Dear Caroline:

“It’s not that simple“- since it is complicated, I will review your first 6- page thread (Is my friend abusing me?) from Sept 28- Dec 24, 2022, a thread where we communicated extensively (We ended the thread with wishing each other Merry Christmas).

You shared almost a year ago about a friend/ co worker: “He has this habit of talking a lot and very long… He can talk for…  an hour or hour and a half… without taking any pause… He tells me everything… every detail… he again started talking about his bike, what repairs he did, exactly what, where, what day it happened, what he ate for breakfast that day, what he wore, that kind of details…  it’s too much, too long… It’s just overwhelming… he had anger issues when he was just being angry all the time and projected this on me… I was always very polite, listening patiently… Lately I got really tired with this and a bit angry…  I was tired of listening to this… I am working home office, he and only one coworker are in the office) I feel it is a trap that I fell into“-

-Notice you used the word trap in context of your workplace back then. Fast forward a year, you shared about another trap, one you are currently afraid to fall into. This one is also in the context of work. I wrote to you only yesterday: “visualizing the job, you felt trapped, so,  you got scared and you catastrophized the envisioned job situation, seeing it as way worse than it would be… Is this what happened?” You answered: “yes.. I think so“.

The co-worker a year ago talked way too much, projected his anger into you, and bullied you. Your Emotional Response was to feel overwhelmed and angry, but your Expressed Response was: “I was always very polite, listening patiently“. You didn’t assert yourself, didn’t initiate active solutions to the problem, but instead, you displayed Learned Helplessness.

bing. com: “Learned helplessness is a psychological state of passivity and powerlessness. It occurs when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable, stressful situations, then does not exercise control when it becomes available. A person assumes that nothing is possible.. to change or alter the situation.. People that struggle with learned helplessness tend to complain a lot, feeling overwhelmed and incapable”.

Learned helplessness is a condition that often starts in childhood, as it did in my case: I was repeatedly abused by my mother, all my efforts to avoid and prevent it failed, so I concluded that there was nothing I can do when bad things happen. Fast forward, whenever I found myself in a problematic situation, I froze, didn’t feel capable of solving problems, catastrophized the situation, kept my growing stress inside for as long as I was able to endure it, felt like a trapped animal, getting more and more stressed and then, way too stressed to endure it any longer, I either exploded or I just RAN, left, was gone.

Back to your first thread, you wrote back in Sept last year: “He usually intimidates and bullies me. I regret I put up with this all these months and did not stand up for myself and now it became a trap I need to get out of“- this is learned helplessness. I am surprised that I didn’t bring up the term in your first thread.

On Sept 30, 2022, I wrote to you what applies to your current situation: ” I think that objectively, the situation is not as bad as you feel that it is. You can undo the trap and set yourself free if and when you stand up for yourself and create a new reality at work”- standing up for yourself, asserting yourself in real-life is an essential part of overcoming learned helplessness.

Do you think that the term learned helplessness applies to your life experience?

anita

* I just checked for new activity on the forums and found your most recent two posts. Thank you for welcoming me back to the forums! I will wait for your reply to the above.

Dear Caroline: I will be able to reply to you Fri morning, in about eight hours from now/

anita

Dear Caroline:

“I feel really stupid for telling one day I want to do it and the other day feeling panic and being scared. What is wrong with me“- visualizing the job, you felt trapped, so,  you got scared and you catastrophized the envisioned job situation, seeing it as way worse than it would be, or could be..  seeing it as something horrible.

This increased your fear: you panicked and you want to escape the envisioned trap as quickly as possible. Is this what happened?

anita

Dear Stacy:

You are welcome.  Having read all that you shared about him, I have this visual: he has been caught in between the Dark Side and the Light Side (Star Wars). Being that you are from the light side (you are definitely a good person), you brought light into his mind and heart, encouraging the part of him that wanted to be a good person (“He overextends himself a lot for people. ‘I just want to be a good employee’ or ‘I just want to be a good person’  and ‘I just want to be the best boyfriend I can for you’ are all regular phrases I heard from him.“).

But the dark side kept calling him and pulling him away from the light/ from you and back into the dark side: porn, sexual obsessions and compulsions, the Tik Tok posts (“The stuff that this Tik Tok coworker posts is definitely too sexual and dark for me“).

“I worry I wasn’t enough to keep him from straying away“- you don’t have enough power to keep him from straying away into the dark side.

“I totally agree that shame seems to be ruling and ruining his life“- if he was committed to the light side, to being and becoming a good person, he would confront his shame, figure out what it’s about, and change the behaviors that he himself considers shameful. But if his shame is too great or too vague, he keeps doing what is shaming him, experiencing a  mix of joy and shame, both.

“I saw a completely different side to him this entire relationship“- you saw the light side in him.. or am I getting carried away with the visual?

anita

Dear Andrea:

First, what you shared, second: my input:

You (31) shared that before your most recent relationship, you had several relationships, one that lasted 4 years. Your most recent boyfriend (31), or ex-boyfriend, “has never had a real relationship/girlfriend until me, all his others were failed relationships and hookups“. He had “a two months long situationship 2 months before meeting me“, one in which he was cheated on several times and “he admitted about 5 months in that he had a very shameful f****boy past“.

* “‘f***’ is a young man who sleeps with women without any intention of having a relationship with them or perhaps even walking them to the door post-sex. He’s a womanizer, an especially callous one, as well as kind of a loser.”(jezebel. com)

During your almost 1-year relationship, the two of you had jobs, but “both stuck living back home with family in bad financial positions“, living two hours apart. You met 1-3 times per month, spending a couple of days together each meeting.

He has been professionally diagnosed with ADHD and depression, on medications. He had therapy and so did you. You therapy, you were told that you have an Anxious Attachment Style and that you are codependent.

You were dissatisfied with the frequency of your phone/ online contact in between meetings, and with the fact that you initiated most of those. When on the phone, you usually vented about your day or about “something he had done that was worrying me. Relationship check ins were happening probably too often“.

Early in the relationship (about Aug 2022) you shared with him that you are monogamous and “vanilla and not into BDSM or anything too kinky“, but in April 2023, “he tells me he wants me to try getting aggressive with him and slapping him, also kind of yelling at him that he’s a loser, etc. Basically a shame kink situation“. You were afraid it meant that he was getting bored with you, but you declined his suggestion.

About 2 weeks ago, Aug 2023, you found out that he was out late with a co-worker at a restaurant and that during the entire time you dated him, (having discussed your very hurt feelings around a boyfriend liking girls in bikinis online, and him saying that he doesn’t do that), “he had been liking all her (the co-worker’s) bikini photos…  the entire time he had been dating me”. He “told me he messed up, he admitted and took accountability for letting me down and he felt a lot of shame and disappointment in himself“, and he “admitted he has wandering eyes and is falling for these photos…“, and the two of you broke up (“I said, ‘Umm. What? Are you breaking up with me?’ He says, ‘Yeah, I guess so.‘). There has been a back and forth communication on the breakup matter. You tried to bargain with him (“I asked him if it would help if I could work on moving closer. He rejected it with frustration“).

Two days after the breakup, “after maybe 3 hours of sleep in total and no solid food, I couldn’t take it anymore and I reached out to him to apologize for all of the times my past trauma triggered me and I projected insecurities onto him. I took ownership for being too hard on him sometimes and felt a lot of shame about it. I then asked him if there were any chance to fix us if he even wanted to. He responded and apologized as well. He told me that he panicked and shut down and doesn’t deal with confrontation and shame well so he just abruptly ended it… We both agreed our issues were triggering each other’s wounds and we were hitting a regressive period with our mental health. I told him I’d still like to be in his life if he were open to that.

“He agreed wholeheartedly and said he honestly didn’t know what he would do without me in his life and that I was his best friend. He thanked me so much for showing him he was capable and worthy of love and that he was eternally grateful for me for showing him all of this…

“A day later after some light conversation still here and there, he texted me that Sunday evening telling me he still felt a lot of shame and was really sad about what happened and that he was still so sorry…  Over the span of our relationship, he’s mentioned hundreds of times different sexual fantasies… He told me he thought porn was detrimental to women and men in the end by consuming too much of it. The Tik Tok coworker dresses as many of his sexual fantasies... At this point, the communication is still happening… I wish I knew what exactly was ‘the past issues eating him up from the inside and falling apart’ over?… He told me when we first started dating that he was worried he couldn’t be 100 percent for me because he was still struggling with shame…

“What is true for me is that despite all of this, I love him so much and this has been the best and I THOUGHT most open and mature relationship I’ve ever had… Apparently I broke him, or maybe it had nothing to do with me. If I knew this guy was just leading me on this whole time…. Do I give up all hope for the future of us? Or do I take these SEEMINGLY serious sexual issues to heart and not try to hold on?”

My input: I boldfaced the word shame and shameful because it is the theme of his story, as I read it. It is his dominant feeling perhaps. Seems to me that his sexual fantasy, what you called “a shame kink situation“, is about his need to deal with this shame that is ruling him: “he tells me he wants me to try getting aggressive with him and slapping him, also kind of yelling at him that he’s a loser, etc.“- he wants his shame to be dealt with and resolved via this sexual exchange dynamic.

Putting this shame kink situation into practice will not resolve his shame, of course, but the fantasy holds hope or promise, for him, that his shame will be resolved. Maybe he hopes that if a woman slaps him and yells at him, yelling shameful words, it will scare the shame away and out of him. A sort of.. shame exorcism

“Apparently I broke him“- no, I don’t believe that you broke him. I think that shame broke him: “He told me when we first started dating that he was worried he couldn’t be 100 percent for me because he was still struggling with shame“- he was struggling with shame way before he met you, and not just shame but a lot of shame (“he texted me.. telling me.. he still  felt a lot of shame“).

“ I wish I knew what exactly was ‘the past issues eating him up from the inside and falling apart’ over?“- the past issue that is eating him up from the inside, seems to me, is a lot of shame, aka neurotic shame, or toxic shame that took hold in his childhood.

The late author John Bradshaw wrote a book titled Healing the shame that binds you. Here is a quote regarding the book from john bradshaw. com: “In it, he shows how unhealthy toxic shame is the core component of our compulsions including, codependency, lying, addiction, and the drive to super-achieve or underachieve. This toxic shame, most often experienced in childhood, results in the breakdown of our self-esteem.. (and) an inability to move forward and form lasting intimate relationships in our lives”.

There is much more that I can say after studying your thread for a few hours by now, but I am running out of time today. If you would like- and please let me know- we can have a conversation about all  of this.  I will be back to the computer by tomorrow (Thursday).

anita

* Reposting, hopefully without the excess print:

Dear Arden:

The first time we communicated was on June 7, 2019,  4 years and three months ago (in 2 days), and our last exchange was in Feb-March this year. I want to respond to this thread, your sixth (and first under your new screen name). This will be a very long post, so please take your time reading it, maybe over a few days. (Italicized quotes are quotes from your 6th, current thread. Italicized and boldfaced quotes are quotes from your previous threads).

“I’ve started doing yoga years and years ago…  in the last 2-3 years, it has been a part of my life… In the..  20ish years, (I) went on with my yoga and it helped me a lot, overcoming my anxiety and all the worries with my exercises that I do at home, also breathing techniques I have learned from yoga. It kept me sane to sum it up, I am thankful and will always have yoga in my life“- yoga has been a part of your life for a long time. It helped you when nothing (and no one) else did.

“I’ve done like 90-150 days streaks where I went on each day with it and count it on my journals… When it’s like a streak and you’re doing it every day no matter what, you make it for the sake of streak, not the yoga. You are not always in the condition or in the mindset that you will enjoy it“-

The streaks of yoga (I’ll call it SOY, if I may, for Streaks Of Yoga)-  just the way you did it, in your particular, personal way, for your own personal reasons, for your own personal purpose, working hard at it no matter how you felt (when you didn’t enjoy it, you kept doing it anyway)-  has been your thing, your personal expression.

“There comes my reason for this post, I have a frenemy…  she is a bit overvalued, glorified, and thanks to this overvaluing, she is a bit selfish, ignorant and felt like she was better than everyone else. She doesn’t put the work in it but also expects to be better in anyways.. she is liked/ loved a lot.. she had a target, to be able to be seen sexy… she told me that she’ll do streaks like me. I didn’t like this idea. I felt like, why don’t you go on with your on-point exercises making your body sexier and not my beloved streaks?“-

– this woman who has so much (she is liked and loved a lot, overvalued by herself and by others) wanted to take away from you the one thing that belongs to you: SOY. She wanted to make it her own: to do it not for her sanity, but so to attract men.

“I am trying to understand why I am doing this gate-keeping on yoga since it’s not my thing to begin with… (I) always wanted my genuine friends to try it since I  know that it is good for both mental and physical health.. But this specific friend made me feel bad about it“- gate keeping means (online definition) to control access to something. Yoga does not belong to you, but SOY does belong to you: it’s your own, personal, individual expression.

You didn’t mind sharing it with people whom you believed could benefit from it, but this woman, this frenemy, as you refer to her, already has SO MUCH. Why does she want to take away from you the one thing that is yours?

– Is this your thinking, Arden?

“I am more interested in changing myself so that I won’t feel this way about yoga and her. This state of mind bothered me and I am trying to change it. At least, I am trying to identify which parts of toxicity here belongs with me and not her, and as I identify that, I can maybe change it“- I don’t see it as toxicity. What I see- based on our years-long communication- is a person who has had a weak sense of self, a weak identity for too long. This other woman has a strong sense of identity (however flawed): she thinks very highly of herself, and this is something that you don’t have, but wish you did.

“What I yearn for is to be a bit more careless, a bit more relaxed. I am not like a stressful person, I just know my limits, I act careful to the loved ones, I try not to bother anyone and also take care of myself at all times. But I don’t think she cares at all about any of those details“- she expects good things to happen to her without even working hard. You never had that expectation. She EXPRESSES herself, not fearing that doing so will bother others. You SUPPRESS yourself, fearing that expressing yourself will bother others.

On May 3, 2022, you wrote: “‘I act responsibly and try not to do mistakes and think of every situation beforehand… I feel like it’s just not fair. And sometimes I cannot get over this feeling. I would want to be more careless about everything“- it takes a strong sense of self to act carefree, to trust your identity to be strong enough and solid enough to not fall apart if you are careless.

“I really want to work on my ego that has created the rivalry here“- an online simple definition of ego: a person’s sense of self esteem or self importance.

How does one get to feel important enough to express oneself freely? A young child naturally expresses herself or himself freely.. for as long as there is love to depend on. But like you stated in the opening of your second thread on June 22, 2019: “I’ve had a childhood where I simply didn’t receive any love from my dad and moms love was a bit unpredictable, exists and then disappears“. You had no love to depend on, and as a result, you stopped expressing. Instead, you suppressed yourself, being very careful, not at all carefree.

* In regard to your mother’s love, it was significantly inadequate: “She has an extreme empathy towards animals and innocent people. But then again, when I try to talk about a huge problem in my little world, it’s not relatable for her. That was always the case“, notice: that was always the case.

When as an adult, you’ve received love/ affection, you were afraid of losing it at any time,  can’t depend on it: “I always worry about losing that affection I guess, or that person” (June 2019).

There are terms that fit me and they fit you too, I believe, although we both made individual improvements recently, I believe): a diminished sense of self/ a poorly developed sense of self/ a weak identity. When a child cannot depend on love/ emotional support- when such is absent or significantly inadequate and too unpredictable-  the child’s emotional/ mental development is arrested: it does not develop.

The following is taken from a spiritual website, lone wolf. com/ sense of self/ 18 signs you have a poorly developed sense of self (in parentheses are quotes from what you shared in  past years)  “*Losing your sense of self in romantic relationships….   *Codependent tendencies  * Aimlessness and difficulty setting goals. * Not knowing what to do with your life… * Feeling lost in life (“ I haven’t got a clue about what I want in life and in a person/relationship“, June 2019)..* Empathy overload- empathizing too much with others that you lose yourself. (“I cannot rationalize having anger towards (unloving parents) and I don’t feel any. Actually, I feel sorry for them, I feel compassion and mercy. I wish I could’ve made their lives better“, July 2020) * Social anxiety- feeling overwhelmed by others because you don’t have a solid identity… *Chronic low-grade intense anxiety- due to not feeling at ‘home’ within yourself because you have a weak sense of self…

* The tendency to be taken advantage of by others (“I thought I was never ‘loved’ and when I finally get the love I need, I’ll get better. Because of this mindset, my first two long-term (1.5 years each) relationships were totally illusions. They both kind-of used me and I thought that I was ‘loved’ in some sense“). * Living another person’s definition of ‘happy’ and ‘success (“I have no idea what would make me happy, I’m just programmed in a way to seek success and since I don’t know how to seek it, and where to seek it; I’m stuck in between projects or stuff like that and I cannot ever feel satisfied with. So don’t know where I’ll go, don’t know where I’m standing“, Oct 2020)

* Disconnection from your true needs, desires, and dreams. (“I cannot dream properly, I cannot make plans“, Oct 2020). *Feelings of emptiness inside” (“Even though I was depressed (as a child), I could motivate myself from time to time to hold on, study… I thought it can get better once I get to a good university, then.. Some people would like me, I’ll find someone to be companions with.. and I’ll feel safe, eventually. All of these happened, the university has come to an end as well. But that mental abyss kept growing“, Oct 2020).

On Oct 25, 2020, I wrote to you: “What happens to a child who.. ‘simply didn’t receive any love’… ?.. Waiting, distracting and achieving, she never gets the affection and safety she desperately needs, she is never able to relax long enough so to experience life as an adventure; she doesn’t get the opportunity to learn about herself, about what she needs. She has no ‘clue about what (she) wants in life and in a person/ relationship‘, she has ‘no idea what would make (her) happy‘..  Waiting, she is frozen in time, frozen in the craving for affection…”.

On July 6, 2021, I wrote to you: ” For a child, a consistent-enough loving attention is like a solid ground that makes it possible for the child to stand up and walk around. A severely inconsistent loving attention is like a very shaky ground, making it too scary for the child to stand up and walk around for fear of falling down”.

On Dec 23, 2020, I wrote to you: “Earlier this month, you shared that when you were 13-15, you spent a lot of time alone in your room, doing stuff on the computer… What happens to a child who is alone for too long- she closes in… I don’t see your anger/ jealousy regarding this friend/rival as an ‘ego problem’. I see it as a consequence of being alone and lonely for too long, carrying within you this unsatisfied natural longing to connect with others and experience life with others, connected, interacting.. no longer alone”- I don’t remember what friend we were discussing at the time, almost 3 years ago, maybe it’s the same one you shared about in your current thread. Regardless, the jealousy is probably similar or the same: envying those who did not get frozen in time, those who developed and grew to experience life way more fully than you or I ever got the opportunity to experience.

You are only 25, Arden, so very young in objective terms. It is possible for you, I know it is, to develop much of your frozen self, to strengthen your identity, and to trust it to be strong and solid-enough to allow you to be carefree-enough to walk around and even run on (figurative) solid ground, to explore and experience life in ways you did not dare before.

anita

Dear Sarah:

“I never get close or get into a relationship in real life (I had an online gf once and it lasted for five months and that was it)“- it is easy- by comparison- to interact with people online than it is to interact with people in real life. For example, as I am typing to you right now, I am not afraid that you will think poorly of me because I didn’t yet comb my hair. I don’t worry at all about how I look because you can’t SEE me. This by itself makes a lot of people feel comfortable online vs real life.

Even if you have a video chat with someone, you are prepared for the chat. You know that once you step away from the computer, you can no longer be seen. It is not like in real-life when you think you are alone but then there’s someone there who saw you or heard you, and you didn’t know.

“And I don’t understand why. Nobody ever said that I am ugly or have a bad attitude, many even said the opposite, that I’m pretty, that I’m kind… I’m not trying brag but that’s exactly what I’m confused about“- what if you think of yourself as pretty and kind and it is not bragging, or boasting. As in thinking: I really am pretty and kind, and there are other people out there who are also pretty/ handsome and kind, and I’d like to meet them.

A healthy self-esteem is not about behaving like you are MORE than others (bragging, boasting, expressing something like: I am so smart, and you are so stupid!), or LESS than others (belittling yourself, expressing something like: You are so smart, and I am so stupid!). A healthy self-esteem is about behaving like you are EQUAL to others (talking positively about yourself and about others, expressing something like: I am smart, and so are you!).

It doesn’t mean that people are all the same, all smart to the same extent. It means that when you have a healthy self-esteem, when you think well of yourself, you look for- and you focus on- the positives in yourself and in others.

“If I really am pretty and kind like they said, why does no one ever try to get to know me in real life?????“- let’s see… if you think that my reply so far has been a kind reply, a pretty and kind reply, let’s say, it would be pretty and kind on your part to reply back to me, wouldn’t it?

And if you didn’t reply, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to get to know you better (online). What I am saying is that maybe if you try to get to know another young person better, and you give another person the opportunity to get to know you better (online), maybe an interest will be born to get to know each other better in real life.

“Why don’t they want something with me?“- someone, more than one person,  will want something with you, but you will need to be not too eager when it happens.. and not too scared either.

“I wonder what is wrong with me“- I bet there is nothing wrong with you, except that you think/  suspect that there is something wrong with you. Sadly, there are millions of people in the world today who think that way- and because they think that way, they behave that way too. (I used to be sure that there was something wrong with me…)

“my heart is breaking… I’m scared“- it is very difficult to live in fear, to have one’s heart break. Imagine calm instead of fear, and a content heart instead of a breaking heart: this can be your experience. Only it doesn’t happen magically. You have to re-evaluate your thinking about yourself and about other people, and change some of it. It takes time and work, and when it happens, your feelings- and different life experiences- will follow.

“I don’t want to, but was I destined to be alone?????“- no human was born destined to be alone. Humans are social animals: for our mental health, we have to socialize- in real life- with other people.

“I’m really scared, I want to have my special someone too. Help me.. what do I do..“- I want to help you. I will try to the best of my (nonprofessional) ability, within the context of this forum. Will you let me?

anita