happens, just less so and I am able to kind of turn it off when I catch it.
So I hate conflict, anger, criticism. My husband is none of these things. But if he uses certain tones when he speaks I interpret it as yelling. Truth is he probably has yelled at me very few times and that was after my affair.
I am going to say that you have a need to be seen as "good" and the minute you realize that’s not the message it feels amplified to you.
Perfectionism is about shame and conflict avoidance is a lack of confidence.
The shame makes you feel you are not good enough. The lack of confidence make you fear not being able to handle the situation.
Finding ways to be self-compassionate, telling yourself a new narrative in your self talk, feeling you are reaching your potential by doing your best, feeling your boundaries by developing your integrity, and making a habit of being accountable for every aspect of your lofe will help you to be empowered, and so on- this is how you change your perception. Change your lens by investing in being mindful of who you are and who u out want to be.
Once you create a long enough recent history with some basic things (honesty, integrity, doing your best, shooting for the goal of being more loving towards yourself and others) it will deepen and grow until you can perceive people from a more balanced mindset.
You will be amazed how being mindful and intentional about things will fix more than just your perception of whether someone is yelling at you.