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anitaParticipant
Dear Caroline:
* I will be sending you a series of shorter posts instead of one long post because my keyboard does not allow me to copy. I normally copy a post before submitting it, so to not lose it if submission fails. So, here, I will send shorter posts so to not lose too much at any one submission.
I went back to our Sept-Nov 2022 communication so to connect to what you shared yesterday. As I re-read our communication I am getting the feel of the Freeze Response that we talked about, which we both had in common as children growing up, and as adults (an experience that has improved a lot for me in recent years).
Growing up within a hostile family (emotionally hostile, if not physically), we don’t really grow up but in, we grow inward. We don’t develop emotional and social skills because we freeze as children. We freeze until such time that it is safe to thaw and resume our development. But since it never gets to be safe, we enter adulthoods frozen, lacking emotional and social skills that are required for the leading of functional, satisfying adult lives.
The emotional skills I am referring to are such as recognizing what you are feeling, being able to label your emotions (instead of drowning in endless overthinking and confusion), and once you label an emotion, understanding the message behind the emotion. For example: I am angry because I feel hurt. I feel hurt because this has happened and this is how I interpreted it. You then examine your interpretation, determine whether your interpretation is rational, and if it is, you then think about how best to respond to what happened.
The social skills I am referring to are in the responding: in what you actually say or do, and how you do it. Assertiveness and Problem Solving are must-have social skill.
anita
January 22, 2024 at 10:09 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427148anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
And now, to your most recent post from yesterday:
“If he sees himself as not valuable on the inside… then he must respect someone who does not want something invaluable, thereby lacking respect for anyone that thinks that he is valuable.. What do you think about this?“-
– I think that this may be true to you, and that’s why you had crushes on, and had your focus on (in middle and high school, and onward..?) guys who were not interested in you romantically, not respecting/ having crushes on guys who were interested in you…?
As far as N is concerned, my feel is that he is too removed from his internal experience via distractions and daily, heavy duty use of weed, to think as clearly as you do. Respect is too much of a human experience of cognition+ emotion, and I think of N operating like a spider: instinctually.
“I have another pondering question/ thought I’d like to hear your opinion on. I do not wish that he had contacted me in the past month and a half, since the breakup. However, I wonder why he hasn’t… If I would have been in tears walking away, he may have grabbed back, perhaps this is even explanatory of his comment to my sister of ‘I just can’t get over how coldly she ended it’“-
– in the past, when you walked away from him crying, or when you had a panic attack in the closet.. it was like a fly shaking his spider web, stimulating him into reaching out to the fly. A cold/ unmoving fly does not vibrate a spider’s web.. so he doesn’t reach out to it.
(I did not understand the last paragraph of your most recent post of yesterday, “what it would have ACTUALLY felt like”..?)
anita
January 22, 2024 at 9:28 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427147anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“To get back with him permanently, he would have to… (make) me feel seen and heard… love me correctly with.. 100% adoration“-
-You wrote the above before the quote in my first reply today, right above this one. I referred to this quote yesterday as an unrealistic expectation. I want to elaborate on this a bit: a child feels intensely (before suppressing and repressing the intensity). When a child grows up unseen, the child feels it intensely, and a strong, enduring desire is born: to be seen, but not just to be seen some, but to be seen A LOT, so to make up/ compensate for the intensity of having been unseen… to satisfy and neutralize that intense desire.
100% adoration is unsustainable, unrealistic: no person is available enough to give this to anyone, not even a parent to a child. Part of healing, following the grieving of growing up unseen, is to lower this expectation.
anita
January 22, 2024 at 9:09 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427143anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
* I will be sending a series of shorter posts because my keyboard does not allow me to copy (which I do before submitting a post so to not lose the text if the submission doesn’t work), and I don’t want to lose a long post.
“Last night I dreamt of him.. I was sad, feeling unseen, and he grabbed me, recognizing my sadness and genuinely asking me ‘what do you need?’, that is who I wanted him to be. I woke up.. didn’t miss him, in fact I recognized immediately that that was not him” (Jan 20)-
– this was/ is a pivotal moment in your healing, right there in that quote. If only F would have done what you needed him to do: to recognize your sadness and genuinely ask you what do you need?/ lf only my mother did that when I was growing up unseen, the loneliest girl in the world. Fast forward, we are both adults and there is no way to redo that unseen childhood. It’s too late.. we are not children anymore and our brains are already formed around the experiences we had.
When you woke up from that dream in which you tried to get from N what you didn’t get from F (projecting F into N), and recognized that “that was not him“, that’s the pivotal moment I am talking about: you recognized that N is not who you needed F to be, and neither was F.. who you needed him to be. A necessary part of healing is grieving what you never received as a child, and never will- because you are no longer a child.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kiersten:
Yes, I do think that your thoughts, your attitude and your plan is indeed reasonable. I am positively impressed with you!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Caroline: I would like to answer you in this thread and in the other later today, or as late as tomorrow morning.
anita
January 21, 2024 at 10:27 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427127anitaParticipant* I sent the above before becoming aware of your most recent post. Will reply to it later.
January 21, 2024 at 10:25 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427126anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“This is so confusing since he also encouraged me..“-it’d be easy to figure out if a person is for you or against you if a person always behaved one way or the other. I think that the evil stepmother in the story of Cinderella always behaved against Cinderella, but then she’s a cartoon character in a story that is of the fiction genre.
A real-life infamous evil character comes to mind, Adolf Hitler, who caused massive pain and death to many millions of people, including the death of 6 million Jews, placing him in the category of behaving against Jews, right? Yet, he arranged for a family of Jews, neighbors of his, to escape being taken away to a concentration camp.
How about a real-life famous good character, a saint, a Mother Teresa? Research it and here it is: “The Dark Side of mother Teresa“.
From my experience and understanding, a good person is a person whose behavior is guided not by the desire to please and satisfy a particular individual, but by values that promote everyone’s well-being. In the Hitler example, if he was a good person, he would have not sent any person to a concentration camp, not just his neighbors.
EVERYONE by the time we reach adolescence, got mixed in with evil to one extent or another, be it indirectly by purchasing an item in the supermarket, and by doing so, promoting the financial success of a company that pollutes the environment and therefore causes disease and death to plants, animals and people. We can’t live in a modern society anywhere on earth, and NOT contribute to death and destruction in one way or another: modern society is embedded in wrongdoing, and living in it makes us all wrongdoers.
It is painful for me to look within right now and think of all the ways I directly hurt other people, including here on the forums via judgmental, angry replies based on my issues, replies that people did not deserve. It makes me feel that painful shame-guilt combo. I struggled and was stuck in that combo for a long, long time until I figured, quite recently, that being a good person (who is born into a society that acts against itself), is about doing the best I can in the circumstances I am in, intent on doing good for everyone, and looking within, correct my wrongdoings best I can, for the benefit of everyone.
If you had N as your life partner and tried to benefit him by accommodating his preferences to not look within himself, it wouldn’t benefit everyone, including N.
To summarize what may be a digressing here, seeing via the 3rd eye, processing information with the crown chakra, the confusion you mentioned in the quote above can get resolved.
“So, why was N in pain?“- started in his childhood. Personally, I don’t know anyone who is not in pain. After all, we are embedded in a society that acts against itself.
“Was his pain all from his past, or were there things I did to hurt him…?“- what you did that hurt him was to.. expect more than he could give you and express that expectation to him.
“I do not like small talk“- neither do I. We have this in common (see my above talk.. not small at all, is it).
“To get back with him permanently, he would have to be the opposite of who he is“- the tiniest chance of being with someone who is opposite to who he is, is being with him.
“.. and change who he is for me to feel like he could love me correctly with 0% intimidation and 100% adoration“- unrealistic expectations, not going to happen long-term with any man (past maybe a love bombing exhibition).
I feel like going a full circle here and back to our initial conversations of projecting F into N. Not that N is the right guy for you, but no man will be right for you when you hold on to the expectation you stated in this quote.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Renn:
“Does he love me?.. I think I might love him. But… how do I know! And what do I even do about it. I’m not sure that I’m ready for these big feelings. It’s scary!… Please help!“-
– when overwhelmed with feelings, one way (“happy rainbow and sunshine“), or another (“It’s scary!… Please help“) , key is to calm down and when calm, think rationally and make thoughtful choices according to your values. Have your values guide you above your feelings of the moment.
You asked if he (the second guy) loves you. Define love, if you will: what does love mean to you?
anita
January 20, 2024 at 11:48 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427119anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
I’ll reply further later, in hours from now, maybe as late as tomorrow, but for now, regarding him encouraging you to do things that make you stronger: when he did not feel threatened, he did. When he felt threatened, it’s then that he wanted you weak. It’s not like he planned this or was even aware of it. It is more instinctual than a thinking thing.
What threatens him? That you will see through him, that you will see what he sees: a man beautiful or valuable on the outside, but not on the inside (as he sees himself).
anita
January 20, 2024 at 9:14 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427113anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“I was starting (again) to believe he could change and I want to stop. Your reply reminds me that I want to be in high vibrations, which unfortunately just was not with him“-
– Every once in a while in between communications with you, I wonder if you got so lonely that you contacted him and got back with him.. because it is often happens that people break up and then get back together, sometimes repeatedly. I wondered, if that happened, would you feel too embarrassed to tell me that it happened. So, just in case it happens, I want to let you know that (1) I will not be disappointed or angry because I know how loneliness feels, and that an online connection such as ours, however authentic and meaningful, cannot substitute for what you need in real life. If it happens, I’d like to continue to communicate with you as we have so far.
(2) In addition to the reasons we discussed about why it’d be a bad idea to get back with him, there is another reason that applies after the breakup: it is likely that he’d hold the breakup against you and every time you’d voice a need or a request that inconveniences him, he might say something like: and if I don’t (do this or that), you will break up with me again? He might (mis)use the fact that you broke up with him against you and keep you shut in that cage for good, feeling too guilty to break up with him again. You may feel like you need to prove to him that you will not break up with him (by keeping yourself in the cage) until some time when he’ll trust you again to not leave (a time that will not come because .. he needs you in the cage.
For too many people, a romantic relationship is not a win-win prospect, but a win-lose. If you win.. he loses. For him to win, you must lose. Again I am reminded of how important it was for him to win that game during that visit to his parents. I think that it’s important for him to win in a variety of contexts, including in the romantic.
“I hope for my future that I can find someone who will maintain high vibrations through the relationship and not stop putting in effort to conversation“- I hope that you will be attracted to someone with high vibrations and not to someone with low vibrations, hoping to change him into someone with high vibrations. I hope that … this kind of hope, or desire to change a man from low to high vibrations is not in the core of your attraction to a man.
“What makes you such a persistent walker?“- (1) habit. It’s easier for me to walk that it is to not walk. (2) it’s a mood elevator, it’s healthy for you and easier on the joints than jogging or running.
anita
January 19, 2024 at 8:30 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427112anitaParticipantGood night, Seaturtle, I’ll read from you tomorrow and reply.
anita
anitaParticipantThinking about you, Peace, hoping for peace in your life.. and in the world.
anita
January 18, 2024 at 4:38 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427087anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“I have always been good at speaking to boys…. But the thing was, none of those flirtatious conversations, actually wanted to date me. In fact, I witnessed all of my crushes with another girl… All of these occurrences, happening every year of middle and high school for me, 8 years, made me think the guys that I wanted didn’t want me and I couldn’t understand why”-
– maybe a lot of guys wanted you but you were not interested in them. Maybe it was a matter of numbers: a certain number of guys were interested in you, you were interested in a number of guys, and then there is some match or no match between the two groups, being that there is a lot of competition for any one girl: other girls.
“I didn’t feel less pretty, so I blamed my personality, crushing my self esteem. Even today I get anxious around a guy if I have any feelings, often I am mean to him because I don’t want to flirt/show interest and be rejected. With this self doubt and lack of self esteem, could I have really had a high vibration through all this going on around me? Not forgetting what I would also go home to?“-
– (1) no one, particularly no girl (almost none perhaps) has a massive amount of self-esteem, not even adequate self-esteem (whatever it may look like or feel like), but you had more self-esteem than many: you didn’t feel less pretty than other girls- that a huge positive self-esteem expression right there! Plus from my communication with you over these 24 pages, I sense a pretty healthy self-esteem on your part. (2) Your self-esteem and confidence held through these disappointments and heartbreaks, and chakras were open enough to do their vibrations, maybe partly because guys were after you, just not the particular ones whom you mentioned here.
“I am certainly getting more over him every day. Yesterday my feelings of disgust changed from inside of me to seeing it in him, seeing him as gross. I still wonder about getting my things and have anxiety about this, I find myself planning what to say in my head but it also just brings me anxiety to think about“- I would send your roommate or someone else to contact him and collect your things, and ask that person to tell you no details about their exchange with him.
One more half a mile, good evening/ night, Seaturtle!
anita
January 18, 2024 at 3:49 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #427086anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“I felt bad for my dad that my brother was awful at sports, so I wanted to be what made him happy“- he whined a lot, so you felt bad for him, similarly to your mother crying and you feeling bad for her (like your sister said, that you get swayed by her crying).
“later in age I realize she was acting out because she wasn’t being cared for as she needed“- and because you, her older sister, was the obedient one. The younger sibling often takes the opposite role to the older sibling (in dysfunctional households, which are more numerous than functional households). If you were born after her, you might have been the trouble maker.
Next, another half a mile.
anita
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