Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
anitaParticipantContinued:
Ice on my left shoulder, still hurting, and because it’s hurting, I’m automatically contracting the muscles there, raising my left shoulder, tensing it, twitching it, making it hurt more. Will the pain and pain-cycle ever stop? Will I ever be free from left-shoulder pain??? Or is it forever? I am trying to relax the shoulder, but it keeps going up. It’s the habits of the body, the habits of the brain that are not under the dominion of logic, of.. common sense, which is not at all common when it comes to instinctual responses of body and brain.
We can logic-think.. but we operate like instinctual, logic-less animals.
Ah, the quest of the animal to be god.
Here it is, rising, twitching yet again, while I don’t want it to!
Sh.. sh.. shoulder, calm down.
I posted yesterday while listening to some music. This evening, I will sing (yes), and I will sing in Hebrew just because I feel like it, so here it is: Avir harim tsalool kayayin, veraich oranim, naso nisa leyrooshalaim, bederech yericho. yerushalaim shel zahav, veshel nechoshet veshel or, halolechol sheeiraich, ani kinor.
Translation: the air of the mountains is as pure as wine, and the smell is of pine trees, we are traveling to Jerusalem by way of Jericho. Jerusalem of gold, and of copper and of light, for al of your songs, I am a fiddle. (I am translating my best, not relying on any online source).
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
Better that you have a night time routine/ ritual where the same things happen every night, before and as you go to bed: nothing new/ nothing out of the routine, so fewer chances for triggers. I hope you are sleeping restfully right now, Thurs 2:20 am, and that if you wake up before morning, that you are calm, and go back to sleep.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshiti:
It’s 1:32 am now, 47 minutes after you posted. Are you still awake, how are you feeling now?
anita
June 19, 2024 at 12:47 pm in reply to: growing up – becoming adul / procrastination – in connection to childhood trauma #434019anitaParticipantDear Robi:
Good to read back from you! I hope that the spider bite heals, and wish you well on your new chapter! Please post again once you are back to Romania (or before)!
anita
anitaParticipantThank you, Helcat!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Abde:
I didn’t thoroughly read, process and respond to your original post yesterday, so I will do so today. I will also read and respond to your following posts:
You shared (the boldfaced are your words) that you’ve been married for 21 years, since you were 28 (now 49) and have two children a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old, that your marriage has been a problem for many years and fights have been escalating lately. The two of you agreed that you are heading towards divorce, but still living in the same home, in the U.S.
In this situation, you signed in to an Indian matrimonial website as Awaiting divorce. Online, you started communicating with a divorcee living in India, you call her Muns. Muns asked you about your marital status, and you lied and mentioned: ‘separated from my wife, she is not staying with me anymore.
By 3 weeks of communicating with you, Muns shared everything with you, everything about her kids’ sport activities and more. She messaged you Good morning, Good evening lovely messages and seemed like she got attached to you. She even introduced you to her kids, and her kids to you (online). On the 4th week of communicating with you, she was confessing her love for you, and she shared more with you, about her health background and everything.
A week or so later, 1.5 months into the online romantic relationship, Muns started avoiding you and her fewer messages turned cold. She then told you that currently she does not feel the love connection and most of the times she feels judged when she speaks to you. Some time later, you figured that Mun’s mother inquired about you in a community app and found out that you were living with your wife. Next, Muns, seeming very hurt, posted some weird messages like: ‘Would you like to share with me about something? Are you missing something that you must or should d have shared with me?’
You then loosely mentioned to her that your wife “is with me and she will go away in July“. Later, she told you that she has known for some time that you were living with your wife. You told her that your intent was not deceit. She got very angry with you and hung up on you.
Later, she shared that she felt that she opened up so much with you and shared every detail (while you didn’t share that you were living with your wife). She started questioning all stuff that you told her, and pulling up photos you shared with her, she asked if your wife was also present in that location, or in that location. Later, you texted her to say sorry and asker her forgiveness and at the end you wrote: ‘Enjoy your day’. She got upset that you ended your text that way, saying it was insensitive of you.
At the Indian matrimonial website, you cancelled the invitation of hers and that led to further escalation, and she blocked you on what’s app. Next, you confronted her on text and she was very mean: ‘I don’t know if you deserved to even speak to me, forget about friendship.” That was 9 days ago.
You ended your original post with: “Couple of questions that come to my mind is that she really loved me or she was trying to mold herself so that she can get married, she was looking at this as an opportunity? During my final conversation when she blasted me, she never cared to ask me : ‘Why did you do this Abde’? Can you help me understand?… I feel devastated as I truly connected with her… I feel that God has punished me severely for lying to her…”
Your 2nd post: “For the last 9 days I have been dying of guilt. I am not a person with these values, I have never lied or cheated ever… Yes I did a mistake, I apologized sincerely to Muns and to my wife… I don’t know if my real intent was to fool Muns, our conversations weren’t utterly romantic… Yes, I should have been transparent to Muns that my wife is staying with me… then she could have opted to just keep in touch and not pulled into building future with me… I am here to seek closure because deep down I am kind, honest and my values are different...”.
Your 3rd post, in regard to a suggestion that you manipulated Muns: “Manipulating Muns is a mean thing to say, I really respect her and feel for her. I understand that she is hurt and I have let her go. I have also apologized to her… you guys seem to have misread the whole situation a bit. I have learned from this experience, I have apologized to Muns and my wife. I will move on from this, especially after this encounter. Good luck everybody.”
My reply today: imagine, Abde, that you were a divorced man, lonely and looking for a spouse in a matrimonial dating site. You get to know a woman online, you like her very much, you get very excited about her being.. The One. You share everything with her, being honest and upfront about everything because you want her to make informed decisions regarding you. You daydream about her, imagining meeting her in-person and having romantic dates and asking her to marry you, and then.. you find out that.. she is living with another man, and that she is married to him.
How would you feel?
Imagine this happens to your 17-year-old, or your 12-year-old when they grow up.. how would you feel as their father?
Empathy is the ability to place yourself in someone’s else’s shoes and imagine what they may be feeling, and then to care about how they are feeling, not wanting them hurt. It’s about considering the likely emotional consequences of your words and actions on others, before you speak and act.
When you lied to Muns about your wife not staying with you anymore, your motivation was to keep Mun interested in you, to not lose her interest. You knew that the consequence of telling her the truth, would likely be that she’d withdraw from you. You didn’t want that consequence, so you lied to her. It may have crossed your mind that if she finds out that you lied, that the consequence- to her- would be that her feelings will be hurt. If that crossed your mind, you lied anyway because, for the moment, it served your interest: she showed real interest in you, lovely, warm messages, confessed her love, introduced her kids to you.
You told her that your intent was not deceit, and I agree that your primary motivation was not to deceive her. Deceit was just a.. means to an end.
You texted her to say sorry and asker her forgiveness and at the end you wrote: ‘Enjoy your day’. She got upset that you ended your text that way, saying it was insensitive of you- it was indeed insensitive. If you really felt regret for having hurt her feelings so badly, you wouldn’t think of ending your apology with wishing her joy.
You confronted her on text and “she was very mean“- if you had empathy for her, you would know that her anger was valid, not mean. You’d know that you owned the mean.
You ended your original post with: “Couple of questions that come to my mind is that she really loved me or she was trying to mold herself so that she can get married, she was looking at this as an opportunity?“- you are suspecting her of wrong intention, of being selfish, while there is no evidence- from what you shared- that she’s been selfish, while there is plenty of evidence that you own selfish.
2ndpost: “For the last 9 days I have been dying of guilt. I am not a person with these values, I have never lied or cheated ever… deep down I am kind, honest and my values are different“- this is how you presented yourself in your 2nd post, after being criticized by responders. No mention of dealing with guilt, let alone dying of guilt for the 1.5 months or so, following the lie (original post).
3rd post: “Manipulating Muns is a mean thing to say, I really respect her and feel for her”– manipulating Muns is not a mean thing to say to you. It’s a mean thing to do to Mun.
Mun told you (original post): ”Stay happy with your Corporate IQ – that’s all I can say“- she was referring to you being an IT Professional, I imagine, and she was suggesting that (big) corporations are.. heartless, and so are you.. Was that her message?
A bit about myself: I too suffered and made others suffer because of empathy-deficiency on my part. My empathy was specific to a few others, but lacking for most. I was too troubled, feeling too guilty inside to .. avail myself to everyday empathy. As a result, I lived a very lonely life. Decades later, now that I feel and express empathy for others, what a difference it is making in my life. My emotional experience of life has greatly improved. I highly recommend that like me, you too will adopt empathy as a way of life, one day at a time, in small ways and in big ways.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
You are welcome!
“I had a nightmare/intrusive spiral while I was half-sleepy around 6:00 am, and it had some of the most disturbing thoughts I have experienced till now… I am feeling better now and back on track.“- see, this is proof that intrusive, disturbing thinking- even the most intrusive and disturbing you ever had- is not dangerous: you were not injured, or killed, and you are back on track less than 7 hours after the spiral.
This reminds me of a movie I saw long ago where (I remember very little of it) the main character was terrified of a monster that visited her in dreams. What it took to overcome her fear was to face the monster, look it in the eye, and say: you don’t exist! And the monster (that was never real, as in flesh-and-blood real), defeated, disappeared forevermore.
Like in the movie where the monster intruded on the main character in dreams, intrusive thoughts (also not real, as in flesh-and-blood real) intrude on you in waking hours and when you were half-sleepy this morning. Confront the intrusive thinking, look it in the eye, so to speak, and say: you don’t have the power to harm me!
Really, scientifically, objectively: it’s not the thoughts that is the problem, but the fear of the thoughts. Confronting this fear in regard to my OCD is just what I did many years ago, and that monster in my life disappeared: I am no longer afraid of my thoughts, and I no longer fit the OCD diagnosis
anita
anitaParticipantContinued a bit tonight:
I just double checked, asking someone who just had a meeting with other people, very locally: “what do they say about me being a hard worker?” and the person said: they say you are the hardest working person around here! I was told this in person too, and I am so pleased, so proud, because my mother used to say (again and again and again and again.. and again.. and f**** again) that I am LAZY.. But these wild-west, hard working farmers and others around here say that I am the hardest working person in this wild-west world, so she was/ is WRONG. Always have been wrong: I was NEVER the bad, lazy person she said I was.
I will still hear HER words, especially when I am tired, like earlier today, the recording will re-play, such is the nature of the brain. But I want to remember that.. I am the HARDEST WORKING PERSON around here, around this wild-west, cowboy-hat-beard, wild, wild-west.
She was wrong all along, she WRONGED me all along, it still boggles my mind: why/ how did she have to be so mean to .. the hardest working girl. I mean, really, I can see how she DISTORTED who I was, who I am, COMPLETELY! I am not, not who she kept saying that I was. And she was wrong out of CRUELTY: she hated me and she wanted to inflict pain on me.
It’s a lifetime process to really UNDERSTAND that your OWN MOTHER was/ is your ENEMY. HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE TRUE???
I can’t believe it, still, it’s bamboozling my mind! Oh.. I just need to fully confront the difficult, horrible, bamboozling reality that my mother, MY MOTHER, was/is my Enemy. It is (I have no word) difficult to take in. I mean: my own mother wanted me to be in pain. My OWN MOTHER whose love I needed more than anything, her motivation was to see me hurt.
It’s just so difficult to take in, it’s just that one expects one’s mother to be on one’s side, and definitely not against… Okay, it’s Tues late night here. Good night/ good morning, 1-3 readers, thank you for being here with me, reading.
Let us be guided by the Truth, however difficult it is to take in and absorb.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
I am having a difficult day today, my mother’s voice, paranoid, negative, ‘all people are bad people, trying to take advantage, bad.. BAD people‘ has been playing and re-playing in my brain without my consent. I suppose this is how the brain works: it plays back old recording when one is tired and anxious (my shoulders/ upper back have been hurting for days, ever since I used a small, electrical mower, for hours).
I felt depressed for the first time in a long, long time, just not right. Still don’t feel right. Was up about 4 am, it’s now 14 hours later, the day is just too long when feeling this way. I am depressed over people’s pain, people (a person) I care about. I feel depressed over the state of the world: so much violence, war, cruelty.. I am not finding the Positive this evening. I WISH I could save the world.. like a superwoman- anita I wish I was. I’d do ANYTHING, everything to save the millions of people that need saving. How incompetent I am, how useless, how insignificant when it comes to making the world a bit better.
Hey, I just noticed I feel a bit better for having typed this.
I’d do anything. I’ll climb the tallest mountain, if.. it made a difference.
One person (me) wanting to make a difference, not having a way to make a difference. If only I was a world leader, a celebrity, I would have spoken, I would have made a difference.
But as it is, there is no way for me to.. what are the words to the song…: “If I can change the world, I would be the sunlight in your universe, you would think my love is something really good… If I can change the world, I would be the sunlight in your universe.. If I could change the world, if I could.. If I could change the world” (Eric Clapton).
I am a hard worker irl; I am known in this part of the world where I live as “the hardest working person”, so say some hard-working people observing me (physical work), day after day, month after month, year after year. If I could.. if I could change the world with my hard, physical work.. I would!
But.. how futile my desire to change the world.
Here I am typing to.. who is reading? A person or two.
It’s so very weird, this internet thing. Eric Clapton I still singing on the other window as I am typing this: “I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot no deputy… I shot… I shot the sheriff“. I live in a very wild-west area, U.S., men in cowboy hats and beards (younger men: long beards, older men: short beards), and of course, weapons that go along with the beards and cowboy hats. I may be digressing. but hey, I am feeling better for it.
Somehow the music on the other window passed on to “the thrill is gone“/ B. B. King, great music (thank you for being here with me, those of you who are reading, 2-3 people I gather, at the most): “The thrill is gone” (the thrill is always gone, says I, it’s in its nature to be gone): “you know I’m free, free now baby, I am free from your spell… You’ve done me wrong; you’d be sorry some day“- my goodness, this is excellent music, the Blues. This song is thrilling me (!) and the day’s depression is gone!
The magic of the Blues.
There are other songs about changing the world: “Can’t do it by myself… Together we can change the world.. With our hand and our hearts, we can make a start.. What if we spoke with one voice… Together…” (Mark Shepard, so it says, never heard this song before).
Back to Eric Clapton: “this love I have inside… it’s only in my dreads; I can change te world.. If I could, cha-change the world… I would be the sunlight in your universe… cha-change the world“.
It seems like too much to ask: TO CHANGE THE WORLD, to BE THE SUNLIGHT IN YOUR UNIVERSE, for crying out loud!
“If I could reach the stars.. shining on my heart, so you can see the truth, then this love I have inside… it’s only in my dreams“-
– human/ most human’s impotence.. if only I could change the world…
“I would be the sunlight in your universe, you would think my love was something good“- which brings me to my story: my mother thought that my love was something bad, that I was something bad, and so was everyone else. And these were the thoughts circulating in my brain today: how bad everyone is.
“I must be strong and carry on” (Eric Clapton still, Tears in Heaven) “Time can bring you down… Time can break your heart… Beyond the dark, there’s peace for sure… There’ll be no more tears in heaven“.
“It’s late in the evening… And then she asks me, Do I look alright?… And then she asks me Do you feel alright?.. because I see the light in your eyes.. My darling, you are wonderful tonight” (Eric Clapton, Wonderful Tonight)
Here is one of my most- ever- favorite song: “mama told me when I was young, sit beside me, my only son, and listen closely to what I say, and if you do this, it will help you some sunny day… take your time, don’t live too fast, troubles will come, and they will pass… and be a SIMPLE kind of man… be a simple, be a simple man, why don’t you do this, for my son, if you can… All you need is in your soul… follow your heart, and nothing else, you can do this if you try… a simple kind of man” (Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd).
Thank you 1-3 people reading this, being here with me this Tues night.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
“even this line made my anxiety and intrusive thoughts surge“- I think that an Attitude Change is required: from being scared of and surrendering to the fear-driven intrusive thoughts, going belly up, so to speak, to => => => Courage and standing up for yourself against the intrusive thoughts, as in looking them in the eye, and saying: I am STRONGER than you.
12:43 am where you are at.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
You are welcome!
“True, these are like mental habits, and these mental habits make me suffer a lot. I will try to practice mindfulness more deeply in my daily life“- like any habit, it takes persistent practice to change and form a new habit. It is far from being easy. I wish it was easy!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
“can you please tell me sites/blogs where I can access audios of Mark G. Williams?“- my therapist at the time sent me links to audios by Mark Williams. All I did was click the links. I just googled “mark Williams mindfulness” and got what looks like YouTube audios and videos of his meditations and lectures (I am very low tech)
“Every night I start thinking which ends up making me feel lesser, or unsuccessful personally and career-wise. That adds on to my intrusive thinking…“- these are your mental habits. I have mine. It is difficult to change mental habits. Mindfulness guided meditations are a way to slow down these habits and eventually, with practice and patience, change them. It takes wanting to change these habits and doing what it takes.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Abde:
“Any thoughts or suggestions on how do I close this?“- I’d close it with lessons learned: (1) to not pursue a relationship with a woman for as long as you are still living with another woman (your wife), (2) when in a dating/ matrimonial site, once you are no longer living with your wife, register the truth about your marital status, ex., separated, not yet divorced.
“Is there a semblance of a chance to get back once she knows that I have divorced?“- I think so, particularly if she is considering moving to the U.S. You living in the U.S., being a legal resident or citizen, having a good-paying job: that would be a big attraction for lots of women in other countries who are interested in moving to the U.S. And an honest woman who has this interest should be upfront about it. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) mean that this is all of her interest in you. There ought to be a meeting of the minds between you and the woman you will be dating: shared values, honesty, trust, respect, consistency of behavior.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
You are welcome and thank you for always being honest with me!
“I do not know if it is OCD or depression“- it could very well be both. I was diagnosed with OCD and with Depression at one time.
“Every day there is something that makes me feel a lesser person, that makes me feel my life is not good right now… Sometimes I just feel so weird about life itself, and in those moments I feel very alone.”– you feel very alone, and I know how it feels. But objectively, you are not alone: there are many, many people who feel so very alone. I wonder if there is a support group in Oxford for students who feel very alone.
And you are not a lesser person, Kshitij, I am sure of it, no doubt in my mind!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Kshitij:
“I don’t know under what context you sent the last message“- I was afraid that my post about anger (June 14) triggered and upset you (similar to when I sent you quotes), and I felt badly about it, wishing I knew how to be helpful to you instead.
“Thank you for your thread above on repressed anger. Can I take my time to read it? Maybe after 20th when my exams get over?“- of course, and you are welcome. Thank you for being as kind and gracious as you are.
“thank you for your empathy, Anita… “- you are welcome and thank you for your empathy: for caring to let me know that I have been helpful to you.
“I saw your message when I got up today and coincidentally, I had breakdowns last night, I am feeling that something is not right, something is not okay“- that feeling that something is not right is in the core of OCD, and almost anything- if not anything- can trigger this something is not right feeling.
OCD is not really a thinking problem but a feeling problem: it’s not about the content of thoughts but about how we feel about the thoughts. Without OCD, a person can dismiss a thought that one considers weird or illogical, but with OCD, a person gets stuck on the thought, feeling disturbed over it for a long time.
I wish you can find a way to no longer feel distressed about illogical, inconsequential thoughts: just observe the thought and let it pass, not getting caught in and entangled in it.
anita
-
AuthorPosts
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. 