Profile
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
October 23, 2026 at 10:19 pm #461787
anitaParticipantDear Robi: I hope you are still visiting with your girlfriend in the nicer city (Oct 20-___) I am rooting for the 2 of u to make a life together, to help each other and make it work.
🤞💛🌷Anita
October 23, 2026 at 9:35 pm #461786anitaParticipant🎩✨
October 23, 2026 at 8:51 pm #461785anitaParticipantGood Friday night, Confused 🙂
B.C, Blushing Confused.. 🥵 (not like that, ha-ha, it’s just this is the only blushing-like emoji available to me.)
About hyperfocusing in childhood: it can become a habit-of-the-mind that transfers into adulthood situations that don’t even look anything like the childhood situations. It’s a bit like PTSD where a person experiences a normal everyday situation as if it was war.
Hmmm..you were with friends and she texted you and that led you to have negative thoughts and feelings about her. You described something similar just the other day, you were texting with your gf and your sister started talking to you, “yapping” you called it, and you felt your skin crawling.
I think that you really, really don’t like multitasking (neither do I, by the way), preferring to deal with one person at a time, or one social situation at a time (friends OR gf), otherwise you get trigerred. Whether it’s something new or old, doesn’t matter, it just is, as simple as that.
If that’s the thing, the solution is easy: turn the phone off when otherwise occupied. Girlfriend will understand. (She knows how it feels when she gets trigerred, I remember, been a while ago).
Well, that thing you smoke still contains nicotine, better not make it a habit, Confused?
(Reading..) You’re the most empathetic unempathetic person I know then 🙂. I think you feel empathy, just that you suppress it, pushing it down.. but it’s definitely there and it shows.
The thoughts you described in the 8th paragraph of your post, these thoughts are trying to protect you from feeling hurt or sad or anxious. You cried in regard to the bear reel and right away— Thoughts 2 the Rescue (T2R), telling you: you are not really sad! You don’t love her!
In the 9th paragraph you described anxiety over the idea that she might reject you. Lots and lots of people worry about that. That’s what’s scary about loving someone.
Where’s that hat emoji.. Oh, no, I don’t have it on my phone, the closest I have is this 🧑🎄 and that 🤠.
My hat is off to you anyway, Confused, really, you are amazing. I mean it 100%, and I will not change my mind 🧠
🙂 Anita
October 23, 2026 at 7:42 pm #461784anitaParticipantMollie, Oct 22: “I don’t know what I am healing from… What does it seem like to you?”-
It looks like you’re healing from the gradual accumulation of many demands over a long time: sustained pressure, constant striving, worry, study, work, people pleasing, holding yourself to very high standards.. that word you used recently: optimizing, living with a persistent sense that you need to be doing better.
You described years of being in motion, over-exercising, under-nourishing, studying, working, worrying, people-pleasing and constantly evaluating yourself.
I figure that retreating into the care of your mother’s, the ending of the pressure for now doesn’t feel like relief, but like a collapse.. or a breakup because all the fatigue, uncertainty, sadness and unmet emotional needs of the past few years don’t disappear or settle. Instead, they naturally rise to the surface and become visible and very much felt.
Your dad’s approval still matters to you, and it’s no wonder: children growing up with a parent with high expectations, emotional volatility, and a tendency toward criticism become highly self-monitoring, learning to ask themselves: ‘Am I doing enough? Am I achieving enough? Am I presenting myself well enough?’
Over time, that can evolve into perfectionism, chronic self- doubt, decision rumination and difficulty trusting one’s own judgment.
During the relationship breakup you were grieving a relationship. Currently, you may be grieving certainty, confidence, an identity built around achievement, a self-image that says: ‘I can always cope, always push through, always achieve, always improve’.. the idea, or belief that you can keep pushing indefinitely without consequences.
When you say: “At the moment I feel like a child who just wants her mother’s love, support and affection”, I hear a young woman exhausting from self-monitoring and self-improvement.
I think that what you needed as a child (and what you still need) is unconditional acceptance, a parent who said:
‘You don’t need to achieve anything today. You don’t need to improve. You don’t need to make the perfect decision. You are loved exactly as you are’
💚 Anita
October 23, 2026 at 1:15 pm #461778anitaParticipantGuess what, I just got done with my med apt., got a bone density test done and a mammogram, didn’t need to see the reg doctor. Now on the way to the dog park with Bogart in the car. He’s whining.. Thank you for asking!
October 23, 2026 at 12:06 pm #461776anitaParticipant* Is it breaking up with the A2SS (Adult too soon syndrome.. just made up the acronym 🙂, not the syndrome. B Back in the Eve.
October 23, 2026 at 11:34 am #461775anitaParticipantI’ll B back 2 U tonight, Confused 🙂
October 23, 2026 at 11:33 am #461774anitaParticipantGood late Friday morning, Mollie 🙂
First, I want to give you credit for this: because of you bringing up RED-s, I forgave a 350 calories surplus of the other day and decided not to do extra walking so to burn those calories. I figured that the reason I’ve been hungrier recently (increase appetite, like in your case), is that I needed more food.
Second, in regard to your dad easily criticizing others but not being able to take in any criticism of himself- same is true to my mother. And anytime she perceived (real or imagined) criticism coming from me, she.. defended herself by attacking me, that is, throwing some more criticism my way.
Is this something your dad has done?
It’s understandable, Mollie, that at this time, you feel like a child who wants her mother’s love, support and affection 🤍
About your 2nd post, this is exactly what I’ve been wondering about: what is the current “breakup” you’re going through about. I’ve been wondering about it ever since you made that comparison.
I need to get off the phone, but will B back 2 U this evening.
Anita
October 23, 2026 at 11:15 am #461773anitaParticipantGood Friday morning (here), Olive:
I neglected to say it yesterday, so I’ll say it today:
Welcome to the Forums, Olive 🫶
Earlier this morning, before I went online, several things ocurred to me:
1) You wrote about exchanges involving Sam, Jane and you, but nothing involving you and Sam alone, about what’s happening in private between the two of you.
2) Unlike Jane who says anything and everything she feels like saying (seems to me), you keep everything inside, and say very little.
3) Even though you say very little about how you feel, I’m guessing that your understandable disatisfaction with the situation shows on your face and in your very silence.
Jane’s comment about you moving out and Sam giving you the middle finger at that one incident, may be reactions to what they’re thinking you’re thinking, but not saying.
4) You moved to his small town, living with him and his parents. You didn’t mention your own family or anything valuable that you left behind so to move to his small town.
Perhaps he was the best or only support you had at the time, or perhaps he was your hope for support that you didn’t have where you were at the time?
Overall, you are indeed sidelined in the interactions you described, and I’m so sorry that this is the situation. I know only too well how it feels 😔
Question: is it because they (Sam, Jane) are immature and insensitive, and/ or is it because they assume negative things about you that aren’t true simply because you don’t express yourself vocally and directly to them as you did here, in your thread?
There’s more that you shared that I didn’t respond to, but I would very much like to read your responses to my replies, as well as to Roberta’s and Amz’s, so to keep talking and learning, in hope it’ll help.
🤍 Anita
October 23, 2026 at 9:43 am #461771anitaParticipantGood Friday morning, The Mediator 🙂
Welcome to the forums!
You mentioned CT (Cognitive Therapy). A therapy even more fitting to treating the anxiety of not knowing is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). A major principle in DBT is the concept of Radical Acceptance (meaning complete, total) of what you cannot change (while changing what you can change).
It’s similar to the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.
Are you familiar with the term Radical Acceptance and/ or the Serenity Prayer?
🤔 Anita
October 23, 2026 at 9:26 am #461770anitaParticipantYou’re right, Zenith. It’d be too late in regard to today’s visit though. I love your LOLs by the way 🙂
October 22, 2026 at 9:40 pm #461762anitaParticipantHey Dear Confused 🙂
You are welcome, and thank you for being the bee’s knees 🙏👏
I am exceptionally not focused enough, so I’ll B Back 2 U tomorrow.
🧠-tired Anita
October 22, 2026 at 9:34 pm #461761anitaParticipantI have a better idea, Olive: can you tell me what you think of what I wrote above?
I’ll continue- and adjust my understanding- after receiving your reply.
🙂 Anita
October 22, 2026 at 9:11 pm #461758anitaParticipantHi Mollie 🙂
Yes, it’s an honor that Bogart trusts me and therefore is able to relax so close to me.
There was an incident long ago, he was in the kitchen with me and I almost bumped into him and fell, not seeing him in my way. I SCREAMED. There was a mix of fear and angerin that scream.
For a couple of weeks, Bogart was scared to be in the kitchen with me, acted Canine-PTSD (broke my heart). He didn’t trust being in the kitchen with me.
I made sure to not scream in his presence ever again.
As I just read about your dad having “moods” and being “emotionally turbulent” when you were growing up, and that it scared you, it made me think of Bogart being scared of me when I screamed.
Just like Bogart needs a calm, predictable me, children need calm, predictable parents.
Your mom able to ” shake off” things he tells her.. she wasn’t his child. It can be very difficult for a child (of any age) to shake off what a parent says.
I want to read the rest of your message tomorrow. I’m not focused enough now.
B Back 2 U tomorrow.
💚 Anita
October 22, 2026 at 8:19 pm #461757anitaParticipantHello again, Olive 🙂
I read your whole post, but honestly, I am not intelligent enough (I mean it) to process it on a first (or a 2nd or 3rd 😑) reading. So, bear with me as I re-read it, respond to this or that part, read more, respond and so on. It will take some time and a few replies.
So, Sam and Jane have known each other since high school, both were 16 or 17 and living in a small town. Both are now 26 or 27.
You met Sam overseas a year ago, and recently moved with him to his small town, living with his parents and socializing with his high school friends: Ken, Nate, Marv and Jane. You have no friends of your own there, unemployed, and feeling isolated and a bit depressed
You are 30, and this 1-year relationship is your longest “real relationship”. In your previous relationship, more than 3 years ago, you were abused physically and emotionally, as well as having been cheated on.
As I read the different things Jane said at different times, I figured she feels very comfortable to say whatever is on her mind at any time, nothing malicious.. just talking too much.
When I read that she said that maybe you should move out (when you dropped Sam at the bar where both work), I was puzzled. It sounds like, maybe Sam told Jane (not in your presence) that you disapproved of the two of them working together.. and that’s what she responded to,
Or he didn’t tell her any such thing, and she thought it on her own and said it, because she doesn’t pause and think something like: ‘I thought it, but maybe I shouldn’t say it’
She blurts things out.
You wrote that you never asked Sam if he was in a relationship with Jane. From my understanding at this point, if they were in a relationship, you would have heard it from Jane, and very early on, I think..
I’ll process the rest of your message later.
🤔 Anita
-
AuthorPosts
