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anitaParticipantDear Sha:
“I don’t feel like studying even though I try to… Negative thoughts keep popping up, such as ‘You are going to fail even if you study,’ and I can’t concentrate… I’ve turned into a negative person, and I fear failure even when I study well. The trigger is every time I take a mock test, it feels like I haven’t studied efficiently (like I can’t recall or have forgotten what I studied), and looking at the competition for the exams, I start to think, ‘Nahh, you’re going to fail in this too.’ My career depends on this exam, but I can’t focus even when I need to.“-
– Naturally we don’t want to do what feels badly. And studying has been established, in your mind, as something that feels badly. When you look at a hot stove, you don’t want to place your hand on it because you know there’ll be pain, it’d feel badly, so you keep your hand away from the hot stove. Similarly, you keep your mind away from studying.. even when you try to study.
Naturally we are afraid of pain, physical and emotional, and failing the exams represent pain for you. Do you agree?
When we are afraid on an ongoing basis, aka being anxious, our cognitive functioning suffers, including our ability to concentrate and remember.
Can you tell me in regard to your career, how do you view your career: is it something you want to do, something you look forward to be doing for years to come?
And if you fail your exams, what would the consequences be?
anita
anitaParticipantDear Niki:
“Some moments I just want to shout“- I imagine your usual calm, measured, controlled voice by your writing: perfectly accurate grammar (as far as I can tell), measured rhythm, calm tone.. perfectly intelligent, educated writing.
But underneath, there is an angry girl who wants to shout!
“I am finding it really hard to forgive myself for being soooo stupid… I could see the patterns and parallels and it doesn’t feel good.“- there is an equation my past therapist taught me a dozen years ago: Wise Mind= Rational Mind + Emotional Mind. To act wisely, we need not only rational intelligence but emotional intelligence.
The latter requires the courage (1) to see things as they are even though it doesn’t feel good to see them as they are, things we wish were different, (2) to break the status quo, to change the patterns and parallels; to depart from your mother’s ways and to choose your own way.
“I’ve noticed a pattern: those used to receiving help have… become perpetual takers, while the givers in our family, like rivers, keep flowing endlessly… this admiration comes with expectations that are taxing and unrealistic. They expect us to behave in a certain way… It’s exhausting. I’m tired of being the role model and the go-to person for help… It’s taken a toll on my mental health… falling into the same trap my mom since her younger days“- the status quo is you being a role model and a giver, a super human specimen who is not expected to take, to fail, to be human.
As a human, these super- human expectations and status quo is taking a toll on your mental health. Did I understand correctly?
anita
anitaParticipantDear Sha:
How about interrupting the negative thoughts with a hot bath.. or a cold shower (if it’s a hot season where you live), or a long walk outside, a swim every day in the public pool.. something like that?
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
My mother was a weak, tormented woman, in so much pain for so long. No wonder she took advantage of this unique opportunity to turn things around and be The Powerful One, for a change, the powerful one over a child she brought into this world. For she gave me life, she OWNS me.. I owe her. It’s her time then, time to cross over from powerless to powerful. It’s her right… Not.
Strange when motherhood is about getting even, taking power back. At the expense of.
Did I say my mother? Yes, I did. That person.. the one with the title mother.
The RAGE within me is about me being powerless, subjugated by her, humiliated, blamed, shamed, tormented.. for her contentment, for her relief, for her getting even, being in power, for a change.
I understand her motivation, her pain, her powerlessness, yet I can’t help but feel enraged.. as if I mattered too, as if I am a person too, like her, not some thing to be used and abused.
That person destroyed so much of me, so many decades, just so to get even with people who were not me, none of my doing.
The Story of Abuse. No. Not a mother, but a person who took advantage of a child.
anita
April 23, 2024 at 6:19 pm in reply to: Surrender, Accessing Shakti by clearing samskaras, eliminating false selves #431973anitaParticipantAn Empathy For All (3 friends) Weekend should take P out of her own distress/ misery and be there for you and for your roommate- friend. There is healing in being present for others.
anita
April 23, 2024 at 5:48 pm in reply to: Surrender, Accessing Shakti by clearing samskaras, eliminating false selves #431972anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“Maybe then the solution is to not expect a relaxing weekend in Palm Springs, just what is meant to be will be, and I will grow from it spiritually by learning to let go of the part of me that is bothered…?“- you are the birthday girl, you choose!
“I decided I would try to use this situation to practice surrendering to life’s events and staying centered“- I think that your decision can lead to a growing opportunity,
“There’s a similar topic, that this is a good example for, that I want to ask your thoughts on… I don’t know whether to let go, or ask her not to come… When to take control and when to not, is really difficult for me to decipher at this stage of my spiritual growth“- I suggest to make your birthday weekend an empathy weekend: empathy for you, empathy for you roommate-friend, and empathy for P. Make it-in principle and in practice- an SEBW, a Seaturtle Empathy Birthday Weekend.
anita
April 22, 2024 at 7:33 pm in reply to: Surrender, Accessing Shakti by clearing samskaras, eliminating false selves #431941anitaParticipantAbout 1 week to your 25 year-old birthday, Seaturtle. A quarter of a century. It’s okay if you don’t respond to this post, really! Nevertheless, it’s impossible to forget a real-life, human sea turtle.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
Every person needs to feel like a Someone, not like a Nobody. It is a non-negotiable human need, withing the family of origin, and within society at large, nationally and internationally. Everywhere, a human being needs a basic measure of respect.
And every human being who needs respect, needs to extend respect to others, to others who still hold on to a measure of humanity.
There are humans who crossed the line into non-humanity. Come back to humanity, please.
Make it better, not worse.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued (as always, trigger warning):
There is a combination of intense fear and rage (intense anger) that I am aware of this afternoon, that which I experienced growing up (growing in, really, shrinking in fear, not expanding):
The fear was fear, always fear, this zzzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZzzz. And rage, rage at being humiliated, taken over, subdued, going belly up in front of the aggressor. The need to fight back, to have some power in powerlessness, to rise up, to rebel, to take power, to subdue the enemy instead of being subdued by the enemy.
When the enemy is your mother, you don’t have a mother. She is that person over there, taking over.
To be taken over, to be made a Nothing, a Big zero (her words) is ENRAGING!
I stumbled earlier today on some writings about parenting styles and though to myself: abuse is not a parenting style.
Some say you should forgive your parents, forgive your mother. I agree when you happen to have a mother. When you have an enemy, run away or fight. Except that when you are a child, you can’t. You aren’t allowed to. And people say: don’t be angry at her, she is your mother!
Again, I never had a mother.
What I do have is fear and rage inside, rage at all the people who hurt my paranoid and histrionic-personality-disordered “mother”, and rage at her for hurting me so badly, repeatedly, never to correct, never to regret, never to .. never to acknowledge, as if it never happened but only in the deluded mind of a bad, bad girl, bad daughter, bad person.
She hated me for the rage in my eyes as I looked at her, as a teenager. Rage in my eyes was all the evidence I had that I was a person, not a Nothing. Nothing doesn’t rage. A person rages.
To be continued.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Laven:
I am sorry that you are still heartbroken, but I am glad you are posting about it again. It can help you to express yourself and see that others are reading your words and want you to get better, wanting you to recover from a broken heart.
I will start with the ending of your original post: “I feel like I deserve the hurt and pain. Maybe it’s my fault that I been used, and discarded like trash.. he isn’t the first to do such a thing to me. I cry a lot.“-
– You are not like trash, and you don’t deserve to be treated like trash. Trash has no feelings, such as hurt and pain, but humans do feel hurt and pain, and therefore you, as a human being, should be treated with compassion and consideration for your well-being.
When one person uses another person selfishly, the fault is not with the one being used, but with the one doing the (selfish, unjust) using.
“Was it all pretend.. even though we had over 8,000 conversations and discussions about a lot of things.. via text.. since the beginning? Up until he blocked me, whenever I called, he would always answer or get back to me when he could“- I’d say that over eight thousand conversations that he chose to have with you means that it was not all pretend on his part.
“Was it all for nothing?? I just don’t understand. Everyday I struggle to respect his wishes and not confront him.. It’s hard to let go…especially when he lives in such close proximity. I want to move on, but I don’t know if I am capable, or will ever“-
– (1) the fact that he is your neighbor and you can see his house, even the inside of his house, from your house, is a serious obstacle in you moving on. I wonder if you can install heavy, dark curtains over your windows that face his house, and secure the curtains in place, so that you can’t move them any time you feel compelled to do so…?
(2) There is a psychology today article called 5 Ways to Move On From an Ex You Stil Love. I am quoting from the ending of the article: “5. Love yourself more- Ultimately, moving on from a relationship that wasn’t working is about loving yourself… choose to turn the pain into a gain. Every relationship, if we let it, can teach us something about ourselves and give us greater clarity about what we need… Know that a relationship isn’t a failure just because it ended. If you grew as a person and learned something to move your life forward, then it served a purpose and was truly a success.”
Maybe reading the whole article will be helpful for you?
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
I have a problem with anger: I don’t know how to feel angry without feeling that I am a bad person for feeling angry. Feeling angry, to me, indicates that I am a bad person.
I tend to be judgmental of people and .. jump into feeling angry.
I need to fix my relationship with anger and moderate my rushing into feeling angry.
Feeling that I am a bad person fuels my anxiety (hence the relevance to the title of this thread). I need to feel that I am a good person, and I often do these days, except when I get angry, and when I rush into it.
I got angry at a woman, the day before yesterday, in real-life, because she sells eggs (she raised high quality chickens) for $5 a dozen instead of the $3-4 or so that the supermarket charges for free range eggs, and I told her that she overprices her eggs (which now I acknowledge, is not true). I was also angry at her for this or that other reason. Yesterday, I apologized to her and she accepted. But on the same day, I got angry at someone else, irl, and was fuming inside me. This fuming in anger is difficult for me to endure. I can’t feel okay with it.
The origin of my trouble with anger is two folds: (1) that person, formerly known as my mother, was very, very… very judgmental of people, often venting to me her judgments and anger at length, telling me how terribly they hurt her feelings, and in so many ways (which she generously detailed and elaborated on). As she vented, my empathy was with her, and I joined her in-anger at .. everyone, at one time or another, leaving me no people to not be angry at. Fast forward, I get judgmental and angry at .. well, almost everyone, sooner or later.
(2) I was angry at that person a whole lot. VERY ANGRY, but would be silent about it. Angry at her and.. judgmental of, and angry at myself, for feeling so angry at her, as in being a bad.. bad.. bad daughter.
Feeling Guilty for feeling Angry.
To be continued.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Ingrid Guerci:
What an interesting wording/ analogy: only trees cannot move. I like it, never read/ heard it before. I also like your simply presented advice: to learn from our mistakes so to not repeat. I hope to read from you again in this and/ or other threads.
anita
anitaParticipantRe-submitted:
Dear Lisa:
So very good to read from you again, thank you for posting and for the kindness in your post!
Choosing Love is the title of your thread. I happened to stumble this morning upon a post you submitted about Love back on May 23, 2018, it has a poetic feel to it, as I read it today, and the content is profound:
“In my world it exists, in my dreams it exists, in my soul it exists, I believe it exists…but in the real world love does not exist. You can not see love in 2018. It doesn’t exist for the majority of people. Money exists, sex exists, status exists, Real Estate exists… How many people would marry if they received no monetary or physical pay off from it? It’s like selling yourself isn’t it? A product on a shelf for people to pick and choose from.
“Marriage should be rare and with no demands. No demanded gift on Valentine’s Day… It’s not love to demand gifts, yet men do it because they get some kind of pay off. I don’t like business. I don’t like money, I don’t like meaningless exchanges, I don’t like aggressive, ill mannered people. I don’t belong in this world and yet I’m here”-
– your post back then brings Corinthians 13:4-8 to my mind this morning, as it also talks about Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Interestingly, the sentence right before the famous quote above (Cor. 13:3) reads: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”.
The title you chose for this thread back on Jan 15, 2019, Choosing Love, is more meaningful to me today (April 2024), as what the world as a whole needs to choose than it was in the relatively peaceful times of the pre-pandemic, pre-Ukraine war, pre-escalated Middle East wars of Jan 2019.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Lisa:
So very good to read from you again, thank you for posting and for the kindness in your post!
Choosing Love is the title of your thread. I happened to stumble this morning upon a post you submitted about Love back on May 23, 2018, it has a poetic feel to it, as I read it today, and the content is profound:
“In my world it exists, in my dreams it exists, in my soul it exists, I believe it exists…but in the real world love does not exist. You can not see love in 2018. It doesn’t exist for the majority of people. Money exists, sex exists, status exists, Real Estate exists… How many people would marry if they received no monetary or physical pay off from it? It’s like selling yourself isn’t it? A product on a shelf for people to pick and choose from.
“Marriage should be rare and with no demands. No demanded gift on Valentine’s Day… It’s not love to demand gifts, yet men do it because they get some kind of pay off. I don’t like business. I don’t like money, I don’t like meaningless exchanges, I don’t like aggressive, ill mannered people. I don’t belong in this world and yet I’m here”-
– your post back then brings Corinthians 13:4-8 to my mind this morning, as it also talks about Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. <sup class=”versenum”> </sup>Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. <sup class=”versenum”> </sup>It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Interestingly, the sentence right before the famous quote above (Cor. 13:3) reads: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”.
The title you chose for this thread back on Jan 15, 2019, Choosing Love, is more meaningful to me today (April 2024), as what the world as a whole needs to choose than it was in the relatively peaceful times of the pre-pandemic, pre-Ukraine war, pre-escalated Middle East wars of Jan 2019.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
“What I am not able to understand is that how the scholarship situation triggered the CSS inside me?… I thought… not about my childhood struggles? Do you think there were thought patterns responsible (like low self-esteem, externalization of self-worth etc.) that I developed as a result of childhood trauma and they gave me problems during the scholarship issue?“-
* I don’t know what you mean by “externalization of self-worth“.
– I have no doubt that there are thought patterns that you developed as a result of your father emotionally abusing you (inaccurately projecting his father, an adult who probably abused him, into a little, innocent girl).
I wrote about your thought patterns in both situations in my April 11 post: “the scholarship application situation triggered the trauma in your childhood sermons situation (lets call it CSS). The thoughts you had as a child, during those sermons were “nothing ever gets better” no matter how hard I try, and this (his very harsh criticism) is so unfair“.
It doesn’t mean that during the scholarship application situation you had thoughts about your childhood sermons situation. It’s that the scholarship application situation awakened thoughts and feelings (about how unfair life is for you, and now nothing ever gets better), thoughts and feelings that were born, so to speak, during the childhood sermon situations.
anita
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