What do you call this? I'm stumped.

This sounds like a type of projected distancing behavior to cope. Rationalize to squash emotions, also if you don't share your own emotions you can't get truly rejected for who you "really" are. Do you think it has helped you disassociate? Maybe it's in that family of coping mechanisms?

I don't think it drives your FA-ness, because trauma "drives" it, but it's probably a symptom / manifestation that helped you at the time you started doing it, and now doesn't.

This is my experience as well, almost to a "t". Also in my preteen years I struggled and was bullied a lot. I came to the opinion that people are not safe, are cruel and stupid and need to be controlled and manipulated in order to protect myself. (Or I need to run away and/or push them away to protect myself). I can resonate with the hyper responsiveness to micro-expressions (I've gone over this a LOT in therapy). It makes things worse because I don't trust people I can't be direct in what I need and want and it frustrates me, which leads to passive aggressively lashing out or running away. 

In my own experience as an adolescent I feel that I learned to ruthlessly climb (from the very bottom at age 12) the social ladder to protect myself all while hating it and hating everyone around me for their part in it. I felt bad for the kids who were not as smart or as strong as I was and so could not figure out how to play the game as I did. I felt that school shootings by those kids (ala colombine) were moral and justified, and that the other kids deserved to die and that if a shooting happened at my own school I would also deserve to die for the role that I also played.

I would caution that I have read a quote from Neil Strausse that went along the lines of, "A lot of people think that they have issues because of bullying in their childhood, but they don't realize how their upbringing set themselves up to be victims of bullying".

OMG yes. This is totally me. I was bullied too, and I couldn't stand up for myself because I had moved countries and couldn't speak English at the time, I sort of went mute. Couldn't fit in at school, couldn't fit in at home either, so no support anywhere. It was devastating. This is at the root of it.

So I'm guessing the psychoanalysis wants to check whether people are safe or not. but no matter how much I know about them, I'm still terrified at the thought that they will betray me or hurt me in some way. So I question their motives frequently. I'm bad at being direct about what I need too, especially if my alarms are going off thinking the person is unsafe.

What an entire mess.

Yes, I tried to ruthlessly climb the social ladder too when I moved again and was no longer a "loser" + knew the language. Suddenly I was the cool girl, I had so many (fake) friends. I didn't do this in college. But I repeated this pattern again in the workplace only to realize "I hate everyone anyway, why do I want to fit in here? what is my goal?" and now it makes sense that I'm trying to avoid being myself and possibly ostracized like I was back then. Wtf. Wtf wtf. I feel shook right now.

The school shooting thing, I remember thinking "great I don't care, it means less people in the world". So I can relate a bit to those dark thoughts.

That's a nice quote, however I'm starting to realize my family sort of played a secondary role in my trauma. Because before all of this, I was top of the class, made people laugh, outgoing, had true friends, etc. all from being myself. Then it all went to shit. I feel now I'm finally getting back what I lost.

Thank you for helping me understand myself better.

blacksnow2 Yep. I (FA) do this too. I learned to analyze people from a young age because I had to in order to survive. Even then it didn't keep me safe. I learned that I have to be on high alert for any threats and I felt that if only I acted in the perfect way that maybe I would get love. I must have not gotten love because I wasn't perfect. Obviously this is not true, but tell that to my subconscious. When you try too hard to figure people out, make them like you and predict if they are going to hurt or abandon you, you don’t allow your true self to come through, out of fear you may not be acceptable or likable. Your goal is to make others like you, but in the process, you care little if you like yourself, and it drains you emotionally. I am not sure how to stop doing it with romantic partners. I'm not even sure who I am and what I need.

I do this and I used to to this a lot more in the past. I think it's being hyper vigilant to perceived threats due to trauma. Growing up my caregivers could have extreme mood swings and I always had to anticipate those. I still try to hide my own feelings and try to make people around me happy. Little changes in expression, perceived avoidance or subliminal aggression all trigger me. 

I discovered this very interesting puzzling thing observing secure people:

They don't do this. I observed a new girl at work who kind of entered into existing friendship patterns and lunch schedules. She either ignored or never noticed people's slight annoyance at this new person, the fact that conversations went silent when she entered the room. After a while everyone got used to her and her cheerful happiness and she became one of the more popular people around. Another situation I observed was a wife just ignoring or never noticing her husbands neurotic behavior until he was fine again. I would have withdrawn in the first situation and eaten my lunch alone and in the second situation I would have been hyper vigilant and tried to find out what was wrong.

I wonder if secure people just see the world through a happier, more positive lens, not picking up these threats that we see. They obviously don't accept major AP or DA behavior, but if it's just little things that trigger us insecure people ... they just see the more positive interpretation instead of the threat, "Oh, he is probably just busy, he'll answer later", "oh how cute, he messaged me several times in a row when he didn't hear from me!" and so on. The expect good things and good things happen to them.

The hyper vigilant behavior might have been the survival strategy growing up but it does us a disservice in the real world.



What you said about having to chameleon reminded me of the type description on the main page: jebkinnison.com/bad-boyfriends-the-book/fearful-avoidant/ 

"A narcissistic or demanding mother can cause a child to mold him- or herself to please the parent to the point where little remains of the child’s own feelings and personality; they have been trained to display a false personality to gain parental approval "

"What the child learns to display is a false persona more pleasing to the active and admired parents "

"While we all have public faces—versions of ourselves edited for public consumption—the fearful-avoidant have commonly developed a false self, an acceptable outer personality which inhibits spontaneous display of their innermost thoughts and feelings even in intimacy. Those who think of themselves as their friends will often be surprised and hurt when high stress brings out the true personality of the masked one. By hiding their true selves, such people live with a social support network that has been attracted by their fake persona, so that when a crisis occurs, those who might have cared for them aren’t around, and those who are around don’t care for the real person revealed by the crisis."

"Instead of the dismissive’s defense mechanism of going it alone and covering up feelings of need for others by developing high self-esteem, the fearful-avoidant subconsciously believe there is something unacceptable about them that makes anyone who knows them deeply more likely to reject or betray them, so they will find reasons to relieve this fear by distancing anyone who gets too close."

I'm analyzer, too. And have annoyed one of my bffs with this, yet she comes to me, when she needs answers in her life and I can analyze and see situations very very clearly. So, it isn't all bad. I think this is one of those things that you need to allow a lot of real input for it to not be disassociative. As in if you are having a real dialogue with people, you can keep analyzing, but if you go off on your own and not listen/ connect with people, then it's a problem. I think it's great that you had this epiphany. I think I had a similar epiphany when I was about 28 and 29, and it helped me just let things go a lot more.