Dear Seaturtle:

“Thank you for acknowledging what I went through in high school“- you are welcome!

“Unfortunately the response felt normal to me, but at the same time not what I expected from reading the forums and seeing people being heard and given insight“-

(1) It is sad that rudeness is quite normal. Next time you receive a reply that is judgmental and rude, here or elsewhere, let the person know it. Stand up for yourself in an assertive, respectful, yet strong way (vs aggressive and rude.. which is weak, really).

(2) It is true that the person who replied to you is a good person, a regular participant who has been genuinely trying to help many people; a kind person..  just not on in that one instance, in your first thread. I am sorry that it happened. Your resulting feelings of hurt and discouragement are as valid as can be.

This reminds me of how important it is to do-no-harm and to be kind every single time I choose to reply to a member. I am glad you gave the forums a second chance by starting your second, current thread.

“I like your principle of ‘Do no harm,’ just hearing you say there are responses you have regretted on here, and witnessing how it makes me feel to receive a response like I did, I will be careful myself“- thank you for being the good person that you are, I appreciate you!

And thank you for appreciating me.

“Seemed to me he was emotional about the fact he realizes he didn’t see me before. But this could all be very wishful thinking“- I never underestimate how intense a child’s need and wish to be seen.

“He does see a therapist..“- he may be dating the therapist.

“This is a reason I have hesitated to initiate a break, because I don’t want to trigger him in this way. I don’t want him to pull away from me and I certainly don’t want to be dating other people“- if not a break, then make changes within the relationship so that you have the space/ alone-time that you need when you need it.

“It’s like I can see myself breaking up with him, exactly how it would happen, an impulse. I can see it relieving me…  Back to taking a break, I have contemplated this for a year now, and I think a year been in this distress… I just moved out two weeks and thought I would see if that helps before taking a break, but honestly it is what I want and know I need“-

– It occurred to me just now, and I don’t know if I mentioned this to you before.. that when with your partner, you may be re-experiencing the distress, anger and the desire to run away/ remove yourself from the situation,  that you felt with your father growing up.

Your father demanded that you give him loving attention, which is inappropriate for a father/ parent to demand from his daughter, and that terribly distressed you and made you angry with him (“his insecure self needed me to literally tell him he was seen. I literally began to do this for him… I started to send him random texts like ‘I love you'”).

“I find myself wanting to criticize my partner.. A mentality like, if I have to be hyper aware of what I am doing, like responding to messages, cleaning up after myself hyper-vigilantly, making sure YOU are seen“-

– right here, you are re-experiencing what happened with your father in the context of your partner: angry (wanting to criticize) with (your father=> your partner) for making those inappropriate, unreasonable and distressing demands from you (to be hyper aware etc.).

As adults, we forget how badly we felt as young children because as children, we dissociate from alarming, intense feelings. And so, when you currently meet your father, as an adult, you don’t feel that distress, or too much of it… Yu don’t feel these distressing feelings in the context of your father. But what happens with those dissociated feelings is that they re-appear in other contexts, commonly in the context of a romantic partner.

Makes sense..?

anita

Dear Stacy:

You wrote to me yesterday: “I don’t mind a longer reply… These posts have been the only thing really getting me through this breakup“- then another long reply this will be.

I read through your now 5-page thread and I want to present the problems you brought up in categories as follows (the content of each category overlaps with the content of other categories, so the following Problem Categories are not unrelated.  Another note: I will be adding the boldface feature selectively):

* The Practical, real-life Problems:

1) Money Problems: “I was born and am still poverty level.. as soon as I come home from my job, I see my mom sitting on the couch all day long in pain and self-wallowing, and the septic tank repair bill or some other stressful and real life issue constantly plaguing us that I have to take responsibility for…   Money issues and repairs constantly keep us stuck in a hole…  No one goes to work or school in my house aside from me… I definitely don’t have the money to move out still but I’m hoping to get there. I have two part time jobs and they just aren’t cutting it, especially with no health insurance. My medical bills and medication are a problem, on top of constant car repair bills. There are talks of me hopefully getting full time at one of my jobs after December if their budget allows it and I can get health insurance then. This would change my life… My car broke down AGAIN last night. I’m stuck at home physically when this happens, but also stuck because I keep having to put my paychecks into fixing the car rather than saving to move”.

2) Physical and Mental Health Problems: “When I was 12 years old, I choked on a cough drop and nearly died. and developed a severe choking and swallowing phobia…. At 26, it was discovered I also have Eosinophilic esophagitis… I’ve been reading a lot into health anxiety/OCD and I’m beginning to wonder if this is overlapping with my extreme rumination and obsessive thinking and need to ‘figure out’ my relationship and breakup as well.… I genuinely fear I have developed some form of OCD from this. Every single day, I can have the slightest physical sensation and I have to talk myself down or need to seek reassurance that I’m not in danger. It’s EXTREME and I can’t be talked out of things. It’s ruined my life and my relationships… It’s mostly the physical sensation of choking (either from EOE, stress, GERD, allergies or asthma) so this is all very complicated for me and it’s hard to explain it to doctors… Chronic stress is harming me for sure…Anxiety and panic to this level depletes my appetite and triggers my choking phobia so badly”.

3) Poor/ dysfunctional current living conditions: Loudness and Lack of structure, discipline and routine: “My sister has severe insomnia so she doesn’t have then on a sleep schedule. They stay up until 7-8 am and sleep in all day. In fact as I type this, it is 3:41 am and my sister is arguing with my nephew in the room next to me. So when I need to sleep, the house is loud and chaotic…  I don’t get much rest or peace at this house. It’s why I also fantasied and counted the days for when I got to go see my ex… I’m just absolutely tired of living in dysfunction and no discipline or routine… I WANTED guidance and rules and routine. I got chaos and isolation back then, and these same themes seem to be replaying in front of me with my sister and her kids now”, “After work, I never want to go home so I usually get myself a soda or just go sit in a parking lot until I know I can’t avoid it any longer”.

* Emotional Problems:

1) Growing up Unsafe, the resulting Hopelessness and Helplessness as a state f mind, and your desperate need for safety/ refuge:

“I felt from at least the age of four that my parents were not capable of keeping me safe anymore because I could see them fearing for their own safety with how destructive my brother was getting”, “she (your mother) is physically and financially incapable” “It makes me feel hopeless for her and for me“, “I absolutely think that I found refuge in my ex” “he (ex) wasn’t deeply thinking about anything.. I think it was more so the illusion by proxy of feeling like I can have room to be hopeful and not feel constantly helpless“.

2) Low Self-Esteem: “I see value in everyone else but myself. I know that’s my biggest problem“, “I just feel really inexperienced and not good enough for him… It’s, ‘Oh this rich family accepts me and thinks I’m good enough for them”, “I allow him to dictate my entire worth about these things and that’s my problem”.

3) Negative Body/ Sexual Image: “I feel perpetually stunted with my physical body… I don’t feel like a woman. When I have sex with men, I feel like a 12 year old”, “My life is a lot more bleak compared to the women he is lusting after. They.. are all hyper-sexually liberated women“.

4) Enmeshment/ lack of separation from your family/ mother: “My therapist said years ago that I do indeed struggle with family enmeshment“, “I don’t feel like I get to have my own adult life or sense of identity outside of her and these issues so perhaps dating this guy also gave me a sense of MY OWN LIFE. I’ve never moved out of the house or had my own separate life outside of her“, ” I don’t want to abandon her” “I know I have to live my own life, but the guilt I’d feel from that would be horrific”.

5) Loneliness and Isolation as an ongoing subjective experience: “I got chaos and isolation back then, and these same themes seem to be replaying in front of me with my sister and her kids now… I feel horribly alone despite living with 5 people… I just feel really disconnected from everyone and this is the very reason why I reached out and met my ex last year at this time” (Oct 17).

I am hoping that the above, being presented this way, will be of some help to you. Maybe one day you will present this (edited as you wish) to a health-care professional so that he/ she can put together a treatment plan for you.

There is no doubt in my mind that you placed your ex on a pedestal not because he belongs there (not at all) but because you desperately need to look up to someone so to feel safe (See #1 above, under Emotional Problems). I believe that you’ve been ruminating about him so heavily since the breakup because.. you still feel that he is your hope for safety.

You wrote yesterday: “I went back through our first couple of months of dating texts the other night (my current ex) and he was SO receptive to reassuring my anxieties. He told me he’d never leave me… He told me…  he reassured me…  He told me… my ex admitted he was… I just am so lost… I’m just going to keep confusing men and pushing them away with my anxious check-ins for reassurance and my anxious confrontations. None of it is aggressive… I do feel a huge loss to have lost my ex and his family and I know I felt refuge in his acceptance and them for many reasons as I’ve mentioned here before. I know I have to move forward but this guilt is crippling me so hard right now. I feel worse about what happened and how I handled it every day”-

-Sweet, precious Stacy: you are a good person, a kind and loving person. You don’t deserve to suffer the way you do. Please consider this-

– You feel a huge loss: subjectively (the way you feel), it is a huge loss, but objectively (reality is), there is no loss: he’s just a guy with his own problems, living at home with his parents, not making much money; a guy who talked a good game, telling you exactly the words you desperately needed to hear. But even if he meant those words (I assume he did) these are still only WORDS. It takes so much more to.. be a mensch (a person of integrity and honor).

Integrity and honor entail oh.. so much more than words.

Even if you didn’t seek his reassurance, even if you acted perfectly at all times (an impossibility for any human), he’d still be who he is and what you would have gotten from him would’ve been more words. Even if he had the right emotion to go with his words, what you need is real-life action that’s congruent with.. integrity and honor.

anita

Dear Cat:

Glad to read from you! I hope you are sleeping well as I am type these words (It’s currently Wed 12:23 am your time; Tues 4:23 pm my time). I will be back to your thread and reply further tomorrow.

anita

Dear Seaturtle: I will reply Wed morning (we are on the same time zone.. ).

anita

Dear Judy:

I am so very sorry for your huge loss.

You are welcome, and thank you for submitting your heart-felt, moving, inspiring post. You gave the testimony of a loving mother doing her best to live by her daughter’s message.

Your daughter’s message:  “There is ‘only love’ that matters in this life here, on this plane. That there is purpose to my life. That she has purpose where she is and I have purpose where I am. Only love.”

Thank you for caring to let me know that my words reached you in a positive way: it is kind, and indeed loving of you to bother to let me know.

“Anita, your deep response to Andromeda- about how humans fail humans IS HUMAN, saved my soul today. It is so hard to live through such traumatic deaths of loved one’s let alone fighting those guilt and shame thoughts on top of just rising out of bed“- may guilt and shame be peeled off your grief; your grief is painful enough.

Your daughter’s message: There is Only Love.                                 Only Love:  Not Shame, Not Guilt, not for you.

I wish you well on your job interview tomorrow. If you would like to communicate with me further about emotional regulation, which you say is your biggest obstacle, and about anything else, you are welcome to start your own thread- if you want to-  by going to the top of the page to FORUMS, scrolling down to ALL FORUMS and take it from there.

I hope that Andromeda reads your message when she is ready, and that she will get back to you, if she is able. My heart goes out to the two of you.

anita

Dear Pandanator:

You are welcome!  “He does seem to come from a family that will judge others easily“-  I came from such family myself. My mother was very, very judgmental, that was her #1 trait, and so, I didn’t have the .. space to make (what was in her eyes) mistakes because she didn’t tolerate my mistakes and punished me for them. I lived in distress, fearing the next mistake, repeatedly resolving that “from now on, I will be perfect; from now on I will make no mistakes”  but I failed every time. Living like that was like holding my breath in, too scared to exhale.

“It is something that is foreign to me as I was raised the complete opposite where my mother always encouraged me to look at life through various angles“- my mother allowed only ONE angle, her own angle, no other angles allowed.

“Also do not worry about being late! We all have lives and priorities. It is very kind of you to offer advice to others during your own spare time“- this is very kind of you to add this, to.. give me space to be late/ to make a mistake. So, in communication with you.. I can be relaxed enough to exhale (unless I inaccurately project my mother into you).

“I had never known that projection was a thing. It an interesting perspective that I think can help me analyze my own life as well. I maybe had been projecting my own emotions during the entire time without knowing it“- we all project our emotions all the time, it’s healthy and normal when our projections are accurate-enough. For example: when you see someone in pain and you feel sorry for them, it’s because you felt pain before, it felt badly for you, and you assume (project) that the other person experiences pain similarly, as something that’s bad.

Problem is when our projections are not accurate at all. For example: when my mother looked at me silently (just looking at me without saying anything), I knew there was trouble coming, that she was going to punish me. Fast forward, far away from her, when I notice that someone is looking at me silently.. I feel distressed, angry, like the person is thinking negative things about me and I am about to be punished. This has always been- that I remember- an inaccurate projection.

In your original post, you wrote: “The relationship was quite toxic… I ended up just blocking him from contacting me as I don’t want to get hurt again but I do feel very guilty over that”- do you know why you feel or felt very guilty for blocking a toxic person.. or is it that part of you believes that you are the toxic person?

anita

Dear M:

Your post is a powerful testimony of childhood trauma, valid anger and transformation, expressed so authentically.

“He has affected and tainted, insert inappropriate word, every aspect of my life. And it angers me. And that I’m still suffering, angers me. I’m taking this anger and using it. It has transformed into my purpose.

“My purpose is not to live in fear. Me purpose is not to trapped by my past, memories, pain, fear, and just everything. I refuse to live like this. I have purpose. I am going to heal so that me, my family, and life overall will be better. He is literally rotting in prison, and figurately  I never should have been imprisoned with him. I have the key and I’m never going back in. I have purpose”-

– POWERFUL. Positively Powerful. Thank you for sharing this and please post again, share more, inspire those who read your words with your purpose, courage and determination…?!

anita

I am sorry being late, Pandanator. I will reply soon.

anita