TW: Anger, trauma responses

Recently, I realized I was suppressing anger toward a friend I recently pushed away. I have a certain set of values (equality is huge for me) and I didn't fully understand why I felt unsafe until just now.

There are certain mental illnesses that are heavily stigmatized because of their effects on the people around them, particularly cluster B disorders. I understand the stigma, I understand how much they hurt, and I understand why people feel the way they do.

I have a particularly touchy fight response as a response to trauma myself and I've worked on this for the past several years in an effort to manage how it affects other people.

The former friend of mine expressed that she felt pity for someone suspected to have a cluster B disorder.

I understand the complicated nuances surrounding these things, how controversial they are, and how much pop psychology (and a lot of rampant misinformation) swirls around these subjects.

What I don't understand, though, is how someone can claim to be so empathetic and compassionate, but say they pity someone. Especially since they're so familiar with illness, and how it feels to be pitied for their illness. She asked me not to pity her... yet she pities that person.

Pity is condescending. It positions one above another. It carries a connotation, "oh, you can't do what I can do and I feel sorry that your life isn't as good as mine." I feel disgust toward this person when I think about it... it's ignorance, and I know that, and she's human, and makes mistakes. I have compassion for that.

I want to move past this anger... I know it's not healthy for me to rest in it. I know anger is just a manifestation that my feelings have been hurt. It truly does hurt. It happened a lot in the environment we both came from, and I understand that part of it is that I expected more from her than was probably healthy, and I feel disillusioned, because. Cluster B traits, myself. As a trauma response I didn't ask for. And am working on.

It really hurts to see someone rejected and pitied for something they didn't ask for, the development of a disorder they can't help and aren't aware of, and it hurts so much. It really, really hurts.