Being crochetty

My most recent discussion with my psych has helped me narrow down the reason for so much of my strange, avoidant behaviour, although the revelation is nothing particularly new - my biggest problem is a constant, all pervading fear, not all that uncommon for people who've experienced my history. I'm constantly checking out to avoid feeling that fear, because its better, in many cases, to feel nothing than it is to be afraid.

I say it's not surprising because I have often noted being afraid to do plenty of things, and when I am afraid, there's usually two ways I go - I either punch through the fear, or check out from it. I've written before about not being willing to participate in communities, I said then it was because I preferred to be an outsider, but to be honest I think a lot of it came down to not wanting to become vulnerable, because I was afraid that my me would be hurt.

Identifying the cause has meant that my psych has thrown a whole lot of activities at me to help clear out that fear. I'm working as hard as I can, but one of the more surprising acts he's ordered me to do is find a craft. The idea is that the constant monotonous action of most crafts helps to calm the mind down. I attempted knitting and failed, but a friend helped me learn crochet, and I have to say I'm getting well into it.

Of course, the whole attempt to find a craft is in and of itself another enlightening moment. I've mentioned before that I generally don't continue with things that I can't get in the first few attempts. I think it goes back to my days as a gifted kid - I only got kudos from people when I was good at stuff, so if I wasn't immediately good at it, I just wouldn't bother. This obviously means that I'm not actually so good at the process of going from sucking to getting better. Daddy doesn't really get this himself - he's internalised that drive to get good at things, to deal with the immediate frustrations of sucking at something and to persevere until he gets it. This is a skill I completely lack.

In this case, I couldn't get the basics of knitting down first time, even with instruction, so naturally I just gave up. Instead, I found that crochet was much easier for me to pick up, so I ended up going with the crochet instead. Another opportunity for growth wasted I guess, but then again, this is clearly a very well entrenched pattern. I cannot expect to just drop the pattern first time.