Dear Zenith:

The Empty Feeling.. I remember how intense my empty feeling used to be, being as isolated and lonely as I was. Lots and lots of people suffer from that empty feeling. I hope it gets easier and better for you!

anita

Dear Zenith: yes, you said something like this before. Well, I wish you and her saw some wise person from the Indian-Muslim community in your area, a religious counselor of sorts, and have the two of you sit together with him/ her to clarify and fix things!

anita

Any news on the neighbor front..?

anita

Yes, Zenit, it is quite depressing when the weather is like this and I can’t go out- too windy, plus the rain. I am walking on the treadmill (on and off, 1/2 mile portions, adding to a planned 3 miles), walking always, or almost always helps with my mood.

anita

Dear Zenith: just came back from the dentist. Very rainy dark late morning here. How are you??

anita

Dear Martyna:

(I am adding the boldface feature to this quote): “He told me how he feels and it paralyzed me. I was suddenly scared of the romantic feelings, being open, expressing what I feel and becoming vulnerable so I told him… A year passed… We’re together for almost a year now… he brings me comfort, security and love, also being my best, best friend. Oh my god I love him. I did obsess over losing him though, over him getting hurt, failing at school, being depressed etc. I really drain myself with those thoughts… And then one evening when we we’re laying together, I had a thought ‘I don’t love him’ which caused me panic… He’s truly a dream. But I’m so anxious bc of the constant thought of doubt whether I love him… this paralyzing feeling wont go away. I’m so scared… Help..”-

-I boldface expressions of fear. It is natural, when a person gets too fearful, to emotionally detach oneself from one’s emotions. It’s a normal defense mechanism aimed at protecting oneself from potential hurt. It is also understandable to get scared when emotions shift randomly and suddenly (I am referring to the title of this thread).

Seems to me that before meeting your boyfriend, while you were growing up, loving someone (a parent perhaps, a family member..?), being vulnerable to that person,  became a hurtful, painful experience for you, and you are afraid to re-experience this hurt and pain in a romantic context.

Maybe someone you loved returned your love with rejection.. anger, betrayal of some sort? Maybe someone you loved (falsely) accused you of hurting them? If so, it will take addressing that earlier situation and resolving the emotions involved, as much as is possible for you.

Please don’t blame yourself for how you feel. It is not your fault that you feel what you feel, or that you don’t feel what you don’t feel. What you feel is not a matter of choice. And there is a valid message behind what you feel (example of such a message: I don’t want him to hurt me, or I don’t want to hurt him). I hope that you feel calmer very soon, and I hope to read more from you (I will be away from the computer for quite a few hours and will be back later).

anita

Dear Shinnen:

“‘Why was I born here and now?’“- some people believe in destiny (believing that one is born with a predetermined future); others believe that the place and time of our births is a matter of random  chance. I believe in the latter.

“Is there anything distinctive about me“?- yes, absolutely! Your curiosity and intelligence stand out to me. Not everyone dives deep into existential questions like you do.

“or am I simply the result of circumstances and genetics“- while circumstances and genetics play a significant role in shaping who we are, there is an entire realm of experiences, choices and consciousness that add layers to one’s identity. You interact with the world and create meaning in it beyond your circumstances and genetics.

“in the same way that there are no completely identical stones, nothing special, just different?”- different but not insignificant. Each one of us has our own unique form and beauty- physical and otherwise-  that might not be immediately visible. Your experiences, your thoughts, your feelings- they create a mosaic that’s singularly yours.

It’s all about what you see, and what you do- in the world- with your uniqueness: are you isolated from or interactive with others; do you choose to harm or to help people.

“I don’t believe or disbelieve in a soul. The same goes for God. They, along with most concept, belong to the myriad of things I have no reason to believe, or not believe“- reads like you prioritize evidence, logic and reason over beliefs based on faith and intuition, a rationalist and a skeptic, needing strong evidence before you believe in something.  There is not enough evidence for you to believe in a soul and a god, nor is there enough evidence for you to believe that there is no such thing as a soul or a god.

“I am ‘very’ suspicious of my ego, which I suspect has a vested interest in telling me how unique, different, special, etc. I am. As humans, the primary way we evaluate the world, what we find threatening, good, bad, right, wrong, evil, true, fearful, the list is endless, is by comparison… always skewed toward our self interest.. ego, as you say. I see no reason to believe that I’m special or unique;  different.. sure, but, so is everything else.“- you are a skeptic in regard to the existence or non-existence of soul and god, and a skeptic in regard to you being unique and special. Not enough evidence to convince you one way or the other.

There is a desire in you to be unique and special, you may call it the ego’s desire. We all have an innate need for recognition. We crave (or craved, before giving up) acknowledgment and appreciation as someone unique and special. We all want (or wanted.. before giving up) to stand out. Nobody likes to be ordinary or forgotten.

There are two sources for feeling unique and special: (1) an external/ acquired source that is dependent on others. We focus outward and compare ourselves to others. If we have significantly more physical beauty, more I.Q, more education, more money, etc., then we (may) feel unique and special (for some time), (2) an internal/ intrinsic  source that is independent on others. We focus inward, focusing today on becoming more and better than we were yesterday, comparing ourselves not to others, but to who we were before.

The first require others to see and assess you (ex., observers can see what vehicle you drive and they can easily find out how much it costs); the second requires you to see and assess yourself according to what you choose to value. The first is reactive, the second is creative.

anita

Dear Kane:

I wasn’t able to read and process most of your original post yesterday afternoon (my time), but I feel more able this Sat morning. I will read a part of your post, respond to it, then read the next part, respond to it, etc.

“hello, my name is Kane, 18 and wanting change“- hello Kane. When I was 18, I wanted to change too. I hope that what needs to change within you and for your benefit, will take place.

“as I grew up, I understood… that everything, had ability to be wrong, incorrect, untrue, inexact, so, I never lived with ‘certainties’, like I was a nice person”-

– I didn’t read the next part, so I don’t know yet what you are referring to, but this line rings a bell for me in regard to my own experience growing up. My mother criticized me so many times, criticizing what I said and did, what I didn’t say and should have said. She even criticized the expressions on my face, what (she thought) I thought and felt. Her message to me was that I was Wrong, that I was thinking wrong, feeling wrong, doing things wrong.

A particular harmful criticism, looking back, was that I was thinking wrong because it led to so much self-doubt over the years and decades. But then her other criticisms were particularly harmful too, leading me to decades of feeling (and thinking) intense guilt and feeling that I wasn’t able to make good choices, so I needed someone else, someone capable to make choices for me (learned helplessness).

Now back to your post: .. I am reading your words, I get a meaning here and there, but it’s difficult for me to follow (I have ADD: Attention Deficit Disorder) and wordiness (using many more words than what is needed to convey a message, resulting in writing that is not clear and concise) is difficult, and sometimes impossible for me to process. So, I will be skipping most parts that I didn’t understand enough.

“I worked into the depths of everything I could, one’s nature… how bad it is we are not in control of our development, the natural problem between kids and parents being organic and part inorganic… I  logicalized everything to such a degree“- seems to me that there were- and are- personal, concrete problems between you and your parents, but you don’t address these problems. Instead, you have been analyzing general  problems between parents and kids and in the  abstract. I made a comment yesterday in my reply to you about intellectualizing because that’s what I sensed you were doing in your post.

psychology today/ intellectualization: “Intellectualization is a defense mechanism in which people reason about a problem to avoid uncomfortable or distressing emotions. For example… A man who lost his wife may focus all of his energy on funeral arrangements and logistics instead of acknowledging his grief. By channeling mental energy into a logical assessment or abstract discussion, an individual can avoid painful emotions or remain distanced from beliefs that challenge their sense of self”.

Even though it takes intelligence to intellectualize (you are an intelligent young person), intellectualization blocks understanding because it (intellectualization) is about avoiding emotional awareness. There is an equation of sorts that my therapist, a decade ago, presented to me: Wise Mind= Rational Mind + Emotional Mind.

Back to your post: “I cried too much as a kid, to which I hid my pain, even though they made me feel such“- you cried as a boy growing up because you were in pain, and they (your parents, I assume) inflicted pain on you..?

“I invalidated my emotions from having agency by denying their impact… I am struggling to advance further in my knowledge, as that is my dependency, for as long as I find the logic, I can do it, and if not…I can’t“- your emotions need to be validated. You cannot be wise by logic alone: wisdom= logic+ emotions.

“my emotions are chaotic and eating each other, wanting to laugh, to smile, to cry, to scream, to hurt, hurt, and hurt, myself? Others? Don’t know?!“- this is similar to what I experienced when I was your age, before and a long time after. No wonder I was so exhausted, particularly as a teenager and in my early 20s when I still lived with my mother. To have emotions chaotic and eating each other is indeed.. exhausting. (The way I used to relax, to calm the emotions down, was to daydream. It’s called maladaptive daydreaming because I did so much of it, throughout the day).

Looking back, this was what my emotional chaos was about: I was in emotional pain, but my focus was on my mother’s pain. My empathy was with her. She accused me of causing her pain, of being the Problem. So, I was against the Problem= against myself. But I didn’t only feel empathy for her, I also felt anger/ hate for her. I was conflicted (empathy & hate), hence the chaos.

Persistent Conflict=> Emotional Chaos=> Exhaustion.

I felt that I deserved to be in pain for being the Problem, but on the other hand, part of me (the part that felt innocent of her accusations) was fighting for itself, pointing to my mother as the Problem.

My peace of mind, the calming of the chaos, happened after I finally took my side and believed, thoroughly believed, that in the context of my mother- myself, she was the Guilty one, I was the Good one.

Back to your post: “Then there’s the wisdom itself, which I nicknamed ‘Mechanical Morality’, as they are the absolute of truths we struggle to grasp… a child’s two-sided ability to be a bright light of joy, or of cruelty“- I wish I was able to understand this part. Can you/ will you explain this to me as simply and clearly as you can, as if you are explaining this to a young child who cannot follow abstract, complex wording?

As a matter of fact, you can help yourself perhaps, if you simplify your writing and express yourself through words that a child will use. (I used to intellectualize.. a lot. Simplified, direct writing made my healing possible).

“Each counterweight each other to where I can’t be anything, feel like my kindness isn’t genuine”- You can’t place your emotions in rational, intellectualized containers and feel genuine. The emotions placed in the containers (repressed & suppressed) are not calm emotions. They demand to be let out, do they?

“Everything that comes into reality had its reason towards existing, to where nearly, there’s always a reason, even when there’s not one directly, you could be pushed to do the worst of the worst and still be the kindest person out there, you can be disgusting yet like something pure“- yes, there is always reasons why people do bad things. Reasons do not equal justifications. And it is true that every person who repeatedly harms another was once innocent and was harmed himself/ herself by someone else. And so, abuse has been spreading around like fire, since the beginning of times.

I used to think that my thoughts (thoughts that I felt were unacceptable) were indications that I was a bad person, and that my anger- and the thoughts fueled by my anger- were also indications that I was a bad person. I didn’t know that people are neither good nor bad for the content of their thoughts, nor for the quality of their feelings. People are good or bad for what they say/ type and for their actions. This means that even when my feelings are not.. pretty, so to speak, as long as I choose to help/ to do no harm.. I am a good person.

I typed above, “a good person”. A Person, not a Saint. There are no saints in human form. I can’t think of a saint in any form. Only the other day I found myself gossiping about a person whose behavior I disapprove of (objectively, objectionable behaviors), and I am still trying to figure out what I should do about my anger at him. My anger is not at all an indication that I am a good or bad person. What I choose to say and do, as a good (and imperfect/ unsaintly) person, is the question.

“Our world is filled with contradictions, to where almost nothing is just one thing“- when I took my side, some things were.. just one thing. The little girl that I was, was just this one thing: a good little girl that loved her mother deeply, and would have done anything and everything to help her mother. And she did all that she was able to do to help her mother.

“I’m getting better, as in I’m feeling emotions again with more honesty“- good to read that you are getting better, feeling your emotions with more honesty.

“but that whole storm is still there… it’s just arguing, simple, family, arguments, fools hurting each other“- who is hurting you, and how?

“I can’t live without them, yet I so desperately want to, yet I want the family that this one doesn’t feel like it is… not exactly horrible, not the best… I need to do something drastic.. let anger win“- there is a positive, healthy message behind your anger: to live away from your family, a family who has been horrible enough to cause a good, loving boy to desperately want to live away from them..?

anita