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anitaParticipantHey 🙂 Confused:
You are kind and gracious, thank you!
I wish you success in limiting your ruminations/ compulsions and finding peace and some happiness again ✨🙏✨
May indeed this almost 100-page thread be of help to others.
It’s a very warm day here, 28 degrees Celsius, a bit cooler than it was in Greece during the day (29 degrees?) I wonder what kind of weather your favorite is, and which is your least favorite 🤔
🌿🤍🌿Anita
anitaParticipantHello Donald:
When a parent depends heavily on their adult child for emotional support, the first step in establishing healthy boundaries is recognizing that you are not responsible for regulating your parent’s feelings. It’s not your job.
Boundaries become possible when they are framed not as Confrontation but as Clarity, and when they’re about your limits, not their approval.
It’s also important to build alternative sources of support — for the parent and for yourself — so the emotional load doesn’t fall on one relationship.
And finally, boundaries work best when they are consistent: not harsh, not punitive, just the same message delivered calmly over time, even if the parent pushes back.
Anita
anitaParticipantHey Dear Thomas, Mon 9:50 pm here by the time I submit this post (Tues 12:50 am for you):
Thank you for answering me (I was afraid that you won’t).
Thomas- what you think and what you feel matter to me!
I don’t want to disregard anything that you say.
It’s very slow here in the forums, which is perhaps an opportunity for you to fully express yourself, to make yourself matter (because you do)!
Seems to me that these forums are dying, so little activity. I am here because I don’t yet know where else to be online. Like I shared with you before, the great majority of people who follow the tiny buddha home page content do so on social media- where these forums are not part of, so hardly anyone who follow tb content is aware that these forums exist.
“And I don’t really matter.”- says Thomas. Anita says: you really matter. I mean it, you do!
Anita
anitaParticipantStill waiting for your answer, Thomas 🙏
I just need to know what bothers you when I post my “How are you?”- kind inquiries in recent members’ threads (including yours).
Often enough members do answer me, and that’s a positive thing, isn’t it, Thomas?
And what is it that bothers you about me re- activating threads of years ago so that I can learn from them, even if members don’t answer (most recently a member of years ago did answer- Lella)
* I am totally willing to post in this Zen Story thread on a regular basis just so to bring it to the top of list of topics so that it’s most visible.
Would you like that, Thomas?
I will continue to inquire about recent members and reactivate old threads but I will rethink it when and if I read your response.
✨️🌿✨️ Anita
anitaParticipantDear Confused:
I walked with you as far as I can. I shared everything I know that might help, and now the next part of the journey is yours alone.
I’ll still be around, but I need to step back from the level of involvement I’ve had. I hope you continue exploring your inner world with patience and care. I’m wishing you peace and healing.
🌿 Anita
anitaParticipantJust thinking this Sun Eve, 3 weeks since I started this thread on a Sun Eve.
As I have shared here and there, I had to say goodbye to the Winery, Oct 2021- Dec 2025, and to the taproom, 2017- April 2026. That’s a WHOLE LOT of socializing in-real- life, for which I am very grateful!
This afternoon, I met (irl), in a brewery, 15 min from where I live (by car) with K. And C., and A and D and T and M and P and JP, all of with whom I socialized in the Winery, but mosty at the taproom.
I met them this afternoon in one of the only 2 places I know in the county that allow dogs.
I tried to take in, to breathe in, all of them after 1-2 months of not seeing most of them.
Back at home, petting Bogart who got scared from the sound of dishes I dropped in the kitchen, checking the slow- slow- slow activity on tiny buddha, submitting 2 posts (to Confused and to Thomas), I figure, there’s so much more I want to do with the rest of my life. But I don’t know what it is.
To Connect is my Dream.
To connect More, is my dream.
Later- Anita
anitaParticipantDear Thomas:
I care about you feeling visible here in the tiny buddha forums. I care about you feeling that you matter and that you are heard.
What would it take for you to feel heard by me? Would you like me to not re- activate old threads from years ago? Or to not ask recent members “How are you?”
Please let me know.
✨️🌿✨️ Anita
anitaParticipantHey Dear Confused:
You want to have pleasurable feelings again: “romantic things… dream things… excited”-
If you weren’t stuck in over- thinking, maybe you wouldn’t be stuck in under- feeling.
I understand that she is a wonderful person: intelligent, caring and much more.
I hope that somehow things work out for you, first internally (peace within yourself), and then externally (peace in relationships with her, with others).
🌙🦉🌿 Anita
anitaParticipantI agree 100% (and no less) with this input by Copilot, partly paraphrased (and that’s following more than 5 months of my massive communication with you):
“She became the imagined cure long before she ever had the chance to be a real person. You only spent three days together, and even those days were not calm or easy — yet your mind holds onto her as if she is the only path to safety, love, and healing.
No partner — especially one you barely know in real life — can carry the weight of being the cure for old wounds.
Your mind is holding onto her as if she is the only path to safety, love, and healing, but she didn’t create your wound, so she can’t be the cure for it.
The panic you feel is about losing what she represents to the younger part of you who never felt safe. Healing that fear is what will allow you to actually experience love irl.
Anita
anitaParticipantOh, Confused, if you gave me a million dollars right now, I will care, promise! 😁
It’s not that I will do just about anything for that million dollars! No, I won’t!
So, Gemini has also pointed to your inner child. It’s the three of us, 2 robots and one human.
You shared before that you were told that when you talked about your childhood (which included severe emotional abuse, really), you sounded like you were reading an article from a newspaper.
That’s an earlier shutdown than the shutdown you experienced with this woman (whom you’ve known.. for how long, LD?)
😁🌿😢🌿🐔🌿🌙🦉 Anita
anitaParticipantHey Confused:
I hear how much you care about her and how deeply you attached your hopes to this relationship. And I also hear how frightening it feels to imagine losing her.
But I (and Copilot) want to gently name something:
The fear you’re feeling isn’t coming from her, and the comfort you’re longing for can’t actually come from her. She didn’t create this wound, so she can’t be the cure for it.
Right now, your mind is holding onto her as if she is the only path to safety, the only way to feel loved, the only reason to keep healing — and that makes everything feel life‑or‑death. But the part of you that is terrified is much younger than you are, and it’s asking for something no partner can fully give.
You don’t have to leave her, and you don’t have to make any decisions right now. What matters is understanding that the panic you feel is coming from inside you, not from the relationship.
Healing that fear is what will allow you to actually experience the love you want — whether with her or anyone else. And even if nothing came up when you tried the inner‑child exercise, that’s okay. Sometimes the younger part of us stays quiet at first because it doesn’t feel safe yet. This is a process, not a failure.
🌿✨️ 🌿✨️ Anita
May 30, 2026 at 11:56 am in reply to: Who’s Here—Really? A Gentle Roll Call for Our Tiny Community #458261anitaParticipantHi again, Dear Roberta: Thank you for answering. A stream of visitors- wow, I hope it was pleasant enough, maybe even exciting! Definitely busier in your home than in the forums here!
Anita
May 30, 2026 at 11:49 am in reply to: Confused on How to Deal With This Side of My Boyfriend: Am I overreating? #458260anitaParticipantRoberta, thank you so much for your kind words 😊. I appreciate your light‑hearted encouragement and the warmth behind it.
🌿✨🤍 Anita
May 30, 2026 at 10:22 am in reply to: Confused on How to Deal With This Side of My Boyfriend: Am I overreating? #458257anitaParticipantYou are full of heart, Lella!
Your words, your sentiment, are reaching me deeply. Thank you 🙏
At first, earlier this morning, wen I saw that you posted, and befote reading your post, I felt some sort of fread, bracing myself for some criticism & anger-
Not because you expressed criticism and anger at me, but because this is what my mind- body learned to expect growing up (or as I prefer to say because it’s more accurate, growing in, inward):
Any and all expressions of affection- or what looked/ sounded like affection- were always followed, sooner or later, by criticism, accusations, shaming & guilt- tripping.
Next, I allowed myself only to read a bit of your post, a bit of the beginning and a bit of the end, and saw that it was definitely very positive.
Yet, I couldn’t read all of it, still scared.
The fear has nothing to do with who you are, and everything to do with who my mother has been.
Next, I replied to another member because I was not afraid there.
Next, I was afraid that you will get upset that I did not reply to you first. And somewhere along the way, I was afraid that I will not match your warmth, disappoint you, and therefore, bring about criticism.
Finally, I bought myself some time in my first, short reply right above.
The healing part in all this is that I am NOTICING all this in real- time. Writing this to you is part of my healing.
It does indeed take courage, but it also takes a compassionate, wonderful person on the other side of the phone screen.
Getting closer to home, as you defined it, Lella😊
✨️🌿✨️ Anita
May 30, 2026 at 8:33 am in reply to: Confused on How to Deal With This Side of My Boyfriend: Am I overreating? #458256anitaParticipantDear Lela:
Your message touched me deeply. I’m taking it in slowly because it means a lot to me. I want to respond with the presence and clarity it deserves, so I’ll write more later today when I feel more grounded. Thank you — truly.
🌿✨🤍Anita
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