Don't talk to me. Cut off all communication whatsoever, and ignore any attempts I might make at communicating with you. My mind comes up with the worst scenarios, and I pick over every little detail of previous conversations to try to figure out what's wrong.
Of course this only works for people I care about talking to, but it is the worst of torture for me to have someone just stop communicating with me. I'm all about communication, you see. I love talking to my friends, having great conversations... even just saying hi and chatting about the weather for a few moments. Even those littlest moments of contact remind me that I'm not alone, that there are people out there who care about me and think about me. They also give me the chance to check in with those I care about, find out how they're doing, and let them know they're in my thoughts as well.
Electronic communication and the internet makes it so much easier to stay in touch with people, and I am an email and text message junkie for sure. But when you only know someone through electronic communication, it makes it very easy for them to do exactly what bothers me most. With a few clicks of a mouse, an electronic acquaintance can be removed from virtual existence: blocked from IM, filtered out of email, removed from friends lists. The hardest to take is when someone does this without any explanation. It could be for reasons that have nothing to do with you - frequently is I'm sure. But of course, my mind starts mulling and churning, and pretty soon I'm positive I've done something to drive them away.
This ties back to my thoughts on attachment, because the reason why it bothers me so much is attachment. Either my attachment to that person, or the feeling of being cared about, or the desire to know what the problem is, and the often misguided certainty that whatever it is can be fixed. I become attached to a certain outcome, and not being able to bring that outcome about - not even being given the chance to do so - bothers me immensely.
A book I've just started reading, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, Ph.D., talks about the "lens of personal insufficiency" that many of us see our lives through - the feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong with us - and how it leads us into so many unhealthy behaviors, and robs us of so much joy in our life. I bought the book months ago, and probably could have gone many more months without ever picking it up, but my experiences of the last few months have made it clear to me that I am very much in need of its message right now.
It is this feeling of personal insufficiency that makes me think that I am the problem when someone stops communicating with me. And even though I may know intellectually that's probably not the case, as long as that feeling is there, somewhere in the darkest corners of my heart, I will always believe my deficiencies are the cause.
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