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anita

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  • #458677
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Lisa:

    Thank you for the first part. I really resonate with feeling beneath others and interpreting people’s behavior as mocking or looking down on me. It’s only recently that I made some progress with that.

    Reading your post today, I realized how much we actually have in common. I don’t think I fully saw it before. Maybe I was keeping a bit of distance from my own pain by focusing on other people’s struggles. But what you wrote touched something very familiar in me.

    What you described at work makes so much sense — when you’ve been hurt before, even small things can feel like danger, and your body reacts before you have time to think. And afterward, you’re the one who sits with the guilt and the replaying. Nothing in what you wrote sounds like a bad person. It sounds like someone who was open‑hearted when she was young, got hurt too many times, and learned to stay on guard.

    That kind of constant awareness is exhausting, and anyone would feel worn down by it. You’re not alone in this, and nothing about what you described makes you unworthy or “beneath” anyone!

    ✨️🌿✨️ Anita

    #458673
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Christi,

    I’m sorry for the delay — I’m not feeling well this morning and my mind is slow. Like you, I woke up early, sometime after 5, and I’m having trouble focusing. So, I’ll keep this simple.

    Reading everything you shared, it seems like part of what pulls you back to the land is the world that once lived there — your parents, being their child, the safety and belonging that filled those years. The place holds all of that. It’s almost like an old photograph that brings back a whole moment in time. You can feel the peace and connection in it, and that’s real.

    You wrote: “When I visit, something in me settles. My soul feels at peace there… When I’m home on 5 acres of beautiful land, there is a deep sense of peace and connection that I don’t find anywhere else. I feel homesick when away from my childhood home.”

    And at the same time: “Sometimes when I’m in my hometown, I feel homesick. Not for another place exactly, but for a version of home that no longer exists… When I’m there, I sometimes feel homesick for the urban life.”

    That mix makes sense. A photograph captures a real moment of love, family, and belonging — which mirrors what you said the house represents — but it’s also frozen in time. You can look at it, feel it, ache for it, but you can’t step back into the life it shows. The land brings back what mattered, and it also reminds you of what isn’t alive in the same way anymore.

    You’re doing something wise by taking your time. You’re letting both the emotional pull and the practical part of you speak. And maybe, as you keep listening, more clarity will come — not all at once, but gently.

    🌿🌿🌿 Anita

    #458669
    anita
    Participant

    Good morning, Christy! Working on a reply

    #458663
    anita
    Participant

    To be exact, it was completely dark here in Sedro‑Woolley, WA tonight at 9:54 PM, which is when last light ended. Sunset was at 9:14 PM. Still light.

    #458661
    anita
    Participant

    I will reply further in the morning, Christy

    #458660
    anita
    Participant

    My goodness, the sun did just set here, W. Wash.

    #458658
    anita
    Participant

    “The Feeling of Love- what does it mean?”- whatever comes 2 mind this Tues Eve:

    It’s wanting you to love me.

    Someone out there, PLEASE love me?!

    Why is it so difficult to love me?

    Oh, let me count the ways, the reasons why I’m unworthy of love.

    * After whatever-comes-2 mind: the above is vulnerability- this very act of telling how it felt for so long, toooo oooooo ooooo ooooo long can draw criticism of me.. one more reason to not love me.

    Yes, there are so many people to criticize vulnerability (a person telling the unguarded truth of how it feels inside)

    And, on the other hand, there are too many people who’d spot vulnerability (the unexpressed) and take advantage of it, vulture style (the vultures in my life)

    I think that it’s courageous to express vulnerability as I do here. It makes me stronger.

    Anita

    #458656
    anita
    Participant

    Back sooner than later: about other people- those who are fortunate enough to grow up in stable homes with emotionally regulated parents who don’t fight and leave again and again-

    I imagine that for them, Love and Peace coexist.

    Not Love and Fear.

    So no shutdowns, no intrusive doubting thoughts, etc.

    🐔 Anita

    #458655
    anita
    Participant

    Double posting: I sent my last message before reading your last message. Back later

    #458654
    anita
    Participant

    It’s like “if I love her, I’ll get terribly hurt” (Fear of emotional pain),

    “If I don’t love her, I won’t get hurt”.

    So, when Love goes up, so does the Fear, and your 🧠 responds by “killing” the love,

    But Confused is a loving person and she is truly lovable, so Love resurfaces, fun and affection..

    And next- even if you don’t feel the Fear- 🧠 is in the habit of protecting you from anticipated emotional pain by producing emotional shutdowns and intrusive thoughts.

    🐔 Anita (Copilot is not involved in the above, using my phone)

    #458649
    anita
    Participant

    Hey 👋 Confused:

    ROCD and Emotional Impermenance are useful terms, but the basic ingredients in these terms are Fear + Love. You Love her + you’re Afraid to lose her.

    Your I-don’t-love-her intrusive thoughts is your 🧠 trying to neutralize the Fear of losing her, to cancel the Love so to neutralize the Fear that’s attached to the love, and make you safe.

    🐔 Anita

    #458641
    anita
    Participant

    Hey Lisa 😊

    So good to read back from you 🙏

    Yes, C-PTSD makes perfect sense. You experienced ongoing trauma from a very early age. Actually, you experienced trauma before you were even born (your teenage mother taking drugs while pregnant with you), and then you were given away as a baby to an orphanage of some kind to be relieved later by your grandmother.

    And that was only the beginning 😔

    The fact that you survived such an exceptionally difficult childhood of deprivation and violence (your unless fighting outside your room, I remember you sharing, and you blocking the door to protect yourself), and managed to work and support yourself all these years, is a testimony of your strength and resilience 👍👍👍

    I remember, long ago, you shared about maladaptive daydreaming. It was the first time I heard the term and I related to it. It was a way to fill my mind and heart with images of the love that I was deprived of in real- life.

    It was only a few days ago that I posted in one of my threads that the title “Unloved” would fit an autobiographical book about my life.

    Does it resonate, Lisa?

    ✨️🌿✨️ Anita

    #458640
    anita
    Participant

    Good Tuesday morning, Christy ✨️

    The 5 acres where you once lived carry memories of people who are no longer alive, and it carries certain youthful hopes and dreams, I imagine, such that didn’t come true.

    So, if you move back there, you’ll be living with a lot of reminders of the people, hopes and dreams that are no longer there.

    It touched me that you wondered what kind of advice your parents would give you.

    They are gone now, but you know they live within you. When they look at you in your mind’s eye, do they smile at you with love? Do they approve of your life in the city?

    🌿🌿🌿 Anita

    #458632
    anita
    Participant

    Dear Christi:

    The coincidence (!) you wrote: “sitting on five beautiful acres in what I believe is one of the most beautiful places in Washington state.”-

    I am sitting on exactly 5 beautiful acres in the evergreen state right now.

    Late here and just turned dark only half an hour ago. I’ll write more in the morning.

    Anita

    #458627
    anita
    Participant

    Just thinking and-being-bitten (BB) this Mon Eve:

    It’s too warm and humid here, and insects biting. I normally spray myself with an insect repellent in days like this, but just took Bogart for the last walk today- after a shower- and didn’t feel like spraying myself again, and … all hell broke loose, mosquitoes were celebrating 💃🥳🔥.

    That and having a hound that takes his time smelling and sniffing and smelling and sniffing every… single.. inch of the way, sometimes (for no apparent useful purpose) while I’m being bitten… and I was about to lose my patience in a big way 🤬. But didn’t.

    Back home, 9:20 pm and not even close to being dark. Cute Bogart is lying on his dog bed, birds are singing outside the open windows, and some news- comedy YouTube show is playing in the background.

    🤬🔥🌙🚶‍♀️🐕 Anita

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 6,579 total)