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May 15, 2025 at 12:37 pm in reply to: Recently broke up with my boyfriend, feeling guilty and sad #445764
anita
ParticipantDear S:
Thank you for sharing this with me. I can hear both the strength and the sadness in your words, and I want to acknowledge how much courage it takes to follow your gut even when emotions are heavy. It’s completely natural to feel a mix of relief and loneliness after a breakup.
It makes sense that being with him again brought up those feelings of responsibility, and I admire that you’re recognizing why you made your choice. Even if the full “why” isn’t clear yet, the fact that you’re feeling more peace tells me you’re on the right path.
Self-discovery, fun, and a more secure relationship when the time is right—those sound like beautiful things to look forward to. I hope that as time passes, the loneliness eases, and you continue to feel proud of listening to yourself.
I’m here anytime you want to reflect more. I truly wish you healing, clarity, and happiness ahead.
anita
anita
ParticipantI would like to encourage you, Laven, to resubmit your original posts (if you have copies of those) into your various threads, so that your voice is not lost.
In regard to starting a new thread, I just did (“Transcendence”). I typed “Testing”, submitted an that original post(“Testing”), but did not get recorded. Next, I submitted a second post (“Transcending suffering… What does it mean to you?”), and that did get recorded and appears like an original (first) post.
anita
anita
ParticipantTranscending suffering… What does it mean to you?
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Tom:
I’m glad to hear that you’re still persevering with things at work, that you have some holidays booked to look forward to, and that you’re continuing to read, exercise, and practice gratitude. It’s also great that you’re still posting here—reflecting and sharing your thoughts can be such a valuable part of processing everything.
I hope that your trip to the U.S. turns out better than expected and brings something positive your way.
You wrote: “My confidence has drained a lot in my current role, and it’s made me question what I am good at and what I enjoy—that is what I need to work on and discover again… I would be happier if I was working in a coffee shop.”-
Since it’s been almost a year since you started this thread (May 26, 2024), I’d love to get a better understanding of how things are for you now. I’m asking these questions based on the quote above to better grasp where you are today, but only if you think it would be helpful to explore. No pressure—just an open space if you feel like sharing. If you do, I’ll respond after hearing your thoughts.
In regard to work & confidence- What specifically in your current role has drained your confidence?
Do you feel like the job itself is the issue, or is it the environment, expectations, or something else?
When did you start questioning what you’re good at—was there a particular moment or pattern that triggered it?
Are there aspects of your current job that you still enjoy, or has your enthusiasm faded completely?
What used to make work feel fulfilling, and do you think that could be reignited in some way?
In regard to the coffee shop idea & career reflections-
What about working in a coffee shop feels appealing—less stress, simpler tasks, more social interaction?
Do you see working in a coffee shop as something you truly want, or is it more of a contrast to the stress of your current role?
If you imagine yourself in a coffee shop long-term, do you think it would give you the sense of fulfillment you’re looking for?
What would help you rediscover what you enjoy and what you’re good at?
What do you think about small ways to experiment with different work styles or environments before making a bigger shift?
Turning 40 can stir up a lot of reflection, especially around career and personal fulfillment. But this milestone doesn’t mean limitations—it can be a fresh start, a moment to take stock and make meaningful choices. Many people shift careers, rediscover their passions, and even find more stability and satisfaction during this stage of life. You’re asking great questions, and that curiosity will lead you toward something better.
Whatever you choose next, it doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to feel more like you.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts if you decide to share.
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Peter:
“I am still very much a 10 year of boy afraid of life and who created a strategy of observing, identifying all the threats, neutralize them (usually though avoidance) and then maybe engaging with life. As a work strategy it has been very helpful as I’ve made a living off of it but as a life strategy not so much.”-
The words Protection Over Experience come to mind. Or Control Over Engagement, or Safety Over Participation, being analytical, cautious, or risk-aware and avoidance has kept you on the sidelines rather than fully immersed in life.
“In the theory behind the Enneagram… Picture a bridge built over the ‘trauma’.”- The Enneagram suggests that people are not born with a specific personality type but develop one based on life experiences. However, once a type forms, it cannot be changed—only understood, managed, and evolved within its framework.
You initially resisted the idea that personality is unchangeable. Your thought was: If I wasn’t born this way, I must have chosen it—so shouldn’t I be able to undo it and choose differently?
But after trying to change your core personality strategy—and failing painfully—you no longer believe change is possible in that way.
You compare your personality strategy to WORM (Write Once Read Memory)—a computer memory type where once something is written, it cannot be changed. This suggests that your way of thinking and approaching life became ingrained, like a fixed part of your internal programming, making it impossible to simply “rewrite.”
Given your realization that your personality strategy cannot be undone, your focus shifts to building a bridge over the river.
I’ve been stuck in patterns of self-doubt, emotional isolation, and invalidation, which have kept me immersed in the river, too attached to external validation. Building a bridge over the river means shifting toward internal validation—trusting myself, my emotions, and my experiences, even when others dismiss them. It also means embracing connection over isolation.
What does your bridge look like, Peter?
“The mistake made when engaging with these practices is thinking you are changing a personality trait or past trauma as if it didn’t happen or were not so…It’s about reducing the intensity of attachments and recognizing that relationships, for example, are not static but fluid and ever-changing.”-
I just remembered that long ago, when I was a young adult, I believed that healing erased past trauma as if it never existed, and that as a result, I would be a totally different person. Every time I thought I was free from trauma—during moments of hope and lightness—it would return, leaving me deeply disappointed.
Detachment, in the Buddhist sense isn’t indifference; it’s about mindful engagement without clinging. Healing isn’t about undoing the past (or undoing oneself) but about changing how we relate to it.
This conversation is very meaningful to me, Peter. Thank you!
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Peter:
I really appreciate the metaphor you shared.
Trauma is the river—it represents emotional struggle, turbulence, and pain that can pull someone under or make movement difficult. It’s something a person gets caught in, especially when past wounds are triggered.
Healing is the bridge—it offers a way across the pain rather than staying trapped in it. The bridge symbolizes the work of transformation, transcendence, and moving forward.
The key idea here is that the bridge exists, meaning healing is possible. But stepping onto it is another question. Sometimes, despite knowing it’s there, people stay in the river—maybe because the pain feels familiar, because crossing the bridge requires effort, or because they simply don’t feel ready to move forward.
The act of building the bridge represents the effort to transform and transcend past wounds, rather than being defined or confined by them.
You acknowledge that sometimes, you can transport yourself onto the bridge instantly, shifting your perspective and navigating past pain.
But other times, you don’t choose to do so—perhaps because part of you is still holding onto the struggle, or because stepping away feels difficult.
This raises a deeper question: Even when healing is possible, why do we sometimes resist it?
For me, I think I stayed in the river because I was alone. No one was there to help me out. What I needed was validation—someone seeing me in the river, hearing me, and telling me: “Yes, something terrible really happened to you.”
I experienced so much isolation and invalidation—comments like “Get Over It”—that I stayed in the river, waiting for connection and recognition.
I can’t emphasize enough how active invalidation in my life, starting with my mother’s massive dismissal of me, has kept me in the river.
Now that I reflect on it, even when I was validated, I rejected it because it didn’t match my own internal invalidation. I didn’t believe my own story.
The external voices that dismissed my experiences became internalized. Over time, I began to question myself: Was it really that bad, or am I exaggerating? Maybe I overreacted. Maybe I’m just too sensitive. Did I misinterpret things? And then, worse—the doubt was no longer a question: I deserved it.
To heal, I must trust my own story—recognizing that my experiences were real, valid, and meaningful, even if others refused, or still refuse, to acknowledge them.
I see now that I’ve been too attached to external validation while lacking the internal validation I truly need. Thank you, Peter, for helping me with this.
* Next, I will reply to your message from yesterday.
anita
May 15, 2025 at 8:42 am in reply to: The Betrayal We Buried: Healing Through Truth & Connection #445751anita
ParticipantDear Peter:
Thank you for taking the time to share this with me. The heart of the message you quoted is that even when someone lacked nurturing, love, or emotional stability from a mother figure, they can still thrive and heal. The soul is resilient, capable of surviving and even flourishing despite hardship.
This idea connects closely to something you wrote in another thread about The Dispossessed: “‘We suffer not enough’… to take the leap of Transformation or is that Transcendence”.
From what I’m gathering, suffering can be transformative, leading to connection and purpose. It is not merely an obstacle but a passage toward deeper meaning.
Transcendence, however, is not about suppressing suffering or pretending it doesn’t exist. It is about recognizing it, accepting it, and then stepping beyond its emotional weight.
Pain may not disappear, but it can be redefined—it can serve a greater function rather than being seen as mere hardship. Transcendence happens when suffering is no longer something to endure but rather a doorway to wisdom and a fuller experience of life.
I welcome this shift in perspective wholeheartedly. Thank you, Peter, for sharing and guiding this reflection.
anita
May 14, 2025 at 7:16 pm in reply to: The Betrayal We Buried: Healing Through Truth & Connection #445741anita
ParticipantDear Alessa:
I really appreciate the way you reflect on your experiences with clarity and honesty. It’s meaningful to see how you navigated your relationship with your mother, processed emotions in your own way, and found a path forward that works for you.
I admire your ability to prioritize growth and goals while also remaining self-aware of the different perspectives within yourself. Trusting yourself isn’t simple when different parts of you pull in different directions, but the fact that you recognize this shows a deep understanding of your own mind.
You wrote, “I don’t take my emotions too seriously. I lean towards goals.”- I think this means that when you experience strong emotions, you don’t let them completely consume you or drive your choices. Instead, you keep your attention on what you want to accomplish, ensuring that your emotions don’t derail your progress.
I think that a major goal you want to accomplish is being a good mother, which I think you already accomplished, and I admire you for it!
I mean, really, I admire you, Alessa ❤️!
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Tom:
It’s good to hear from you! I’d love to reply more thoughtfully in the morning when I’m feeling more focused. Take care!
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Peter:
I was hoping to hear back from you 😊.
“You are absolutely right that telling someone to ‘get over it’ is almost always harmful. Yet the concept of ‘getting over,’ ‘moving on,’ and letting go are valid practices in dealing with something you can’t change.”-
First, thank you for recognizing how harmful it can be when someone is told to “get over it”—it truly means a lot to feel validated.
Second, I appreciate how you balanced that perspective, acknowledging that letting go can still be a meaningful practice. The distinction you made is important, and it’s given me a lot to think about.
I’ll share more of my thoughts in the morning.
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Laven:
I noticed the original posts in all the threads since 2013, all have disappeared 😞. Must be some technical problem. I hope that you copied all your original posts in your own records..?
I hope the original posts return. I know nothing about computer and website technology..
anita
anita
ParticipantLittle girl anita is a good, loving girl, innocent and optimistic, still trying to make mother love her. Trying and trying throughout youth and all the way to the other side of youth.
* I love you, little girl anita. You are the very best person in the world! Together we can move on from the tragedy of the past, the series of tragedies.
And we know that there are so many lost children, lost like we were. Let’s help them too!
Little girl anita: But some of them want to hurt me when I don’t expect it!
* We won’t let them. I am here for you. I am the mother you always needed and wanted. No need to look anywhere else.
.. This makes other people not so dangerous.. not so powerful. It’s no longer a little girl, scared and alone, looking up for a grown up out there to take care of her. The grown up is here, within. It is me.
I will protect you, little girl. I promise.
anita
anita
ParticipantI just realized following the above post, that I never stopped trying to reach my mother, to make her change her mind about me. To make her think well of me. Only I’ve been doing it by proxy of others who resemble her in disliking me, disapproving of me, thinking badly of me, or just misunderstanding me.
It’s amazing. I didn’t know.
Giving strangers (people who don’t really care about me) so much power!
It’s the little girl in me still wanting, still needing a mother, a grownup to love me. A little girl who is older by far than the “mothers” I am chasing for approval, for recognition, Ha!
anita
anita
ParticipantMid-day Stream of Consciousness Writing (whatever comes to mind):
It’s about undoing the silence imposed on me.
I don’t mean a calm silence, I mean a turbulent silence, feeling tornadoes raging within me (my childhood experience) and saying nothing because no one is there to listen, and someone there to criticize and attack me for any word I might say “wrong”. It wasn’t safe to talk, to express.
Here, now: I talk, I express and it’s liberating!
It saddens me that there are people I care about whom I cannot reach. I need to give up the hope of reaching the unreachable, at the least- unreachable by me.
Goodbye unreachable people. I hope you thrive in relationships with people who can reach you in positive ways.
As far as my No 1 Unreachable Person, my mother, unreachable way before I was born to her- no one can or could have reached her. Her notion that she was the Victim and I- among many others- her Victimizer, was unshakeable. I remember her beating me, taking a break, looking at her hands and saying: “Look what you did to me! You made my hands hurt!”
To be clear, she was beating me, not the other way around. And she was beating me not because I assaulted her first in words or action.
I couldn’t reach her although I tried in so many ways, for decades after that one memorable beating. It just couldn’t be done.
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”- the things and the people I cannot change. Stop Trying. All it does is keeping me hurt and angry, waiting to be liked and approved of by people who won’t.
anita
anita
ParticipantDear Clara:
I want to share what I understand personally about anxious-avoidant attachment—it’s about needing closeness yet fearing it at the same time.
In the explanation that follows, I’ll be repeating myself—expressing the same idea in different ways—because I believe that approach helps deepen understanding.
As children, we learned to associate love with abuse, because the two became intertwined. Maybe a parent was sometimes affectionate or took care of us—it felt good. But at other times, they were neglectful or abusive—it felt bad. Or perhaps a parent was consistently neglectful or abusive, and we learned to associate the love we offered them with the pain we received in return.
This confusion stays with us—it makes intimacy feel both comforting and dangerous, leaving us caught between longing and fear.
Anxious-avoidant attachment is a complex dynamic where a person craves intimacy but simultaneously fears it.
When a child’s love for a parent was met with rejection, manipulation, or abuse, the child learns that attachment comes with risk. If caregivers were both the source of comfort and distress, the child develops conflicting emotional responses—longing for closeness but associating it with harm.
How this attachment manifests in relationships:
1) Seeking love but pushing it away – Feeling drawn to deep connection but panicking when it gets too close.
2) Hypervigilance – Constantly scanning for signs of rejection or betrayal, sometimes even expecting abandonment before it happens.
3) Difficulty trusting – Wanting to believe in love but struggling with deep-seated fears that it will turn into harm.
4) Emotional highs and lows – Shifting between intense attachment and sudden withdrawal, often in response to perceived emotional risks.
In my case, I don’t remember feeling love or closeness with my mother—who, in practice, was a single parent—when I was a child. Not a single memory of feeling safe with her, close to her, or experiencing true emotional togetherness.
Only in the last few years have I been able to feel the love I had for her back then. As a child, I must have repressed it, which is why I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I believe I did so because of the pain she caused me—the severe guilt-trips, the relentless shaming episodes. To protect myself, I shut down, closed in.
I do remember moments when she expressed affection, when she cooked for me—tasty, healthy meals—or bought me toys and treats with her hard-earned money. But I never truly relaxed into those gestures, never felt comforted, because the pattern was always the same. A guilting or shaming episode had already happened, and another was always on the way. Sometimes, it happened right in the middle of a meal.
It was always guilt, always shame—a constant cycle. You can’t feel love for someone who does that to you. Not while they’re doing it, and not when they pause, only to resume again.
Fast forward to interactions with others—unlike with my mother, I sometimes perceived affection and allowed myself to relax into it. I remember those moments. But within hours, I would “wake up” from the warmth and suddenly see the person differently—as if they were a stranger.
Sometimes, it felt like they had completely changed—cold, distant, unfamiliar.
Looking back, I think the need for closeness would take over for a time, but self-protection would always return. Fear of harm, of hurt repeating itself, would creep in. So I would close in again—dissociating, disconnecting, choosing not to feel as a way to avoid being hurt.
I believe that the first time you shared about your childhood, Clara, was on July 2, 2016. There you shared that you grew up timid and fearful of social interactions, experiencing anxiety when engaging with unfamiliar adults. You resented boundary violations, particularly when your uncle hugged you without your consent and your parents failed to protect you from such intrusions.
Your mother was emotionally present, but not protective—allowing boundary violations to happen to you without stepping in. Your father was rigid and harsh, obsessing over small details, punishing mistakes, and even resorting to physical discipline with your brother. He was controlling, making demands you felt powerless to refuse.
A deep sense of betrayal emerged when your mother entered the bathroom while you showered, exposing you to your uncle. You felt violated but were too timid to voice your feelings or confront the situation. This moment symbolized the larger theme of your privacy being repeatedly disregarded.
Connecting this share to anxious-avoidant attachment in romantic relationships- your childhood experiences set the foundation for anxious-avoidant attachment, where you crave closeness but fears it at the same time, particularly the boundary violations in childhood made you associate intimacy with intrusion, leading to discomfort when relationships get too close.
Your father’s harshness and control likely instilled fear of emotional closeness, and your mother’s lack of guidance left you unsure how to establish healthy relationship expectations, leading to confusion about what is acceptable and what is not.
How to move forward, or keep moving forward –
1. Recognizing that love can be safe: your past has taught you to associate love with intrusion, unpredictability, and emotional intensity, but healthy love is different. Love can be steady, gentle, and free of control—and you deserve that kind of love.
2. Honoring your need for boundaries: continue to practice identifying and enforcing boundaries without guilt. If something makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to justify your feelings—they are valid.
3. Continue to set small boundaries first (declining unnecessary favors, expressing preferences) to build confidence in your ability to protect yourself.
Learning to self-regulate when fear creeps in: when you feel yourself pulling away from closeness out of fear, pause and ask: “Am I protecting myself from real harm, or am I reacting to an old wound?”
Give yourself time to process before withdrawing—sometimes, your instinct to push someone away is just fear trying to shield you from something that isn’t actually dangerous.
Practice grounding techniques (breathing exercises, journaling) to self-soothe instead of emotionally shutting down.
4. Building relationships that feel emotionally safe: choose people who respect your boundaries, validate your emotions, and make you feel seen.
Watch for patterns—someone who pushes you to be more open faster than you’re ready for might not be safe for your healing.
Seek relationships with consistency and kindness, where love is not a guessing game.
5. Releasing self-blame & practicing self-compassion: your past was not your fault. You didn’t choose neglect, boundary violations, or emotional instability.
Allow yourself to grieve for the childhood you needed but didn’t get—this is part of healing.
Speak to yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer a friend.
6. Expressing your Needs without fear: you deserve to have needs.
You are not “too much” for wanting emotional security.
Practice expressing your thoughts with people you trust—sharing doesn’t always mean conflict, and your feelings matter.
Keep moving forward at your own pace, Clara, and know that there is room for love that feels safe, steady, and freeing in your future. 💙
anita
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