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I am feeling so different than I did on May 1st when I created this thread. I am not suddenly cured of my loneliness and I am not 100 percent confidant that my feelings then won’t return but I feel so driven now. I have made an elaborate plan for life goals and how to approach them more involved than I have ever done before. Because I have so much to work on I feel I have to do it this way. So much ties into my feeling alone.
I have many goals in different areas but my first focus is eating well and sleeping well. Yes my ultimate goal is to do this to properly take care of my body but in my ultimate goal here to help with my loneliness it will help my self confidence to be happier with my body image. I have already made progress but do not want to be obsessed with constantly checking it. Part of me feeling attractive is my taking care of my body by eating foods that help me and drinking plenty of water.
I have written some affirmations for whenever my feelings start to spiral down so I have that. I also do have this forum and I believe this forum has really inspired me to be as driven as I am right now to do something about my problem.
As I am focusing on each goal I will not forget to be mindful of my thoughts on men and to change the way I think. Right now I am very optimistic and hopeful.
Lucy I am glad to hear someone say that they are inspired to keep trying and if what I write helps that along on any level that makes me happy.
Thank you Lucy. Right before I joined this forum I was very depressed and have had my ups and downs so I don’t know when I will be feeling optimistic or down. Right now I am very optimistic and it is on my list to soften my down periods so they don’t completely cloud my judgement.
A certain mantra upsets you or the idea of centering your feelings and letting go upsets you? I think I know what about it bothers you but I think even though it sounds detached the goal is to quiet the mind so I think we can make decisions with more clarity. I fortunality have had very pleasant feelings listening and repeating mantras. My emotions get to be too much when either my hormones kick in or I feel I am being treated as unimportant or as someone who just needs to be tolerated because she’s here. Of course I feel or think those thoughts more deeply other times than now. I think I have a real self esteem issue that like right now I can deal with and want to work on. Unfortunality also when my emotions get to be too much I tend to rant about everything I am feeling. There really isn’t anyone in my personal life I can do that with.Yes it is a very important part of my dream to have a relationship with a man and it is one of the reasons I want to change but my ultimate reason is I want to be the person I was meant to be when I was born and part of that is being open to love and acceptance and giving back to people I know and meet. One of my biggest problems in life is my extreme loneliness and I don’t want to be sad most of the time anymore but I have been feeling these things for years. I understand the importance of a person being happy with or without someone else but I want to experience a real connection with someone and have friends and have a family. That is what I dream of and also what I envy in others.
I felt I did love myself when I was younger but I was an extremely sensitive child and the get up and don’t cry environment amongst the often anger I experienced and saw between others growing up as well as the competitive school I went to where the strongest and happiest excelled…I felt abandoned. If you experienced pain of any kind in my family or the neighborhood your options seem to be to become more stoic and or use drugs to hide your pain. I fortunality did not turn to this growing up but I dealt with my undealt with pain by retreating from the anger in my family, from the other children who I felt just wanted to ridicule me and eventually not giving the rest of the world a chance because of these early experiences. Sadly both of my parents turned to alcohol or drugs as well as some of my mother’s siblings. I went to the library, museums or stayed in my room and imagined myself somewhere else, being someone else.
I do agree that people are attracted to people who are happy but also to people who show all human emotions in a healthy way. I think when one or two emotions take over our lives we seem less balanced to others. Like Anita and others have said we don’t feel an emotion all the time but people like me with the way I have allowed my life to go I often feel sadness and anger way too much but I never found a way to deal with it thinking if someone loved me and accepted me no matter what I would feel better. The problem is that people you never met before can’t really see the person you are inside and only experience what is on the surface.
I do think it is important to be yourself and we are ourselves under our pain which is why it might be good for us to let go and release it. We are always ourselves deep down.
Angela I totally respect your perspective. I really think we are the same people no matter what age we are and the struggle is not allowing our experiences to cover up our true selves. In my case I have let my experiences rule my life and only a handful of people are able to see the real me inside. I don’t even rocognize myself anymore and it often feels like this negative force has taken over my life and I am powerless over it. I have been waiting for someone to rescue me from it.
I respect your experiences the only difference is the length of time that they have affected our lives.Thank you for your empathy. I wish I was more embarrased by my situation because I had a family member once tell me that I really shouldn’t admit out loud that I have never had a relationship. I am way more secretive about it with aquatants and even a few friends. This is why I like posting on a public forum instead of people who know me. I often wish my family was more concerned when I was a teen staying in my room but I was firm and my grandfather who did try to get me help with a counselor eventually just let me do what I wanted. He was grieving his wife at the time and I don’t think he really knew what to do. The allowances he made for me didn’t really sit well with others in the family though. I just had a memory of my guidance counselor who I was in love with really expressing understanding for what I was going through. If everyone had been like him at that time I might have been less resistant to listening. I remember my female gym teacher stood there in the guidance counselors office and said she thought I was throwing a temper tantrum. Maybe I was. I had enough and felt powerless to bullying, to feeling used, to feeling that I was fated to be nothing special, being the recipient of verbal intimidation. Don’t know why that scene just popped in my head.
Angela I can relate to crying myself to sleep. I hope you do not do that as long as I have and hope you find what you want in your life. I feel for you and can relate to you and I agree, I believe that it won’t be forever for you or for me although I believe more in your ability.
I was raised Catholic and although I do find some things comforting there are many things I do not get and never did so when it comes to religion or belief rather I think it’s a very personal understanding that you come to. I am very open to hearing about all different perspectives when it comes to what someone believes. I approach it like those holistic flyers you see sometime that have different inspirational words and the flyer says take what you need. I do pray though for me personally but I am very open to all different beliefs
I have “friends” but I have difficulty maintaining a close relationship with anyone so I came to this forum for advice and an opportunity to communicate with people.
I absolutely should be doing the things I enjoy on the side but I don’t. I can only compare the reason I do not drive as to my views on living life. I won’t learn to drive because not everyone follows the rules. I won’t participate in a game if I know people might cheat. I do not want to be part of life with other human beings unless everyone is treated as equally valuable. I grew up with the thought that some are for reason just more valuable than others and no matter how well I behaved, no matter what grades I got, no matter how much love I could offer a person they will always see someone else as more valuable than I am. I don’t agree with that way of thinking. It’s just what has developed at a very early age. I literally decided one day in high school that I was going to my room and wanted to be left alone. My grandfather being the age he was compared me to Greta Garbo. Lol. I had heard of her name but I had to look her up in the library to see what he meant. When I was a teenager the library was my internet and it really was the only place that got me out of my room.
It is on my list of things to do though to get a better paying job hopefully in a stress free environment. Needless to say after losing my grandfather, the man basically taking care of me, I had to go into the cruel working world and it has proven to be a nightmare at times for me who really wanted to stay in my room and let me dream about the way I wish my life was. I was not spoiled or felt entitled is was my safety from the world even though I had enough to deal with at home from other people, not my grandfather. It’s wonderful that you take care of yourself and I as of yesterday will make a real effort to pay more attention to my looks. Getting in shape is part of that plan. I know it should be for myself but I think about how I can look and know it could help me in the relationship department or at least in the attraction department. If only I didn’t have to speak. lolI agree with you that there is someone out there for you and for me and taking baby steps to improving myself. I read somewhere recently that you can make all the long term goals you want but if you don’t change your daily habits you will get the same outcome you have always got. I hope and wish for you to find your special someone to share your life with. Thank you again.
Anita I have come up with a plan of some sort. It is starting out as the others did with many goals written but this time I added affirmations in the front of my binder to try to change my thought patterns. I know what to do intellectually, it’s my stubborn thoughts that I have been carrying around with me since I was a teen and then my emotions and sometimes my pmdd takes over and I go back to the beginning of feeling I need to do something.
I don’t know how to get around this because when any of the above kicks in I become incredibly negative and then all the obstacles come up. I don’t know how to participate in something unless everything is perfect. Like if I didn’t have financial woes I could pay for intensive personality makeover or physically be put back into shape.
I am feeling good about what I accomplished this weekend but know all too well my obstacles sure to come up: fear, hurt, loneliness, judging all by the comments of some. I wanted to share with you my feelings on some of the comments posted after some other online articles but not sure if it’s productive.
I also need to see some results rather quickly and become discouraged if I take away my coping methods and nothing comes of it. I have so many issues that are interlinked that I can not set aside even one of them.
I put myself on a more nutritional diet today and plan on walking back and forth to work, as well as some strength training and yoga this week. I want to do it for my health but it’s always in the back of my mind to acheive looking the way I onced looked. I know I am babbling now and even stopped writing about what I am afraid of in my goal settings.
I have a whole binder of things I need to focus on that I worked on this weekend as well as some physical work around the house maybe I am a little fatigued. I should post tomorrow after a bit of rest…
Lucy thank you, I never want to stop trying, stop learning, stop growing…
Yoga is a very personal experience and is mainly focused on concentration and the breath and that is where the poses begin. After you focus on your breathing and thoughts the physical poses come with time. Not sure if your yoga teacher was thinking of yoga as some kind of competition but I have fortunality been lucky to have very good yoga teachers who taught me that everyone can practice yoga. Unfortunality the limitations I experience I put on myself because I am competitive. I am my own worse enemy. I feel like the victum but follow the lead of my oppressors even though I know they are wrong. When I think about it, how messed up is that? lol.
For you I think you can find a much better yoga teacher. One who truly knows the foundation of a yoga practice.Lucy I don’t think I would be good communicating one on one with someone right now. I don’t feel as if I am dependable enough. For me communicating on a forum pretty much anonymously makes it easier “for me” to be honest. I have said things here I have not even told members of my family. I would actually like to continue posting on a more public forum until I am ready to communicate with someone directly which I don’t feel I am ready to do right now. I absolutely welcome you to post in this thread and would love to converse with you if you feel you want to. I am the opposite, I feel I can put it all out there to a lot of people I do not know personally but have difficulty having private conversations. I will retreat and hold back the way that I am right now.
I look forward to hearing more about you if you choose to post more.
Lisa
Have to continue on a new post…my phone. I know I need to change my views about men but how do I do that? It’s like I am waiting for someone to prove to me that I am wrong. I am also not sure I have been completely honest on this thread about what I think because what I think might be actually reinforcing my ideas about men. I don’t think I am good enough so do I focus on men who would feel that way as well? That really makes me sad.
Thank you for the kind words Anita. I feel very lucky to have found this forum.
I agree that I have to get to the foundation of what I need to do to feel like a whole person. It will be very hard to not look for it from other people because I have been searching for that all my life. I have to start over.
Thank you Anita for encouraging me to post more. I appreciate it. I wrote move on with this thread because I felt I was taking up too much of people’s time, yours included. What I have talked about in this thread fro7m my input is really what I have been going over in my head for years but I have new perspectives.
I feel as if I should be actually doing something about my problem. That has to happen. I have had wonderful input from everyone and though I do accept a lot I am not sure if I really feel it all. I feel I need to jump in the pool to see my reactions and think I would better understand myself.
With all my feelings about men I truly think my biggest obstacle is going to be how I feel about myself. I am super critical of myself. I feel as if I have the abilty to look very good because I have before and if I can keep my stress level down I can get into shape. My almost insurmountable problem is not feeling I deserve anyone. It is so ingrained in me to think I am not part of the human race and feeling like I come from another planet. I feel so poorly about myself that if anyone pays attention to me now I wonder what is wrong with their judgement. My self esteem is not good.
Another obstacle is getting myself hopeful by starting another project to improve my life and then giving up and abandoning it….and then becoming angry and depressed…
Lucy, I do not think there is a private message option as I have tried to do that as well. I know it is a lot to read. I tried to explain the way my life has pretty much gone on since birth so it took a bit of time.
How did we grow up different? I am sorry that you grew up in an unfriendly environment and that you have felt lonely. I think being an adult can only get someone so far in overcoming feelings you carry with you for a long time. I am happy for you though if you can resist negativity. Sometimes, actually a lot of the time I feel like a failure because others were able to overcome things I was not able to overcome. I can’t tell you how many times I have watched or read about someone who seemed to have the same problems as I have and the announcer or the author of the book says “and she has been married to”….or “and her children”….and then I don’t listen or read anymore because they are really not like me at all. It feels like no one out there is like me.
Survival was my only option in life. Nothing else was there for me. I used to be very active. I also practised yoga and always felt amazing after the class. Meditation is very difficult for me. It’s easier with other people because I feel others will see me not meditating so it pushes me into doing it. When I’m alone I give up after 1 minute. Something always distracts me and I have no one to answer to but myself. I believe in it though but I can’t do anything for myself unless I know I am being critiqued however subtly. I know ut works wonders for anxiety and I applaud you for being able to do it.
I want so badly to be able to help people but sometimes I wonder if I am able to give anything to anyone. Thank you for posting in my thread and I will certainly try to help you as well. Feel free to post in this thread if you like anything that you need help with. If I can not offer good advice I’m sure others can. Whatever you like.
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. 