moving away...

i just read a chapter for my "theories of personality" about karen horney and her theories. one of her main points in her theory is about three interpersonal orientations as related to conflict--moving away from people, moving against them (in hostility), and moving towards them (searching for love). in reading and reflecting on this chapter, especially with recent some of my own recent life events in mind, i began to think about which of these interpersonal orientations i best identified with. 

i see myself as someone who moves away. 

i've discovered that i am a retreater. 

i make the attempt to avoid conflict at all costs.

i avoid conflict. 

i hate drama. 

when i am in any type of conflicting relationship or a situation where i feel like i will not succeed, i tend to withdraw myself, moving away from the problem. to me that situation is best because i am given the choice of whether i want to sacrifice myself to the conflict or whether i want to seek freedom and remove myself from the conflict. 

the part of this concept that worries me is that horney says that a healthy person should be able to balance all three of the interpersonal orientations based upon a situation, but i fear that i move away from a situation far more often than i move toward or against it, offsetting that bit of balance, and separating me from the other people around me. moreso, i can recall the numerous times where i have justified to myself that becoming detached from a problem, which most often meant detaching myself from those people, will solve the problem at hand. sometimes it makes things better. more often it makes them worse. 

whether this trait is a strength or a fatal flaw, i don't know. am i a coward? i'd like to think not. i think i just make the choice to remove the conflict from my life. i think that i have other, more important things to be worried about. that's debatable though. however, i do know with certainty that traits tend to stay with us for life. so this one, i'm probably stuck with. but that doesn't mean i can't work on it, and try to rise to the challenge. being proactive is something i strive for when i give people feedback in the meredith autism program, so why not strive for it in everyday life. 

i love studying psychology because it helps me to understand myself a little more every single day. 

"Underground, underground, ooh
Everything's heavy underground
you been kicked around
did life bring you down here?
Everything's heavy underground"

-- Ben Folds Five