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HelcatParticipantHi Calm Moon
I’m sorry to hear that you had a difficult childhood with your parents being in an abusive relationship and a family friend tried to abuse you. That’s horrible to go through.
I’m glad that you got therapy and it helped you to recover from your trauma.
You’re clearly a very strong person and you’ve done a lot of work on yourself already.
I think that focusing on building your own life is a good idea. You deserve to have a life and not to put things on hold for your family forever.
I imagine that it is difficult to step back from your mother’s feelings because it is a lifelong habit for you. You have always comforted her? Is this correct?
The difficulty is that you cannot save someone from the struggles that they keep choosing for themselves. All you can really do is focus on taking care of yourself and hope that your family are inspired by that and do the same for themselves. Honestly, these things can rub off.
The less you help people out, the more they will learn to develop and rely on their own resources.
You have done a great job taking care of everyone else. Now it is your turn and it isn’t selfish to do that because everyone’s responsibility is to take care of themselves.
Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantPart of me doesn’t believe it is possible to step back from it. But I know that the first step is believing that it is possible.
HelcatParticipantIt is complicated. There is some resistance to stepping back from emotions tied to past trauma.
I’ve identified with these emotions for so long. It is hard to unpick myself from them. Fear especially. I learned to exist with fear running in the background.
I learned that some emotions don’t even mean what is initially apparent. Hurt also means caring.
Things are getting better with my husband. It helps when there is no drama fuelling things.
HelcatParticipantHi John
Thank you for being understanding.
My son finally slept through the night again! Hooray! It seems that switching to one nap worked. 😊
That is a talent to be able to draw hands. A lot of artists struggle with that. I have tiny hands. 😂 My husband has very graceful hands.
That sounds like a lovely tattoo. It would be interesting to pick Banksy’s brain, it is a shame he is so elusive. I suppose it is also half the fun. I hadn’t heard of the burning of his artwork. I looked it up, apparently it happened after the shredding event. He apparently filmed the burning of his art and sold the rights to the video. Very interesting!
I love the sand mandalas.
To be fair, a million words is not thaaaat much. Only 2000 pages which would take approximately 400ish hours to produce. There is another saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. From another perspective, the teacher in your quote might be looking for a measure of basic competency in a student or them to prove desire to learn.
Oh yes, I believe the best art quote is a universal truth.
There is nothing wrong with being present and giving life your all.
Haha I’m sure once he’s actually vacuuming it won’t be fun for long.
You have some fascinating friends!
Hmm well common things like losing a job, relationships ending and death of a loved one are all considered to be traumatic. I find it interesting that effects of culture on what is to be considered traumatic. Lots of people react differently.
I hope that you’re having a good weekend?
Love, peace and blessings! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Kane
Since you’re going to become a psychologist, I would encourage you to look into Buddhism. Some psychological techniques are even based on it these days. I’m not suggesting that you become Buddhist. I just thought it might be helpful for your career.
I found that psychology has limitations, but Buddhism operates outside of the limitations of psychology. It is a way to continue healing and growing beyond what therapy can provide.
Emotional mastery. Not my goal personally. Healing and growth. The way I see things, my more challenging emotions are memories of trauma. Sometimes those memories need to be let go, so they don’t follow me around in the present day. A habit to overcome.
Lovely to see you around again! I’m keen to read your thoughts.
Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Stacy
I hope you don’t mind if I pray for you to get it? 😊 That’s a really healthy perspective though about if it happens it’s meant to be.
To have this level of insight about the rumination on your ex is progress in itself! I totally understand what you mean about these things being like an addiction.
You don’t have to make a decision immediately. You can always sit with it for a bit to decide what you would like to do next. It might be silly but sometimes I find flipping a coin helpful for understanding how I feel about decisions. If I flip a coin and get the wrong decision I feel disappointed. Perhaps you might have an instinctual reaction to something like this?
I think that you are stronger than you realise to get to this point. You want to be free of it. You deserve to be free of it. ❤️
Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantSomething came up today. It was wondering why some things are easier for me to let go than others. Why was I resistant to it? This floated around in my head a bit.
I realised that there was a feeling of deserving it. Letting the feeling be and watching it came up. Self-hatred. Sitting with the feeling and watching but not interacting a memory came up. I feel like that was why I started hating myself.
My mother hated us for ruining her life and wished that we didn’t exist. She was punishing us for existing and for making her life more difficult. The hatred was instilled by her.
Next, anger came up. Anger at my mother. As a mother myself, I can’t imagine treating a child that way. No matter how difficult things are.
The two feelings meld together, like yin and yang at the core of my being.
I was able to comfort myself. I think looking after my son I’m starting to develop a supportive mummy voice. That’s new.
Earlier in the day I was feeling a bit down and like since having a baby I have lost touch with myself. Everything I felt confident in about myself is now gone. I didn’t know what to like about myself now because I don’t want to centre myself entirely around my son.
But what came up later in the day answered my own question. I think that kind voice inside of me who supported myself is something to like about myself.
It was just sitting and watching the emotions unfold and letting go. It is funny how thoughts just chug along by themselves sometimes. I realised that I identify with them too much.
Technically, these feelings of self-hatred are not even technically mine. They are within me, but they are a recording of what happened in my childhood. And the anger, a recording of what I felt in my childhood.
I couldn’t express anger as a child because it was too dangerous.
HelcatParticipantHi John
Apologies, I don’t have much time to write at the moment because my son has been having difficulties sleeping since he has been ill. I’m at the stage where I’m exhausted because he was up every hour last night. We’re trying dropping a nap and seeing how that goes.
I’m sure that I’ll be able to write properly again soon. Last time I was literally falling asleep writing which is why I had to cut it short.
Love, peace and blessings! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Jana
Thank you for your kind wishes! It might not be easy, but it is a good life though. 😊 I will be able to write more soon hopefully. My son has been having difficulties sleeping ever since he was sick. Too tired to write much at night sadly.
Love, peace and blessings! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Jana
What a lovely quote from the sutta! I like the summary of the video too. I will have to get around to watching it, it’s just hard because I don’t have much time atm.
Absolutely spot on about the other person picking up on the vibes and negativity causing issues in a relationship.
Love, peace and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Gage
It’s good to hear that you have a therapist to support you through this. I think that your plan of waiting to speak to your therapist is wise.
It sounds like you’re being really hard on yourself for losing your temper and throwing the cookies.
You have a good level of awareness of your own difficulties. One way to think of this is as codependency. The issue occurs when you put your partner’s needs before your own. You do this out of kindness and a desire to help her. But the best way to help her is to help yourself. Tune into your feelings when these things arise and place a firm boundary and leave the room or the building when she cannot be reasoned with in this “black out” state.
I would say that a difficulty with couples counselling is that it is hard to find a counsellor that doesn’t favour one party and I think that causes issues when a therapist takes sides. So if you do go down that route it is important to find someone compassionate to you both.
I say this from experience. I have had counselling with my husband and it upset him and made the therapy pointless when she was being quite hard on him. I have also seen other couples experience the same issue too. Ironically, it was better talking to someone that knew us and cared for us both because they didn’t take sides.
It is up to you both whether you decide to separate or stay together. I think that the fact that you are thinking about these things and considering your wellbeing is a great thing for you. Kudos and good luck!
Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi John
Haha I was wondering if that was his breed or his name. 17 years is a good age. I can tell how loved he is. ❤️
I’m a practical person and I enjoy philosophy too.
I’m trying to teach my son to enjoy cleaning up. One of his favourite things is the vacuum cleaner because we use it a lot. I suspect he thinks we use it because we like it. In teaching him to have fun cleaning up, I have to have fun cleaning up. I didn’t foresee this turn of events. 😂
I suspected that you might be the kind of person who is into a bit of everything. It is hard to be truly great at something if you have so many interests. But it has its upsides, being good at a number of things and being a well rounded person.
I love the passion you have for the quotes that you share. I did actually get to listening to the broadcast about gender and health around Christmas. Fascinating stuff, thank you for recommending it! I have a thought about why there might be such a difference on the immune system based on gender. Pregnancy. The immune system has to be variable for women due to pregnancy. The immune system has to be intelligent enough to recognise the baby should not be harmed and also to react aggressively to threats to the baby. For example, people get ill. This is actually a known cause of autism, being unwell during pregnancy. There are actually quite a lot of changes that the female body has to go through as a result of pregnancy. After breastfeeding, the tissue dies and returns back to the original state. To even carry a child your muscles and ligaments need to stretch. Organs get squished together in the third trimester. And the amount of blood in the body increases dramatically to support the growing life. It’s a very damaging and gruelling process. At the same time, healing capabilities are improved to try and combat that damage.
To be fair, I think a lot of creative types produce a variety of quality. It would be hard for everything to be exceptional. I’m not surprised that you have some good ones. If you feel comfortable sharing, I would love to read them. 😊
Apologies is going to have to be a two parter.
Love, peace and blessings! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Stacy
Happy New Year! It’s great to hear that you have a full time job now and have applied for an apartment. Is it correct that I remember you find living with your family stressful? Apologies if I’m getting mixed up.
I think you’re underestimating how much progress you’ve made by focusing solely the ex situation. It seems to me like there have been some big changes. 😊
It’s good to hear that you don’t have cancer even though the cells are abnormal. You do your best to take good care of your health. I think that is really important.
Regarding the ex, it sounds like you’re feeling like you lack closure over the breakup. You’ve suggested a couple of options. Do you think that you could say your piece and then block and delete him? Or do you think you would be drawn into talking to him?
Ultimately, the choice is yours whether you do decide to confront him or whether you choose instead to delete him. I don’t think there is a wrong answer. So I would suggest, thinking about what would make you feel best? Whatever you decide, it sounds like it is a new chapter of your life starting. Apt for the new year.
Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Gage
It sounds like your girlfriend is dealing with a lot of issues and has been through a lot. You’ve clearly supported her. I can understand the frustration and anxiety about her behaviour, especially as this issue keeps arising. I think it’s healthy that you are focusing on taking care of your mental health.
I have a question. Are you in therapy? When you have a partner who has unique issues like this it is often helpful to have a therapist to deal with any complicated feelings that arise as a result of the difficulties. If you think about it, it a way you are a caregiver to her and with that comes an element of burnout.
You are spot on that you should not give up your friends to make the relationship easier.
But I don’t think that the problem is related to you or even ultimately your friends. It sounds to me like she is dealing with massive amounts of shame and self hatred.
I would think of a way to handle when she brings up this paranoia in a healthy way and set boundaries. Taking a break from talking about these things when you are both upset might be a good idea. Sitting next to her and giving her a hug might be helpful when she is upset.
Quite often when people have arguments they are trying to communicate needs. Ultimately, she is seeking reassurance from you about how you feel about her. She is trying to make up for her lack of self-love with your caring for her.
She is externalising the problem because she doesn’t know how to deal with her own feelings of inadequacy.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said so far?
Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏
HelcatParticipantI just had a thought about the art of doing things perfectly which is a thing in Japan. I like how it can be applied to anything. Sometimes people just really want to make amazing tempura. Sometimes there is beauty in perfection.
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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. 