why the fight was not Camille's fault
to understand anyone's thoughts, feelings, or behavior, you have to understand their life history of events. you have to understand how all of their previous interactions with other people have contributed to who they are ... and how who they are completely colors any new experiences they have. so let's start with Camille, shall we? unfortunately her life history was not filmed ... so we are going to need a psychic read between the lines. it goes something like this:
Camille learned from a very young age that she is nothing more than an object in others' lives - she is not the subject of her own life. fortunately (?), she is a pretty girl ... and she learned very well that her looks gave her worth and made her valuable. she learned that to be valuable, a girl should not only be pretty, but should also be submissive. and good girls don't feel anger. the trouble is that the lessons Camille learned are not true. Camille does feel anger, but she doesn't know how to express it in a healthy way. she is too terrified of losing her worth if she were to ever honestly and directly confront the issues that cause her to feel anger. so what happens to all that bottled up anger? well ... let's take a look ...
Kyle attempted to clear up the misunderstanding about whether or not Kelsey was going to Hawaii with Camille. While they are talking, Camille is checked out (watch a clip of the interaction and pay attention to where Camille's eyes are ... they don't indicate that she is present in the discussion with Kyle). Camille is checked out because she is experiencing a high degree of distressed emotion, and has no outlet for it. She is terrified of compromising her value on camera (she desperately NEEDS to come across as sweet because that is what good girls are ... and she doesn't know who she is if she is not the good girl she has been brought up to be ... but communicating any honest or direct emotion at this point would compromise her worth as a person (in her mind)). off camera, my psychic powers tell me, she was conversing with Taylor and lamenting that she didn't think it was fair or nice to call her insecure and that Kyle did question why anyone would be interested in her if Kelsey weren't with her. Taylor perhaps unwittingly fueled the flame ... but Taylor is a topic for a different day. in any case, the end result was that Camille felt attacked because she believed the other women were ganging up on her behind her back and insulting her by calling her insecure.
why isn't the disagreement Camille's fault? psychic powers say that someone really did communicate to her that she had no worth apart from her connection to Kelsey (to which she was desperately clinging via making herself valuable by being submissive and looking good). maybe it was more than one someone who legitimately made her feel this way. the part that is not Camille's fault is that she internalized a lifetime of messages from people around her. everyone does this. we all learn about relationships and our worth to others through relationships with other people. unfortunately, because some people legitimately made her question her own worth, she developed a pattern of interacting with others in which she is really, really sensitive to whether others perceive her value as being tied to her worth to others (e.g., her connection to Kelsey). because real life interactions are ambiguous, people filll in the blanks with what they know from previous experience. so what really happened? there was a discussion between Camille and Kyle that was ambiguous ... and because Camille is continually primed to look for signs that her worth is questionable (because she has been conditioned to feel this way), she filled in the blanks in a way that was not accurate with regard to Kyle's intentions. then, when Kyle attempted to resolve the misunderstanding, Camille was acting (not necessarily for the RHOBH ... even if the cameras were off, Camille probably would have behaved the same way because she likely feels pressure to act in a way that betrays her authentic experience in real life in general ... because she doesn't feel like her authentic experience is acceptable ... or that she is unacceptable because she feels things she thinks she "shouldn't"). Camille was acting until she could separate herself from the situation. when she got away from the direct confrontation, Camille was able to use a more indirect strategy to cope with her emotions - she confided in Taylor instead of directly expressing what she was thinking and feeling to Kyle. why? well, Camille has learned that it is safer to talk behind someone's back because she can avoid direct confrontation that way ...
all this to say, the misunderstanding was not Camille's fault. Camille's lack of emotional/coping resources, likewise, is not her fault. but Camille is now an adult ... so it is her responsibility to pursue self-awareness (or not) and to accept the consequences. what Camille failed to understand was that just because she felt attacked did not mean that Kyle had, in fact, attacked her. perhaps it was too threatening to Camille to admit that she felt insecure about her relationship to Kelsey (which would have been a completely normal thing for anyone in her position to feel given that Kelsey gave her every reason to feel insecure) ... because Camille could not accept the reality that trouble was brewing or because Camille so desperately did not want trouble to be brewing, she misdirected her intense negative emotions. Kyle did not deserve to receive them. Kelsey did. but Camille was brought up to compete with other women - to view women as competitors. Camille was brought up to need men's approval. so instead of directing her emotion to where it belonged, Camille directed it toward a safer target - Kyle. when Camille made Kyle the villain, she was unable to hear what Kyle was really saying. Camille has choices: she can continue to vilify other women or she can begin the painful journey into self-awareness ... and confront the likely painful reasons behind why she developed deep-seated beliefs that it is unacceptable for her to feel or directly express certain emotions and that her worth is determined by her physical appearance (because her physical appearance gives her worth to men).
No comments:
Post a Comment