Dear Alessa:

I think I understand what it triggered.. happy while you were suffering.. I am so very sorry, Alessa (tears in my eyes)

Thank you, Neil. I would have taken your generous offer if I knew how to apply the ZOOM feature. I am technologically very.. challenged. 😳

* mentally foggy and short sighted that I posted the same emoji 3 times at the top.. lol

Hey Tom:

“I will keep ploughing on but just wanted to write this down.”- I am glad you wrote this down. Keep writing, keep posting, as long as it helps, if only a bit.

“My partner and friends know some of the feelings I have but not to the full extent.”- would you like to share more about the “full extent” at this time..? It may help to express in more detail, and to receive positively attentive feedback.

Warmly, Anita

Dear Tee:

I was up much of the night thinking, worrying about what I will find in this thread in the morning. I decided- before getting up- that I need to take a break from this thread- so to reread, to journal (privately), to process ..so to make it possible for me to let what I learned here sink in to a level of real, positive change in me: change in the way I think, feel and behave- online and in real-life. I thought about taking a break of a month or two.

And then I got up and read your latest response, Tee.. tears in my eyes right now.

“I truly hear that there has been a shift in you..”- yes there is. I believe that my experience with you, in this thread, is a life changer for me. You made a major, positive difference in my life, and for that I am forever grateful.

“I’ve felt a shift in me too when you’ve apologized for attacking me in your SOCJ journal, and realized that my intention wasn’t to hurt you but to help you.”- indeed it was to help me. Not to hurt me.

“… I’m still processing it all, to be honest, but thank you, truly. I might come back to your post and comment on specific points, but for now, I just want to appreciate your new sentiments and realizations about yourself and about me and my intentions.”-

Thank you, Tee. In regard to commenting on specific points of my previous post, you are welcome to do so, of course.

I would never try to silence you in any way.

It’s just that I don’t think that I am capable of reading or processing more negative criticisms of me at this time. I really need time to process what transpired so far. It’s been very difficult for me to get to this point.. the point of accountability: admitting fault.. going as far as seeing troubling similarities between my mother and me. It’s a LOT. I need time to turn inward and process.

So, as far as I am concerned, you are always welcome to voice your thoughts and feelings. It’s just that I may not respond to, or engage with certain things that are said, or may be said here, in this thread- during the 1-2 months break.

“I’m glad you’re feeling a change in yourself. This conflict certainly taught me things about myself too. I hope we can all learn from it and see what to avoid in communicating with others. It’s definitely been a learning experience, though very tough and tiring!”-

-Yes, I am feeling a major, positive change in-the-making. I am indeed in the process of learning different things, what to avoid in communicating with others is one of these things.

I am sorry that it’s been very tough and tiring for you. If there’s ever a way that I can make it up to you, if only in part.. to help you in some real way, I would like to do that.

“Thank you again, Anita, I appreciate your message and your change of heart. I think I need to rest and process it all for a while, but I’ll be back.”-

You are welcome and thank you so very much. I hope you rest well. I am thinking of starting my 1-2 months break today: a break from new negative criticisms regarding what already transpired: things that I cannot go back in time and change.

“I feel instead of a smiley after ‘tough and tiring’, a perplexed face would be more appropriate: tough and tiring :/ Don’t know how to bring that emoticon about, but anyway, it hasn’t been an easy-breezy experience for sure…”- no, not an easy-breezy experience, for sure 😕

I have a new appreciation of you, Tee, and a new respect. Actually, I am in awe of you!

Forever Thankful-

Anita

Thank you, Jana-

But in regard to me and Tee- Tee was the one who was wronged. She’s the one deserving empathy. I wish there was a way for me to make amends.. real-life amends, some way to offer real help.

Jana (right above): “It is a hard conflict. It is! But it can bear fruit, as well. 😊”-

* I am adding this here after closing the post and deleting much of it because what I realized at the end makes makes much of the post I put together was defensive, somewhat argumentative and unhehelpful. So, this is what’s left:

…………. And now I will respond to the rest of your yesterday’s post:

“Hi Anita, Thank you for your message. I must admit, it’s a mixed bag of feelings, but I’m very happy you’ve realized that I haven’t tried to hurt you but that I actually tried to help, even if it didn’t end up being helpful”-

Thank you, Tee. Yes, you tried to help me, just as you’ve tried to help so many people in these forums, giving so much of yourself in your many detailed, thorough and empathetic posts. Unfortunately, I perceived invalidation and an intent to hurt me where there was none.

About the perceived intent to hurt me, as I remember it, I wasn’t thinking: “Tee is trying to hurt me!” It was an assumption I made without verbalizing it, not even in my own mind.

“Thank you, Anita, for realizing that I indeed didn’t intend to harm you but to help you, because radical acceptance (and a sort of detached compassion, which I’ve explained what I meant by) helped me heal from my mother’s abuse. I truly thought it might be beneficial for you. But I apologized when I’ve realized it was an ill-fitted advice.”-

Seems like you were not suggesting that I feel compassion for her (which I already have, in massive amounts) but that I feel detached attention.. which is a different kind of compassion that I didn’t yet experience? (IF so, this distinction didn’t occur to me until now.. AND I failed to understand your input back then..?)

“Thank you for acknowledging that my intention wasn’t to hurt you or invalidate you. And I fully accept your apology. Thank you.”- this is so gracious of you. Thank you so very much for accepting my apology. 🤍 🙏

In regard to whom I had in mind when I wrote that particular sentence, I spent about 20 minutes just now trying to locate that sentence and I can’t find it. But here’s the thing: you have better memory than I do, Tee, so if you say I was referring to you, to Alessa, or to the two of you in that one sentence then I truly believe you.

Maybe I felt so embarrassed when first confronted with that sentence that .. I tried to deflect responsibility by saying maybe it was someone else. I suppose.. not exactly a lie. There was no such thinking as: I am going to lie about not remembering who I had in mind. It was more like (not verbalized this way though): I don’t want to remember, it’d make me feel badly.

“I’ve already apologized for accusing you of lying that you don’t remember whom you were talking about (Sept 7): “If you truly didn’t remember whom you were talking about, I apologize for wrongly accusing you.”- I didn’t lie about not remembering.. I didn’t want to remember… hmm, there’s a difference. And I didn’t realize this until just now.

You are very, very detailed oriented and a very intelligent critical reader, Tee.. and you caught me there- the inconsistency, the avoidance.

“I’m sorry, Anita, but isn’t it kind of funny that I have to defend myself for assuming that you were less judgmental than you really were?”- ouch, this hurts a bit.

“I mean, I thought it could have been only 2 people whom you had negative feelings about, but now you’re saying it could have been 4 people in total.”- good point. By the avoidance I mentioned above, I made it worse.

“Please don’t take offense, but when we step back and see a bigger picture, it becomes a little absurd. I hope you see it too?”- yea, I suppose. Yes.

“Like you, I would also like to close my post on a positive note: I appreciate your realization that I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I also appreciate and accept your apology. I’m also glad that you’re experiencing some more healing thanks to this thread, including the ability to stay present with difficult emotions and stay in the dialogue, rather than withdraw and then express your grievances indirectly. I think it’s better if we can express what bothers us directly to the person. I appreciate you’ve returned to the conversation, even if not everything you’ve said has been easy to hear. I also appreciate you chose not to use Copilot in this post, because Copilot makes the answers a little mechanical, in my opinion. I prefer talking to a real person, not a machine, because it’s more authentic. So thanks for that 🙂”-

This paragraph I quoted right above, this is the first time I am reading it. Yesterday, when I read “Should we just stop sharing our experiences, so you wouldn’t get offended?”- I felt threatened- and angry, and stopped reading, focusing on what scared me (being talked badly about). If I read the paragraph above, I could have softened. It is a beautiful ending of your post. I simply didn’t read it, and based on 1 or a few sentences I perceived your post as hostile. I see it as .. goodwill on your part, grace, kindness- I COMPLETELY missed the good nature of your post, seeing nothing but a single perceived threat.

This is exactly how I misread your input in regard to my mother- taking one thing from the post that feels like a threat (a threat to mu understanding of things), and seeing ONLY that.

I feel ashamed for having misread and mistreated you, Tee. Looking back in regard to the communication about my mother- you did nothing wrong, but I reacted as if you did, feeling offended when there was no offense and I proceeded to attack- indirectly. And through all this, I didn’t see, couldn’t see what I was really doing.

* It’s amazing.. Like my mother who offended me but claimed that I offended her. She truly felt offended, I suppose, just like I did. This comparison is scary. Something I’ll be thinking about.

I apologize for not reading the closing of your yesterday’s post until just now. And more so, I sincerely and truly apologize for offending you to begin with, and then- adding salt to injury- for accusing you for the ways you reacted to being offended.

Yes, these are my posts now.. not Copilots. Copilot didn’t hold me accountable. You did, Tee. Thank you.

Anita