Thank you anita. I think my meditations are really helping me to calm my mind and just be present one day at a time. This week, I have been beginning to feel hopeful for my future again and I am able to bring most of my thoughts back to myself and my own healing path, soon after they tend to try and go back into the recent past. I acknowledge them, but the intensity of their impact on me is slowly becoming less. They have not been all consuming sadness for 5 days now. Hurrah! Thank you for being part of my journey again. You are such a bright shining light on tinybuddha and I send you lots of lovely energy over this weekend. 🙂

Hi anita

I hope you’re having a nice weekend?

I went out for the day to a theme park with my friends yesterday – I found out that I don’t tolerate rides as well as I used to when I was in my 20’s! It was a very good day and I felt very happy for the most part, however, my mind did keep wandering off to my ex partner. I knew he was at his friend’s charity boxing match yesterday and he had originally invited me along to whilst we were together (before he did a U-turn and ended it). I found myself wondering what he was up to at the charity evening and I really wished I could have been there with him and that things were different. This made me feel so sad, which has continued to linger all of today and made me feel a heaviness again. I have been trying to fight reminiscing of the happier times and ignore how I felt in those times, but my mind just wanted to go back for today. So I let it have it’s place in the moment and had a good cry. Thoughts of my termination also come up which I also cried for. I feel a bit lighter after letting it all out and I am hoping that I can refocus on the present from tomorrow again.

Why do we tend to focus so much on the person who hurts us and disappoints/walks away from us? I am thinking that it is part of the grieving and healing process. Letting go and acceptance of what is, is very hard for me to do. Although I feel this situation has happened in order to make me grow emotionally and spiritually. I cannot help but miss him and how I felt around him, despite it being a short relationship , he had a profound effect on me and I was ready and willing to progress our connection more deeply. Some people just have an effect on your entire being and shake your world up. Unrequited affection and feelings are so painful. I’m planning on writing an unsent letter to him where I write down everything I feel and want to say to him. It will be like a journal / letter that I do not send. I’m hoping it will help me release more.

Having faith and putting trust into uncertainty and the unknown outcomes is a huge challenge for me to tackle. It has been a coping and protective method for me for so many years, to try and take control of situations so that I feel safe. It hasn’t worked though as I’ve been hit with the harsh reality that you cannot control everything, especially other people’s feelings towards you. No matter how much you wish it were different. If only I could see the bigger perspective outside of my grief.

Hi anita

You’re very welcome. I am benefitting so much from our conversation and I hope that you don’t mind continuing for as long as we need and/or want to.

I’m very sorry to hear that your mother did/said harmful things intentionally towards you. Again, it just shows what a strong and determined person you are having come through that and continuing to do your best to heal.

I have noted down all of your advice in the last paragraph and will check in with it daily, every time I hear the inner voice creeping in. It is also about creating new habits out of the new thinking patterns. I honestly never knew how out of reality and inaccurate my feelings and thoughts have been throughout my life. Despite knowing deep down that there was something amiss and that life shouldn’t feel like that. It’s going to be a journey but they say that awareness of it all is the first and most key aspect. Thank you for sharing your methods. I will be out for the day tomorrow, so I will continue talking with you on Sunday. Lots of blessings.

Hi anita

Sorry for the late reply. The last couple of days have been quite busy. I had a job interview yesterday for an old job that I enjoyed – and I got it! Yesterday was the first day that I felt rather ‘normal’, instead of feeling anxious and confused with an overactive thoughts. It felt such a relief. I have started meditating every morning in the last few days and I have found that it is really helping with my anxiety for the rest of the day. It grounds me so that I am able to actually function and feel less fear of uncertainty for that day.

You are right about the sensitivities as a child. I must have become very aware of subtle cues and tones of voice as it seems to be like an internal radar now for me.

I have read elsewhere online that this is the case with healing. It isn’t a linear process as we would hope it would be. I’ve realised that in the last 6 weeks of one day feeling quite optimistic then the next day not wanting to get out of bed and experiencing a bad tension headache.

I’d like to say that I think you should be incredibly proud of yourself, seven years on. You have a lot of insight and wisdom, which you are using to help heal others on their journey by being on here. So I thank you for that, as you are the only person who has consistently communicated with me on here when I posted for help. I am very grateful.

Am I right in saying that when you say “you will be able to disengage”, that the action you take is consciously interrupting that negative voice that pops up alongside anxiety (in my case)? So as soon as you hear that criticism in your mind, you can say something like “I hear and acknowledge you, but this is not how I do things anymore, I have a new way of being and feeling”. I’m trying to make this a new habit of ‘interruption’, as it cuts it off as soon as it pops up. It’s a way of acknowledging but also taking over with compassion. Hence building new neuro pathways.

It was my parents who both told and taught me to stay small and keep my head down. My dad did it by pushing me to just go along with the ‘rest of them’. Leave school, get a good job (aka only a teacher as anything else isn’t reliable enough – I didn’t end up being a teacher by the way), get married and have kids. Almost insinuating to stay in the line and don’t venture outside of it because it wouldn’t be successful or good enough to do something out of. He came from a “if you work hard you’ll be safe and secure financially” background, with not much emotion in the approach at all. My mum, has verbally announced “keep your head down and get on with it”, when referring to a previous work conflict that my brother was involved in. He of course rebelled and spoke his mind, of which he ended up being respected for and still works for the company. I did then tell my mum that keeping quiet and not speaking up at work, is not always the best route when you are being treated unfairly (how I wish I took my own advice!). She replied that he took the risk of being sacked from his job by speaking out. This didn’t happen. My mum has always played it safe and small in her own life, personally and professionally. She has been offered several job promotions where her manager recognised potential in her, but she has always refused to take anything else on (she works as a cleaner in a school). She never gave much of a reason as to why she refused to progress. To me, I got the impression that because she doesn’t believe in herself, she refused to try it or take the risk.

Both of these situations came into my head as it reflects a message of “you get what you’re given, so just work with that and plod along, don’t take any notice of yourself if you’re unhappy, just get on with it because there’s not much else better”. But having said this, I have been incredibly successful in my work life and was able to buy my first own home at 26 years old. I know my parents were very proud of me as they both said that it is something they would never have achieved at my age. So perhaps underneath they wanted me to break out and away, but didn’t know how best to show me or tell me? As far as emotional growth goes and as per romantic relationships – I have been clueless and stuck for years, as we discussed, as the focus was never on being my best true self. Always on making someone else the focal point. At least I’m starting to learn now.

I hope your week is going well and I’d love to hear a bit more about what and how you act / react practically in order to change the neural pathways? What are your methods?

For me, it’s more of an ability to read and sense/feel others emotions and changes of energy. I have discovered that I have a very accurate sense of feeling and knowing the shift in someone’s energy and mood, before they say something. This often happens with a romantic partner when they are “emotionally shifting down a gear”. I sense very subtle changes in their body language towards me and I can just feel the change in their mood and energy. I was able to feel utter depression of a previous partner when he was experiencing an episode, but didn’t verbally tell me how he felt. I told him that he was making me feel so miserable being in his energy. He of course didn’t understand how I could feel what he felt. He looked at me like I was so odd. I can’t explain it in any other way. This happens with some new people that I meet too. I’m also very drawn to healing modalities and have always felt like I haven’t really belonged. I find the world rather harsh, confusing and often feel lost (I’m feeling very confused and lost today actually). I’m not quite sure where I fit in, as deep down I feel I am happier when in a daydream and meditating! I feel safe “elsewhere”. I tend to love very deeply, more than I receive back, hence then having to grapple with self worth and rejection. I am learning that I need to develop a morning habit of building up my psychic and energetic field protection, because due to my recent circumstances, it has completely broken my entire being open, so I’m feeling really overwhelmed with noises, places and heavy energy. Even that from my mum, who I spent some hours with this morning. I could feel her sense of negativity and a “oh well, that’s just the way life is” downtrodden mentality. I had to have a hot bath and sleep when I got home because I felt like my head was going to explode! My world just feels yuck and heavy today. I’m hoping it starts to lift after meditation in a while.

I understand your point. Yes in an unintentional way she did neglect our emotional needs because she herself, does not have healthy boundaries and mindset, that was what I was attempting to get across. I am defending her to a point, but this is just because I feel sad for her. I do acknowledge and understand the impact of her behaviour has all had on me, because here I am needing to unlearn everything I was ‘taught’ to believe about myself and life. When my relationship ended, it did come down to me thinking about choosing to carry on and face everything or literally giving up and opting out of this life. It breaks my heart that I feeling so desperate only a few weeks ago.

This ‘rebirth’ does incredibly hurt, because it’s made me realise how many years I have perceived and assumed the way life works or is ‘supposed to be’, is in fact not the way it was supposed to be at all. Over the last few weeks, I have questioned my entire purpose and identity on this Earth. I have needed to go back in time and thoroughly (and painfully) relive my feelings, thought patterns, habits and reactional behaviours upon each ‘rejection’ I have experienced. This most recent relationship has been the ultimate catalyst, cracking me open to my core to really face my issues that keep me stuck on the hamster wheel of externalising the need for unconditional love and safety. Going within is a whole new concept.

I’m trying not to feel envious of certain friends of mine who appear to ‘have it all sorted’ since they were teenagers and have long standing, strong, healthy and deeply connected relationships with their partners and are also independent women who do not question their worth. This is the representation of what I long for. I pray and hope that I can be a strong woman who can still stand tall and not shatter to pieces when ‘rejected’ in the future, because all I know is that I cannot feel trapped in this cycle of utter chaos anymore.

I told her that she is not that at all and that she is amazing for just being there with me when I need her. She then told me that she loves me. Which is something she appears to feel more comfortable with saying in more recent years.