Dear Jim/Jamie:
I am having a better day today. I slept well. I am so glad that I did- it sure feels good to feel better- goes without saying, yet I do say it. I have my distressing moments today as in any other day. I get distressed and when I do instead of analyzing on and on trying to get rid of the distress via analytical thinking (did not work)- I surround the distress with nothing, with space, with silence. I figured things enough (there is a place to analysis) and now as teh neurons release the distressing juices in my brain (which happens physiologically)- I have to silence those “ripples in the pond” with quiet. Over and over again. I just had lunch and with the severe eating disorders I developed in the last few years (yes…) eating has been involved with anxiety. I repeatedly talk to myself while eating, saying: I deserve to feel pleasure. It is okay to feel pleasure, nothing bad will happen because i am feeling good. Nobody is going to attack me because I am feeling good. Then a few minutes ago- my god, I can’t believe it- I felt love for myself, actual affection for myself. Wow- amazing.

I read about you having been a doormat, a yes person. Sometimes I get so angry thinking about how I humiliated myself, how I disregarded myself. I get angry and I see, NOW, that it shouldn’t have been so. Now that I felt, today, affection for myself, not that I am growing into liking myself- I think: what a shame. It is sometimes overwhelming to think about decades of life spent subjugated, submissive, a nobody in my own mind. Ah, the pain….

How are you doing with that presently? I like you as the “jim/Jamie” in this forum. I like to get messages from you. I like your expressions here, you noticing me, “listening” to me, paying attention. Seeing me. And I welcome you showing yourself to me…I am a safe place for you to do so…
anita