Hey Jana,

Do you want tell me more about how you accept yourself?

I reported my own post by mistake, really inappropriate 🙂

Dear Anita,

I’m touched that you follow my story. I feel loved. Thank you for sharing your story. I feel sad to hear your suffering. I want to tell you about some success. I had last month.

I was deluded in romantic love When I lived it in reality my mind collapsed (it’s all true) my mind got more clear and now things seem to be changing. My psychologist we mainly do gestalt psychology (inner child) said that she thinks I’m growing up. I have her since one month. Since then my impulses are less strong. I need less sleep. I don’t really feel tired anymore. When I tell myself I love you I feel it. When I give myself a hug I feel it. When I hold my hand I feel it. I do learn a language since one month when previously I only could do that for 2 weeks. And I think the best. When I’m at a place it looks like I’m there for the first time every day. It doesn’t get boring (usually after a week). It’s like my brain is naturally stimulated. Also somehow anxiety got inside out.  At first I was afraid of eating and now I’m adding more and more things to my life. I’m still getting used to it and it’s a bit crazy. It’s beautiful and crazy 🙂

I think it’s most important for me now to do things I’m anxious of first with myself. Talk to myself. Play with myself. Take myself for walks go to the cinema. And then add people to it. To create secure attachment.

What do you think of that? Have you been trough something similar?

Hey Jana,

I gave up on work for the moment. I gave up on family and people I have conditioning with for now. (I can have some contact on the phone) I seek to be by myself as much as I can feel the pain and I accept anxiety as a guide who tells me to slow down rather than in the past push trough. Cause I can not differentiate myself from others well. And i will mask / suppress myself.
Self love helps, to tell myself I love me. Giving myself hugs. Sauna is good when I suppress something. I try to hug myself till I can move again when feeling alienated. And I always looked for someone to do it with but it seems i have to go trough it alone. For now it takes very long and I don’t see how it can work in daily live. Also suppressing abandonment will wake up self harm. That’s why I let it affect me so much. I rather give it all the space it can get till I’m ready to face it.

Can you connect with that? Have you experienced alienation?

Hi Panditdevsharma,

Thanks for your Post here.

I want to understand you fully.

You say to align what you do with what you like to do and in ways you respect. To identify what makes you flourish, what you can do in playful ways. Things which make you get out of bed easily. It can be anything. Do it step by step, try to forget about the outcome. Stay with the moment solely knowing the direction you want to go.
Have people and places around you where you do not need to hide. Where you can be how you want to be.

Be aware of the steps you take. If you want to do something extraordinary consider it carefully. Maybe you have been wrong all the time. Maybe give it a try even if it’s scary. Most important is to focus on pleasing yourself.

This is how someone can find fulfilment in what he does.

What you write is simple in words. Like dry food 🙂 you need to add water to eat it. I think its beautiful. I feel happy that there are people out there who have much understanding. It means it’s possible to understand. That there are people who care. It means the world to me!

Hi Tee,

Also, you can say No to yourself. Is it in situations where you would want to indulge in things that you know are not good for you? Or in situations where your automatic reaction would be to freeze? But now you know better and you choose a more mature response, which is aligned with your true self?

I wrote it like these to things are connected but they are not. I think what I meant was that some parts are actually not me, they are someone else. This part’s I send away. These parts often also make me doubt my own boundaries and needs.

Ah, she understands that you don’t want to be bossed around, but she can’t help but lash out from time to time, right?

Yes, she she’s it but can’t change it.

Alright, so when you are in freeze, you are kind of depressed, doing nothing, perhaps using drugs to numb the pain?

Drugs don’t work for me. I have not tried psychedelics maybe they could. Conventional drugs do not really help. Listening to music helps it kinda makes the pain more enjoyable. Eating also doesn’t work anymore to cope. To cope creates confusion and clarity I have no space for that in my mind.

And then when you get out of freeze, you try to achieve some of your own goals, but you feel like your mother is trying to tell you what to do and what to achieve, so it feels like she is trying to control you?

Yes, it’s like a port of her in me. I want that part to go away.

That would be in line with what you’ve said that you want to stay independent of her, and that refusing to clean the kitchen (i.e. refusing to obey her orders) is a way of maintaining that psychological independence. So perhaps staying in freeze is also a way to stay psychologically independent from her – because you are withdrawn in your own shell and unreachable to her, and so she cannot control you?

I think I do freeze because I need to suppress my boundaries to be able to please someone which does not respect them.

You said that right now you are in the space where you are able to say No to other people’s requests, if they don’t align with your true needs. Do you think that with this new mindset, you’ll be able to participate in your father’s birthday party? Because earlier you said that you most probably won’t be able to go (My dad turns 60 and throws a big party I made shure I have time and I really want to go but right know it feels like I can’t go). Perhaps this has changed now?

My body is very clear about that. It feels like no way. I tried to start a process with my dad but I think he lacks the empathy and curiosity to make me feel save. So I could open up and we could find a way which I can attend.
I think the main thing is that my mum said:” I don’t even know if you attend at the birthday”. From that point on it shifted and it feels too dangerous to risk my integrity. I feel it’s unfair to my dad cause he got in between also I do not know anyone else who could help, my mom has no close friends. I could call her psychiatrist.
Also I can accept how it is right now, it might be necessary for my mental health to split very clear for  me to fully let go.

Hi Tee,

Has your mother (or father) ever told you that you are making a big deal out of nothing and that you surely cannot be as hurt as you are claiming to be? Have they tried to deny your experience and tell you that you are too sensitive and/or faking being hurt?

I think what I learned is that I do this by intention. That’s probably why I feel guilty.

Anyway, now you are an adult, and you’ll have to create that anchor, i.e. that strong “mother”, within yourself. You shouldn’t wait for your mother to change and become the source of that strength and support – you need to create it in yourself.

I want to give that to me and I don’t know how. I wanna take responsibility. All I can give is to give space to me and it seem I can’t get enough of it and have no control except that it always works out somehow. My dad turns 60 and throws a big party I made shure I have time  and I really want to go but right know it feels like I can’t go. Now I’m creating space for that.

Give yourself encouragement, or seek encouragement (for the things you’d like to achieve) outside of your parents. You can seek it in coaches, therapists, support groups, people who are already doing what you want to do. You need to find an anchor elsewhere and stop expecting her to give you that strength and courage (or whatever quality you feel you are missing).

I’m not expecting that conscious. I think my parents have not much capacity to care for me or they expect me to ask which I don’t do. I think about seeking help and sometimes I did as when I did this post. It takes long and at least I talk to people that I do not have  many impulses to seek help.r I’d need an online therapist and I somehow need to create space for that person and do not know how. I mean you are supporting me in that way out of goodwill <3

It seems that when you tell her your pain, you are still hoping that she would be able to relieve it. But she isn’t. She can’t give you the strength/support/encouragement you are hoping for. So your every encounter is painful because you are seeking something she cannot give you. She is burdening you with her own pain, instead of relieving you of your pain. It’s like adding insult to injury.

Mhh, I wonder if I do belief that subconscious. I think it’s also working with her is like working with me cause I kinda treat myself like she treated me but the last time was too painful and now I need to stay away. I don’t know how long.

That’s why it seems to me you’d need to stop hoping to have your emotional needs met by her. You’d need to start finding ways to meet your own needs and seeking people who can help you in that endeavor. Become emotionally “unhooked” from your mother, so to speak.

It’s good to hear. I need to hear this. It takes so long if I tell something to me. I need have people say things to me. I work on meeting my needs. I belief I need something like a family to be able to do a regular job and live at a place for longer than 1 month.
The things I tried feel failed and I’m afraid if I fail again now it’s too painful.

It seems she doesn’t like it when you don’t show empathy for her. If you are cold and distant. If you don’t let her complain about her problems, right? She doesn’t like your protective shell. And you don’t want to get out of that shell, because it would hurt you even more (what I said earlier: her pain is added onto your own pain, and it is too much to bear).

She needs the connection. She probably feels like there’s something wrong with her when people block. Like I do.  Yes, I need to protect me.

It seems you withdraw into your protective shell, so not to be overwhelmed by too much pain (both hers and yours). And maybe also not to lose focus from yourself, because if you start focusing on her and her problems, you tend to lose yourself, or forget what you want, or start feeling guilty for wanting those things? Perhaps you fear getting enmeshed with her, so you are hiding in that shell, to keep your own space and identity intact.

Mhh, yeah I would. I’m at a point where it is too painful to withdraw from pain. Which is good and also scary.

Ok, so you try to negotiate with her to give you tasks where you won’t feel misused? (because you said you’re only willing to help her if you feel that her requirement is “selfless”). She doesn’t like your conditions and she gives you a strict/angry look (you called it a “fierce” look).

Yes or in your words: ‘a task where I do not freeze’! I’d like to find a way to show her that she can meet her need for support and I can meet my need for autonomy.

Maybe she feels you are too demanding (or lazy/unhelpful), and not her? And that her requirement/plea for help is justified? While you are unjustly accusing her? (As if she’s made responsible for something which is my fault.)

I think she beliefs it’s my duty as her child to support her. Yeah, you say the same thing. It’s most difficult do give to people who think it’s their born right to receive and take it for granted.

It does seem to me that your attitude towards helping her is a defensive stance – you withdrawing into your protective shell and not wanting to be “used” by her, for fear of getting emotionally overwhelmed and overtaken by her. I think it’s a bit of an overreaction, but I understand where you are coming from. You don’t want to give anything of yourself, because you feel so burdened already, that any additional pain of hers (and an expectation to be soothed by you) comes with a risk to overwhelm you. So when she needs help, even if it is as simple as cleaning up the kitchen – you feel it might deplete you even further and take you away from yourself and your own needs and desires.

I think I want her to really see me and see me equal. I have the same right to choose the task as she does. It’s not really about the task it’s about control and me making a statement that I do not wish to be controlled. I want to be asked what I would like to do and what is needed. I want my support to be valued and not taken for granted.

So refusing to help in the kitchen becomes like a self-protection tool, albeit a misguided one, because if I am guessing right, you are still hoping to have your emotional needs met by her. So you are still kind of dependent on her, even if you are trying to protect yourself from her…

I’ll reflect about it. Isn’t it also about the people pleaser thing why I do that in the end? I’ve been thinking that I am dependent on her (subconscious). Cause I noticed that the things which stress her out like go traveling, working a regular job, not misusing drugs, having a girlfriend are things I struggle(d) creating for myself.
It sometimes feels like that I am my mom and my self is this thing I can’t control. And all I wish is that I would not need to care about myself. It would just do what it is supposed to do.

I said it’s an overreaction. But if it is a freeze response (“I draw a line. My body draws a line”), it’s not conscious – it is what your body and your nervous system do automatically. When you are in the freeze response, your rational mind isn’t “online”, so you cannot really control your reactions. So I just wanted to clarify that, because I don’t want to sound as if I am blaming you for being overly reactive. The freeze response is not your fault – it’s an automatic reaction when we feel in danger.

Thank’s for clarifying Tee.

There are techniques to get out of the freeze response, which include moving our body. I am sure you have looked into it already, but here are 3 really useful youtube videos, by psychotherapists that I respect a lot:

“This is what it’s like to be in freeze” and “Unfreeze yourself“, by The Holistic Psychologist channel, and

“Are you stuck in freeze mode? How to turn off the freeze response“, by Therapy in a Nutshell.

Mhh, sounds like I’m quite often in a freeze response or I feel what I can do without getting into a freeze response and only do that.

I hope it helps, if you’re not already familiar with it.

I’ll download the books.

Thanks Tee,

feel free to shorten the text. I been quite emotional today I think I wrote things reasonable but feel free to question and ask and also I want you to know that I do not expect a reply and feel grateful if you do a reply.

Hi dear Tee,

I’m happy too, to hear from you 🙂

Really happy to hear this! That means you don’t even feel it for the most part, right? Are you still skating? And yeah, better not try full-time construction job, because that would for sure aggravate it.

Yeah, still skating and I’ve done some hours of construction work.

My back is a little better too, thank God. But now my knee problem got reactivated, after having been dormant for 1.5 years (since my back injury). I hope it stays manageable and doesn’t escalate, specially now, before the summer holidays.

Let’s hope for the best. True holiday’s coming. What do you have planned?

It felt emotionally distant, right? As if it didn’t affect you?

You know when adult’s say to kids that they are simulating? Like that. It feels distant, it does affect me cause of the self betrayal.

But then, as you were writing your reply, you had an encounter with your mother, and then you felt it emotionally?

I saw it very clear, the ambivalence between being my mum’s child and in a way father.

Am I guessing this right?

Yes, subconsciously it makes it hard to do things in live I want to do.

Can you give me an example of something you’d like to express to her, but you worry that she will worry and will try to talk you out of it? (and thus control you)?

Mhh, since the last encounter I don’t wanna express anything to her. I would like to express myself. Affection, a hug.

Can you give me an example of a request she makes on you, which you deem as not selfless, and then you can’t do it?

It’s simple things in the household clean the kitchen. Mostly it is support.

Thanks for asking.