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March 4, 2024 at 3:09 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #428363
anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
I’ll think about your question (last paragraph).. a tiger bit you in the dream, not a shark… I wonder… back to you later.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Caroline:
The complexity of communicating in two threads at the same period of time. So, when you posted earlier on this thread: “To be honest I feel a bit discouraged .. When, at first, I was happy that I found something interesting in, I thought it was enough and after you counted and pointed out 12 minutes I felt ‘scolded’ and tried to read more but it overwhelmed me .. I promised myself I would come back and force myself to spend more time on this but I never did. Anyway I hope I will come back to this here or somewhere else.“- you did not refer to a post I submitted for you on this thread, but to a post I submitted for you on the other thread.
Having re-read the post you referred to, and your response, boldfaced above, it is clear to me now, in no uncertain terms, that I made a stupid mistake being pushy/ aggressive via CAPITAL LETTERS and attitude, and that made you feel discouraged, scolded and overwhelmed. I sincerely apologize, Caroline. I didn’t think enough before submitting that post on Feb 5, nor did I understand after how I came across, or how I could come across.
Interestingly, I wrote in that same post in regard to your state of mind: “Maybe you rushed so much because you were anxious and exhausted. You have to be calm enough to be able to patiently read and process information“, while it was my state of mind: not calm, but rushing with a reply that hurt you, instead of (potentially) helping you
“I hope this explains why I feel overwhelmed and discouraged“- yes, it does. Thank you for explaining it to me. I think that it is kind of you and admirable that you took the time to explain this to me, and give me an opportunity to pay better attention to how I come across.
“I think it would be good for me to take a break from this“- you can, of course. But if you would like to give me the opportunity to show you that I learned the lesson you kindly taught me, I would like it that you’d post again sooner than later.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
From urban child institute. org: “In contrast to tolerable stress, toxic stress refers to persistent, unhealthy amounts of stress caused by chronically stressful conditions without the protective benefits of healthy caregiving… babies are affected by stress even in the protective environment of the womb. Since maternal cortisol levels affect the developing fetus, a mother’s level of stress is directly related to the well-being of her baby. Positive and tolerable stress levels are safe, but toxic stress increases the risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight and other complications. It is also associated with impaired mental, behavioral and motor development in infancy”.
From Psychology today: “Newer research on this topic has involved scanning fetuses’ brains through their mothers’ pregnant bellies to examine the neurobiological consequences of chronic stress. In general, this research has shown that… stressed-out mothers had fetuses with decreased functional brain activity when compared to mothers who were less stressed. Importantly, infants of the stressed mothers were also born sooner, consistent with previous research linking prenatal stress to birth complications”.
From NIH National library of Medicine: “When faced with an acute stressor, the brain initiates behavioral and physiological adaptations to protect the body and prepares for a fight-or-flight response. These physiological adaptations are referred to as allostasis… In the short term, allostasis is adaptive, and physiological systems return to baseline in the absence of threat. However, repeated or chronic exposure to stressors can lead to allostatic load or overload, in which prolonged release of primary mediators (glucocorticoids, catecholamines, and cytokines) disrupts development and functioning of the brain and neuroendocrine, immune, metabolic, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. These physiological disruptions, referred to as secondary outcomes of the stress response, can lead to diseased and disordered tertiary end points that affect mental and physical health across the life span…
“For the purposes of this article, I define chronic stress as the process by which any stressor leads to a prolonged release of primary mediators and places children at risk of secondary outcomes and tertiary end points associated with allostatic load and overload. This concept is distinct from that of acute stress, which includes a temporary allostatic response with a return to homeostasis after the resolution of a single psychologically or physically threatening event. In childhood and adolescence, chronic stressors may include extreme experiences, such as abuse, neglect, or institutionalization, as well as more prevalent stressors such as exposure to poverty, food insecurity, interpersonal violence, parental mental illness, racism, discrimination, unstable foster care placement, or unsafe neighborhoods and community violence”.
These quotes give me a better understanding of the effects of my mother’s high stress levels on me when she was pregnant with me (leading to birth complication/breech birth, and low birth weight), and the effects of growing up with her expressed high stress level, and with her abuse of me, leading to a variety of my disorders: a quite severe ADD and other cognitive deficits, as well as OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome (TS), and emotion regulation deficit.
I have no doubt that my Healing, as I continue to heal, cannot be complete, given the nature of the damage. My future healing, journaled here, will be guided by the principle outlined in The Serenity Prayer: “god, grant me the serenity to accept the tings I cannot change (the damage that can’t be undone), the courage to change the things I can (to undo/ lessen the damage that can be undone/ lessened.. neuroplasticity and such), and the wisdom to know the difference“.
– To be continued…
anita
anitaParticipantDear Caroline:
“When, at first, I was happy that I found something interesting… After you counted and pointed out 12 minutes I felt ‘scolded’“- do you mean that at first, when you read my Feb 5, or Feb 7 reply, you found what I wrote positively interesting, but as you kept reading, you felt scolded by me?
Let me see, in my Feb 5 post, I wrote: “Everything is difficult when you don’t own your .. own life: all relationships are difficult, at work and personally, there’s so much self-doubt and heightened anxiety“, and I quoted from online sources about powerlessness, power Imbalances and dominant-submissive patterns in relationships, and ended with this quote from the online source: “Love doesn’t mean giving up oneself, which eventually leads to resentment. Love actually requires the exercise of power…. taking responsibility for ourselves and choices, building self-esteem, and asking directly for our needs and wants…“. I shared about myself growing up in a “dominant (my mother)- submissive (myself) pattern of relationship“, and how it damaged me.
In my Feb 7 post, I analyzed, best I could, the history of the power Imbalances and dominant-submissive patterns in your relationship with your girlfriend. Seems like at first you enjoyed some sense of power in the relationship, but then lost it, or more accurately, gave it away, resulting in feeling powerless, bullied and resentful. You shared that you regularly asked her what you should do or not do (“I ask her about everything… While we are shopping, I ask her ‘should we buy this’, ‘maybe I will buy this’… I ask her everything“, June 3, 2023), and when she answers your questions, you feel bullied by her, and therefore, angry at her.
I ended that post with a recent quote from you: “We finally agreed we were going to see Italy or some other place but we agreed on Italy. And I wanted to include her in searching for plane tickets etc., because I felt like she was leaving this for me and it felt too much” (Feb 4, 2024)-
– re-reading this quote today, a month later (March 4, 2024), reads like you are uncomfortable with exercising power in the relationship (“it felt too much“), so you give her the power and then you get angry with her for receiving what you give her.
Do you agree with the above, Caroline? And if you feel scolded by me, please tell me more about it..?
anita
March 4, 2024 at 8:56 am in reply to: Recently broke up with my boyfriend, feeling guilty and sad #428355anitaParticipantDear alette:
I hope you are still feeling better this Monday, good to read from you again!
(I am slightly editing grammar in the quotes because it helps me understand the content better as I read and re-read): “I feel like he is giving me mixed (messages) that I don’t know how to interpret them… Help me Anita in interpreting” (March 3, 2024)-
– I re-read and studied all your posts since Feb 10 of this year:
In Jan this year, following a 2-year relationship that you described as perfect, with a man who’s been consistently straightforward, and following no disagreement of any kind, out of the blue, he told you that he “is not feeling the same way anymore… it (is) nothing, his feelings are just not the same… he needs some space to navigate through his feelings… there is no way to save our relationship“.
He did not want to explain anything more, and avoided a conversation with you: “He doesn’t want to explain anything… I prepared for the meeting, but he postponed… When I want a conversation with him he avoids me“.
He then called you when you were at work, asking if you were home (He knew I was working (when he called) to ask me if I was at home“). The next day, he called you “at a weird time, in the middle of the night, which he never did (before)“.
During the relationship, he used to offer you chocolate bars as a romantic- loving gesture. Recently, following the breakup, having packed (some, not all of) your stuff so to return them to you, he added chocolate bars to the package. He then brought the package to your house on Sat, I believe (March 2), and told you that he has been missing you, and that he will miss you, and he didn’t ask for his stuff, not even for the key that you have to his place.
Best I can interpret all the above, is that maybe he is on drugs that interfere with his cognitive function (not being able to have a conversation of any depth with you, forgetting your work/ home schedule, not noticing that it was the middle of the night that he called you, packing and returning to you some, but not all of your stuff, forgetting to ask for his stuff and for your key to his place), and with his emotions, making him numb (no longer feeling love). Maybe most recently, there’s some change in his drug use, and he got some feeling back (placing the chocolate bars in the package for you), and maybe he had some interest- on Saturday- to get back together with you.
But it’s Monday now, and .. he may be back to being numb, inattentive, forgetful, etc.
Or maybe he is suffering from a brain abnormality that is responsible for abruptly changing a consistently attentive, loving, straightforward man into.. a man who is none of those things.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Ann: the last time the OP posted on the forums was in May 2019. I hope she replies to you. If you’d like to share about your situation, you are welcome to do so, and I will reply.
anita
March 3, 2024 at 6:55 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #428338anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
I read your journal entry twice. My summary: in on-weeks you are in a state of motion/ flow, confident about your decision to call it quits with N. In off-weeks, you are not confident about the decision, and you feel comforted by thoughts of a (conditional) reunion with N. In the past, pre-surgery, intense exercise put you in the on/ in-motion state of mind and you are craving it (this state of mind).
Looking (again) at the title of your thread, looks like gut is synonymous to your confident, in-motion state of mind, and fear is synonymous with your off/ stagnant state of mind. The guts is fine with not having N in your life, fear wants him back.
Thank you for the P.S. My weekend had both on and off parts, right now, it’s on. Good night, Seaturtle!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Reader:
In childhood, anxiety grew based on a combination of (1) the coyote/ predator in my life was my mother, a person I loved and was depended on, a person whose love (and care) I kept pursuing, (2) it was not a single occurrence of emotional predation, but a recurring one over many years; overall, being I was stuck living with a predator, nowhere, no way to run away (Flight), and no chance to win a Fight, (3) being alone facing the predator, no one with me, no one together with me facing the predator, (4) feeling/ believing that I was the bad guy, that I was very faulty and very guilty for making her so miserable, that she “had” to attack me; seeing her as my victim, and myself as her victimizer.
More, tomorrow.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Reader:
Fear in my childhood accumulated and turned into severe anxiety, and by severe, I mean, I got caught in OCD and Tourette’s Syndrome from an early age, sometime in the middle of my first decade of life. By my mid-thirties, I managed to resist the OCD compulsions and I no longer fit the OCD diagnosis. That’s Healing. There are other mental health diagnoses that I received but no longer fit (Healing there!).. but the anxiety and the tics persist. No Healing in this category, and every tic is associated with anxiety. These tics (vocal, sounds of loud breathing, shoulder/ face twitching) are my anxiety physically vibrating through my body, twitching it. Every day.
I want Healing in this area of anxiety vibrating through my body (right shoulder is hurting right now, from twitching it), and I will work on it in this thread.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Reader:
Because I was reminded of the coyote incident yesterday, I talked about it with someone last evening (irl), someone who grew up on an Indian reservation, close to nature, and who was himself the intended prey of a pack of wolves. He said that (1) sounds like the coyote I encountered, by its looks (having blue eyes and grey/ white fur colors) was a mix of coyote and Siberian husky (coydog). Or that it could have been a wild Siberian husky. Indeed, looking at images of Siberian huskies online, these images look very similar to the animal I encountered, and still, scary to imagine an encounter with this animal.
(2) He said that it is unlikely that there were coyotes from a pack hiding in the brush, observing the encounter, because if they were there, they’d make their characteristic sounds, howls or yips. He said that the coydog who confronted me was probably a maverick, an independent, one who is not part of a pack.
(3) He said that indeed coyotes (unlike wolves who attack from the back of the intended prey) confront their prey from the front (like it happened in my case), and that the way for a person to react when attacked by a coyote (or a coydog, or a dog) would be to cover one’s neck with one arm and insert the hand of the other arm into the coyote’s mouth, grabbing its tongue. I asked: wouldn’t its tongue be slippery? And the man said, No, it’d be like sand paper.
Back to the 2021 incident: facing the coyote (or coydog) who was focused on me and looking at me up and down, the ditch to my right was in the periphery of my sight. I wanted a stick to hold and use to protect myself. (I live in a wooded area and there are lots of sticks lying in the ditches on the sides of private roads, many are thick and strong). I knew that it wasn’t a good idea to lower my height by stepping down into a ditch, but I felt that I needed to do it anyway, so to get a weapon/ stick. I remember allowing myself to look away from the coyote and direct my eyes to the ditch, looking for a stick to grab, not having the coyote in my sight, and wondering if it was already approaching me for the hunt. It didn’t. I grabbed a stick or sticks, and I threw one at the coyote: it moved back a little but remained in its location, focused on me still. And then, a vehicle drove by and the coyote ran away. I remember feeling relief seeing the coyote running away along the road in front of me and then disappearing into the brush. I walked the rest of the way with a stick or sticks, afraid but confident enough to complete the walk.
The day after, I didn’t take my walk, but the day after that, I said to myself: I’ve been taking this walk every day for years, what happened the day before was a freak occurrence, what’s the chance that it will happen again? And so, I went on the same walk again, and at the same stretch of private road, I heard panting to my left, and there it was, the same coyote running to my left.
That’s the whole story: thing is, I don’t remember if the vehicle drove by and scared the coyote away on the first day or on the second, or in both days. Following the two encounters, and since, I carry bear spray with me on most of my walks (sometimes I carry a thick stick, but there were times I carried nothing with me).
Okay, that was my experience with Fear. Now, Anxiety is a different animal, so to speak: Afraid, I felt strong and capable; Anxious, I feel weak and helpless, Afraid, I had only a few thoughts and all of them were of a practical nature; Anxious I have many thoughts and not of a practical nature,
Afraid, I was not aware (not thinking of) my body and its sensations at all; Anxious I am too aware of my body, I focus on it (it’s called body vigilance), worrying about and getting alarmed when noticing pain or sensations that I am afraid will develop into pain,
Fear did not stop me from taking my daily walks; Anxiety stops me from doing lots of things, every day I continue (still) to procrastinate tasks that cause me anxiety, tasks that very much need to be done, Fear was followed by a practical, proactive solution (carrying bear spray); Anxiety was followed by helplessness/ paralysis.
* I will continue in the next post.
anita
March 3, 2024 at 8:50 am in reply to: growing up – becoming adul / procrastination – in connection to childhood trauma #428328anitaParticipantDear Robi:
Good to read that you arrived well!
“I am a little surprised by the levels of anxiety I’m experiencing. These days I’ve been very tense and I felt like I won’t be able to ‘make it’ ( as in to get a job, get things sorted ). It comes and goes“- enjoy the times it goes, and manage it when it comes back.
I think that your anxiety is about you feeling not grown up, at 30 (“Growing up- becoming adult” is in the title of this Feb 2024 thread), not like an adult, but like a boy, alone in a new country. Children are afraid to be all alone by themselves; they are afraid that they can’t take care of themselves, as in “to get a job, get things sorted“. They need .. a grown up to get a job and sort things for them.
Part of you will need to be the grown up that the other part of you needs. Robi the adult has a scared, anxious child with him all the time, a child that needs care.
I hope you had a nice walk and chat with your friend!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Lisa:
“There is not much I can say right now. I would just be saying the same things I have said before“- say the same things you have said before in a different way, and I will respond in a different, more empathetic, understanding way than before!
anita
March 2, 2024 at 8:58 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #428318anitaParticipantDear Bee’s Knees Seaturtle:
“With my retroactive awareness I wondered if… my third eye and crown will have more time to communicate about it first“- yes, more time for the third eye and crown chakras (the adults in the room, so to speak) to communicate if the sacral and heart chakras (the children in the room) cooperate and do not disrupt the communication between the adults. This means that the adults need to (empathetically, yet authoritatively) discipline the children.
“We’re bot the bees’ knees!“- to read this coming from a Gen Z Sea turtle makes my day!!!
“Yesterday I went to a brewery with my roommate and as I looked over the cider menu there was one called ‘the bees knees’!! Can you believe that haha after I told you it was losing relevance…. I ordered the cider just because of the name and so I could tell you!“- H i L a R i O u s!
Happy Saturday to you too..!
anita
anitaParticipantRe-submitting:
Dear IMBACK
“I had a thought today… I started questioning If I even loved her“- what I boldfaced is the recurring, intrusive, obsessive thought.
Wikipedia/ relationship obsessive compulsive behavior (ROCD): “People may continuously doubt whether they love their partner… haunted by continuous doubts regarding the relationship…
“ROCD is a form of OCD. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) are considered the Gold Standard psychological treatments for OCD. According to CBT models, we all have unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images and urges. Individuals with OCD interpret these intrusive experiences as meaning something bad about their character (crazy or bad) or about the future (a catastrophe is going to occur)… Such interpretations increase attention to unwanted intrusive experiences, making them more distressing and increasing their frequency…”.
Do you relate to this quote, and if so, do you feel that if you lost the loving feeling for her, it would make you “crazy or bad” (from the quote above), or that some catastrophe will happen?
“So I had a thought today, that maybe it has something to do with the fact that I feel like I have to love her and be over the moon with her every single minute of the day”-
– and if you don’t love her over the moon, every single minute of the day, what’s the worst that can happen?
“Or could it be that I’m afraid of the future... Now we are getting close to her 18 years birthday and I’m about to meet her family in 2 weeks”- what are you afraid of, IMBACK?
anita
anitaParticipantDear IMBACK
“I had a thought today… I started questioning If I even loved her“- what I boldfaced is the recurring, intrusive, obsessive thought.
Wikipedia/ relationship obsessive compulsive behavior (ROCD): “People may continuously doubt whether they love their partner… haunted by continuous doubts regarding the relationship…<sup id=”cite_ref-Doron_2014_169–180_3-2″ class=”reference”></sup>
“ROCD is a form of OCD. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy<sup id=”cite_ref-12″ class=”reference”></sup> (CBT) are considered the Gold Standard psychological treatments for OCD. <sup id=”cite_ref-13″ class=”reference”></sup>According to CBT models, we all have unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images and urges. <sup id=”cite_ref-14″ class=”reference”></sup>Individuals with OCD interpret these intrusive experiences as meaning something bad about their character (crazy or bad) or about the future (a catastrophe is going to occur)… Such interpretations increase attention to unwanted intrusive experiences, making them more distressing and increasing their frequency…”.<sup id=”cite_ref-16″ class=”reference”></sup><sup id=”cite_ref-18″ class=”reference”></sup>
Do you relate to this quote, and if so, do you feel that if you lost the loving feeling for her, it would make you “crazy or bad” (from the quote above), or that some catastrophe will happen?
“So I had a thought today, that maybe it has something to do with the fact that I feel like I have to love her and be over the moon with her every single minute of the day”-
– and if you don’t love her over the moon, every single minute of the day, what’s the worst that can happen?
“Or could it be that I’m afraid of the future... Now we are getting close to her 18 years birthday and I’m about to meet her family in 2 weeks”- what are you afraid of, IMBACK?
anita
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine.