TL;DR To celebrate getting my flair, I decided to make my first post by reposting a comment I made recently about way women are socialized to put others above themselves and then pathologized for exhibiting the resultant insecure behaviours demanded of us by these societal scripts. Since finding FDS, my expression of these feelings and behaviours have dissipated and it's tremendously benefited my mental health.

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Something that really opened my eyes was the understanding that these behaviours were the result of me following a script that society (and my upbringing) had given me (and women in general).

Up until that point, I'd been working from a premise that *I* was wrong/broken and I needed to wander through the wilderness until I magically found the path -- the underlying point being that I needed to find a way to contort myself until I fit into societal expectations in a way that would be automatic and not feel unnatural or like work.

But lo and behold -- I found FDS and realized that it was the script that was wrong and not me.

For example, I was conflict-avoidant because it upset me to upset another person, or to let them down, or to be seen as "wrong" or incompetent in the situation by disagreeing with them. But that is because I was working from the premise that:

  1. other people's opinions of me should matter more than what I think about myself
  2. it's my job to make the other person feel good when walking away from the interaction
  3. I need to always be seen as right/competent about the subject or I will have no credibility (again, other ppl's opinions about me mattering more than what I know about myself)

But once I realized that this script was what was broken, and not me, I was freed me from the stress of trying to reconcile what I actually felt about myself (I am right in this situation, I must assert my needs in this situation) with the societal script that I needed to give the benefit of the doubt/question myself and put others first. Other fearful behaviours go along with this basic script that society needs women to follow to enable the patriarchy (being too nice, letting others take advantage of us).

This script is no more natural or correct than the belief in an Earth/geo-centric solar system. If you look up at the stars and sun and they seem to travel from East to West, you could easily be fooled into thinking the Earth is at the centre and they revolve around us. It takes intelligence and courage to step forward and say No: while a geocentric solar system superficially explains why some planets and stars appear to move the way they do, it does not accommodate many other observable phenomenon that I can also see. I went to bed Ptolemy and I woke up Copernicus.

Every woman needs to have her own Copernicus moment. I wish you well on your journey :)