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HelcatParticipantI’m thankful for my family, that I have financial security and a home.
It’s good to remember what I’m thankful for when life is overwhelming.
HelcatParticipantWishing you all the best! 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Annie
I’m sorry to hear that you are suffering.
Children are innocent and should be protected. You did nothing wrong, you were never to blame. I’m sorry that your brothers hurt you. Children have a habit of blaming themselves when others hurt them. It’s not true though. Children are just unable to protect themselves from danger and easy to take advantage of.
You mentioned difficulties with relationships ending. Would you like to share more about that?
I think life is difficult for people in general. I met one person who was 18 that had no experiences of trauma. It was unheard of to me. Most people unfortunately have something… Ideally, I think pain teaches us to be kind to others because we can understand suffering.
The only way I know to overcome fear is to face it head on. It isn’t easy though and takes a lot of practice and perseverance. Exposing myself to lots of positive experiences has helped me too.
HelcatParticipantHi Anonymous
It sounds like you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself even though you’re struggling emotionally. Adding more pressure to yourself when you’re feeling rough already isn’t usually helpful. Taking care of your needs and being kind to yourself, refilling your cup could be helpful?
All of your questions take time to answer and as you know, you will need to find those answers yourself.
There is no right answer, no right way to live. Living is about figuring out what you want from life. What you care about, what you love. Everyone’s answer is different. Have faith and give yourself time to find your answers. Be kind to yourself!
When you are feeling a little better take some time to reflect on what you want from your life.
What does success and achievement mean to you?
Wishing you all the best! 🙏
July 24, 2023 at 6:44 am in reply to: Seeking for suggestion dealing with the situation I’m in #420992HelcatParticipantHi Orion82!
I’m glad to hear that your efforts at a non-traditional lifestyle and building your own business are paying off!
There is a lot of pressure in this world to behave in certain ways and do certain things. Some people feel threatened or jealous of others breaking the mould. Some people just believe that any attempt to do so will fail and seek to prevent suffering. It sounds like people have said and done things that hurt you during your journey to create your ideal lifestyle. Do you want to talk about it?
I’m curious to hear about your experience of building your non traditional lifestyle. Outside of the issues with people, was it difficult? Were there any other issues?
I wonder if all in all trying to build this lifestyle has been a struggle (including dealing with people)? Sometimes when we have struggled for a long time our bodies and minds can get stuck in that mode even when things are getting easier.
Are things getting easier for you in your life now that business is picking up? Are you resting and taking enough time to take care of yourself? I hear that running your own business can be demanding?
Especially when you are feeling the difficulties of the past, I think it’s important to take extra care of yourself and try to build some good memories in the present.
Proving other people wrong might have been good motivation in the past, but it sounds like you’re achieving all of the things that you wanted to. Now what was once motivation is no longer serving you and bringing unhappiness. My therapist used to say that it’s okay for the need for a coping mechanism to pass. It’s important to reflect on how it did help in the past whilst recognising when it is no longer useful.
Habits take time to change. Please be patient with yourself. It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling.
Eager to hear your thoughts.
Wishing you all the best ! 🙏
July 13, 2023 at 1:44 am in reply to: He said he loved me and woke up one day feeling confused #420797HelcatParticipantHi Eva
I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through a break up and that one of your best friends was going through end-of life care.
To be honest, it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong.
It sounds like his feelings changed. What caused that? It could be anything. It even sounds like he could have been going through a period of depression. Just from how negative he became.
I think your first instincts were right about not getting involved too quickly. It’s very easy for people to get caught up in the romance of the early stages of a relationship. That early excitement does pass, it’s a natural thing to happen and the perfect early relationship behaviour doesn’t last forever. He started to show you who he really was warts and all, not just the “perfect” side of him.
It’s amazing that he was there for you in a time of need and that he treat you well. I think you did a good job protecting yourself after those traumatic relationships. It’s such a shame things didn’t work out.
Wishing you all the best! 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Kodi
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve experienced anxiety and depression for your whole life. It seems that it running in the family might be a reason why you feel this way, I think that’s enough of a reason.
I’m glad that you have many good things in your life. I doubt that you are terrible person. You sound like you have a lot of care and empathy for others. That means that you are a good person. You deserve to have good things in your life! ❤️
Please feel free to share your thoughts.
Wishing you all the best! 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi I
Good question! For me, my main focus in life is working on my mental and physical health. I love my family and my pets. I appreciate being able to support myself working. I’m studying to improve my capacity to support myself and my family in the future. I also care about helping people and enjoy watching tv.
I’m sorry to hear that you are experiencing a lifelong depression, eating disorder and a number of other conditions. I’m sorry to hear about the difficulties with your partner too.
I can understand why you don’t feel like your needs are being met. They aren’t! I have a lot of empathy for people who are neurodivergent, or have mental and physical health issues as I experience these difficulties myself. But I think the most important factor is trying. It doesn’t sound like he is trying at the moment. Would you agree?
It sounds very unfair for you to go to work and manage all of the housework when you get home.
Ill people can only do what they can manage, but even a little help I’m sure you would appreciate. It’s sounds like it’s not just the physical side of things that is missing, but the emotional side too. At the moment, your partner isn’t being a partner. You’re his carer. It’s honestly a very difficult situation that you are in!
Please feel free to share your thoughts.
Wishing you all the best! 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Peter
Sorry for the late reply. It’s been a unique time for me and I wasn’t in a place to process things emotionally.
There’s a lot of wisdom to be found in experiencing the moment.
I always felt that people are very much programmed by our experiences. I wonder if deprogramming is part of emptiness? Perhaps, not in the traditional meditation sense. But at some point our practices start to touch our lives.
I get the feeling that you’re a very courageous person Peter. How are you doing? I always enjoy talking with you.
Hopes and fears are complicated. Sometimes we are afraid things won’t be achieved. Sometimes things we hoped for aren’t appreciated once we attain them. I feel like vulnerability is key, the willingness to courageously experience things good and bad, without programming dictating behaviour. Perhaps a form of emptiness?
Wishing you all the best! 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Sarah
Thank you for your support and kind words!
I find that it can take time for emotions to catch up to what we logically know. It sounds like you did the right thing for your friend at the time by being there for them and empathising. I’m glad that you recognise it wasn’t your fault. It’s painful to lose a friend and your desire for things to be different also comes from a place of love.
Thank you for sharing the quote that helped you. I’ve found it to be true, maybe not immediately but over time. Another quote that it reminds me of is “The only constant in life is change.” Heraclitus. I’m a big fan of hope and change but patience and understanding are key to keeping expectations realistic. All we can really do is try and take one day at a time.
Side effect of medications are tricky to manage! I hope that you can get things worked out soon. 🙏
I agree, something that helped me was writing down my fears and then the outcome of situations as it taught me that my fears were unrealistic and disproportionate. Knowing this, it’s easier to manage my anxiety now.
Reflecting on times where I handled emergencies well helped me to develop confidence in my ability to handle stressful situations. Stress still sucks though!
I think it’s amazing that you’ve done so many great things! Giving feedback on treatment programs and advocacy are incredible feats.
I’ve always wanted to be involved in activism around rape. But unfortunately I’m not ready yet, it’s still a trigger for me. Definitely something for me to aspire to one day!
Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of therapy and I do see those qualities in myself.
I agree that abuse is never justified. I think that it takes hard work and compassion for people to overcome their trauma. I learned when I was young it’s very easy to have no desire for self control and take pain out on others. It can be hard to make changes, but it’s incredibly worthwhile.
I think the difficulty is that whilst I’m not in that situation anymore, I still remember it and I feel like these experiences become a part of us. A part that I believe can be healed.
It’s difficult to explain but the way I conceptualise it is there is who we are when we are emotionally stable and not triggered. Then there are depressive or anxious thoughts that are related to memories of trauma.
I’ve done some further work as the habitual si thoughts arise. Confronting my mother. Not all of it was forgiving and understanding. A lot of it was anger. I think my therapist would be happy that I’ve been able to get to this point finally. It was never safe at home for me to be angry as my mother escalated the abuse in response.
I noticed that some anxious and depressed thoughts remind me of other influences in my life. I know people that have struggled with trauma and depression and I think even though it’s not abuse, as a child it’s something that can be easily internalised if adults overshare deepest fears. It’s kind of scary how much kids pick up of the world around them. That’s why I think who we choose to spend time with is important. Having good influences helped me a lot.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that people who suffer from mental health conditions are a bad influence on children. Quite the opposite. But there are some people who manage their depression well and others who don’t. It’s the latter category that I believe can cause some issues. But the world is full of unique issues that it’s impossible to protect children from. As long as people love their kids and do their best to protect them, I think that’s all children really need. Learning to deal with issues is just part of growing up.
Sorry for rambling! Wishing you all the best 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Sarah
Thank you for your kindness and sharing! I really appreciate it, especially since you used to suffer in silence. I’m sorry to hear that things are still hard in general. It sounds like you’ve had a difficult life. I think everyone deserves a break, especially kind people. I hope good things come your way. I will definitely check out the reading recommendations. ☺️
I hope you know that you did nothing wrong by sharing your feelings with the patient. Their death was not because of you.
I agree that things are senseless and I find that comforting. I used to blame myself for my mother not loving me when I was younger and realising that it was just circumstance being born to her and she was the messed up one was a relief. I’m no longer in contact.
Learning to accept pain and let go is hard. Well done on accepting it today!
My therapist used to say that pain from trauma doesn’t disappear but it does get smaller and easier to bear as you heal. I’ve found this to be true, but still I have an irrational hope that one day it will heal completely.
Reporting back on my experience with the role play my therapist used to recommend. I don’t think it worked out quite the way that she intended. Instead of a “confrontation” I ended up forgiving her. I didn’t ever think I would be capable of that. It was quite unexpected.
I realised that she was quite young when she had me, and was knocked up by a guy 10 years her senior who had a habit of abandoning women once he had children with them. She wasn’t ready to be alone with 2 kids and before she ever met my father she’d already had traumatic experiences. Another thing was that she didn’t trust anyone and was very much alone. I think she had 3 friends over 15 years. 1 who she betrayed, 1 who died and another who chose to take me in and that ended that relationship.
I feel like people are made up of the people they spend time with and the experiences they have. She didn’t have help. She chose to re-enact her own abuse in the role of the abuser to make herself feel powerful and she hated herself for it. None of this is any excuse for what she did or makes any of it okay. I hope that she changes.
On the other hand, I have been very lucky. I have had a lot of help. Not just from therapists, but people in general. I have never been alone like that.
HelcatParticipantHi Sarah
Thanks for your advice. Wishing you all the best! 🙏
I’ve actually had a small breakthrough with this recently.
When I was a child I had my abusive mother’s voice in my head. It was very clear.
Over the years as I worked on my mental health and learned to be kinder to myself it stopped sounding like her. If that makes sense.
Now that I think about it, these days this anxious voice as it were might be more polite. But the sentiment is still designed to make me feel the way that she would. She wanted to make me feel alone in the world, unable to trust other people. She wanted me to be afraid, so she could feel powerful. She wanted me to feel like I was incapable of protecting myself from her.
Historically, this voice was around in my weakest, most vulnerable moments.
One thing that my schema therapist always wanted me to do was role play and speak to my mother as it were to challenge her but at the time I was too afraid even imagining her. My therapist alway challenged her for me.
So I guess I’m going to try challenging these thoughts thinking of them as coming from memories of my mother and see how it goes.
I’ll report back on how things go!
HelcatParticipantHi Freddie
I believe you when you say she was a good person and love and miss her. But you did have valid concerns when it came to debt and her child. When you want to marry someone it makes sense to talk these things through deeply it is important to know these things about a life partner. It’s concerning that you had been together for 7 years and she was unwilling to speak about such things for all that time.
I once broke up with someone I loved and was ready to marry because they were unwilling to have difficult conversations. It’s not a way to live.
It’s sad to hear that when you were in the on again off again phase once again she refused to address your concerns and instead it became about how you hurt her by leaving.
I think that if she had just talked to you and been willing to share you would have stayed and this would never have happened.
I doubt she could replace the connection that you both had so easily. What she has now is something different and new. It doesn’t compare.
HelcatParticipantHi Freddie
Thanks for clarifying that you were together for 7 years and then the on again off again element of the relationship started. Apologies for the misunderstanding, it is difficult to understand the context without further context. It does sound like a different situation to what I experienced.
It sounds like you broke up for a reason. You mentioned communication issues in the relationship and the final break up with her choosing to date someone else after telling you that she loved you 4 weeks prior does sound like another communication issue. I can understand why that hurts.
Do you regret your decision of breaking up and wish that you had instead stayed together? You might not want to go into details. Or if you wish to please feel welcome. But surely you made that decision for a valid reason?
Wishing you all the best! 🙏
HelcatParticipantHi Freddie
I’m sorry to hear that you’re having a difficult time processing the break up and your ex dating someone else.
I’ve been in a similar situation myself and honestly I just got tired of being pushed away all the time. The on again off again is a very unhealthy relationship dynamic. At some point you do take no for an answer. She had likely been at that point for a while before she ever met someone new.
Do you honestly want to be with this person permanently? You had 7 years to figure it out and it sounds like largely what was in your mind while you were dating was that you weren’t interested in commitment. Which is fine if you aren’t a commitment kind of person. But a lot of people are and when one person wants commitment and the other doesn’t, the relationship doesn’t work out.
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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. 