Anita

I am doing well, how are you?

I have been prioritizing my mental health over the past few months. I am about 2 months away from earning my full therapy license which will mean i will finally have a consistent income, so that is a relief. Other than that I have been putting more time and effort into the relationship with myself, mainly through regular meditation, and compassionate self-reflection when journaling. I have been trying shift my attention to things that make me happy, i’m grateful for, and things i’m doing well. I had been away from journaling consistently for a couple years and now recognize why it was so helpful in maintaining a healthy relationship to myself.

I did end up breaking up with the girl i was seeing, but i was proud that i was able to date without having sex immediately for the first time. I was also  proud i honored my authenticity by ending a relationship that wasn’t a good fit. She was very critical of my career decisions, and just decisions in general and had alot of “should’s and shouldnt’s” for me every time we talked so i realized we were not a match in our development.

My current focus has been on living effortlessly meaning maintaining a state of not trying too hard, acceptance of what my current life circumstances are, and remaining present. When my wounded inner child is activated i am living in the past, so i’ve been working on responding to him compassionately while also keeping him at healthy distance, not too far away where i cant hear his cries (weed & alcohol), and not so close that he takes over my functioning (powerlessness, hopelessness).

Thank you for the well wishes Anita.

I’m trying my best to be more mindful this time around. The more I pay attention to what i’m feeling the deeper i’m realizing my wounds are. I experienced an intense anxiety last night when thinking about the possibility that she may not like me back and it made me want to delete her number and cut all contact. Thankfully I didn’t do that instead i reached out to her and said I’m excited to see her again, which is the truth, and she responded well to it.

That anxious feeling though was so intense for me. It started right in the middle of my abdomen just below my heart (solar plexus), and radiated outward through all my limbs and eventually came out through my eyes as tears. It wasn’t sadness, I believe it was fear of losing an attachment. It felt familiar, the same debilitating sensation that lasted for hours when i broke up with my first girlfriend. I’ve never been able to really take a step back and just watch how that sensation moves through my body until last night. I think if i can be slightly detached from that discomfort i can better control my response to it. So many times i have self-sabotaged relationships because of my response to that discomfort.

When I realized that sensation is not new, i began to wonder how far that feeling goes back, and tried to approach it like my inner child and was asking myself “what does he need?” and I the answer was safety. I cried alot after that realizing i have never felt safe in my life. I’ve worked very hard to build my skills so that I will likely be financially safe, but it was heartbreaking realizing i’ve had no relationships where i’ve felt safe.

I’m hoping i can find safety in relationships one day if I’m able to take care of myself well enough to keep trying, and taking risks.

Anita,

You are correct about the anger. I have been on a dating app for 2 weeks. My pattern is to get on it maybe go on a date if i’m lucky and dont get upset before deleting it and giving up, then trying again a couple months later. I didn’t recognize the anger festering under the surface until on tuesday this week i was skating and getting frustrated with not committing to a trick because i was afraid. I got angry, cursed, and tried to break my board.

I realized the anger wasn’t about me not committing to the trick, it was the frustration i feel with failed attempts to date, being afraid to commit to the trick was just another failure that triggered that. The frustration in my mind typically manifests itself in the thought of “what am i doing wrong that i can’t be loved?” then i get resentful because I think of all the things i do that “should” make me lovable. Obviously we are only entitled to our actions and not the outcomes of our actions. Meaning i can control my efforts to date, i can’t control whether anyone will want to date me, or love me.

I’ve been making an effort to be more mindful of my thoughts, body, and emotions. After that outbursts i went and sat in a secluded part of the park and just cried for 10-15min realizing i was sad, tired, and disappointed about the lack of love and support, and all the trauma that made me adopt these behaviors.  I feel heavy right now even just typing this out.

The anger is a secondary emotion, to the emotional fatigue and hopelessness i’m trying to bury in order to keep making an effort dating. I still haven’t deleted the dating app, and i’m telling myself i have to stay with it and make an effort in order to keep developing the part of me that can take care of my trauma responses/inner child

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by noname.

I have felt intense pain this week and was able to work through it and distance my trauma from my identity, and now have hope that my internal relationship can be improved and continue to get better, which can help me build the external relationships I need without sabotaging them. This week was tough but i’m happy how i treated myself.

Anita,

Thank you for compiling all of those random quotes, it really helps to highlight the cyclical nature of my moods.

I have considered medication a few times. The side effects from SSRI’s for me have greatly outweighed the benefits for which i experienced which was none. Medication for mood disorders is not something I have seen work to help people “heal” from their trauma, rather it helps them function in a disconnected world, and may help them “function” enough to do work in therapy. For me this is not the answer for a few reasons.

1) exercise is consistently shown to be as effective if not more effective than anti-depressant medications. I exercise frequently, i get the feel good neurotransmitters on a daily basis, SSRI’s have never had an effect greater than exercise for me personally.

2) Side effects (decreased libido, increased risk of suicide, serotonin syndrome, etc)

3) I’m already self-medicating with cannabis. We could go back and forth for months comparing research studies between cannabis and anti-depressants, i don’t want to.

4.) I’m committed to my philosophy of human connection and ready to accept the suffering. What this means is I have commitment to never killing myself. I have chosen an alternate path to treat my depression that will never involve pharmaceuticals. I want to discover what relief is possible through connection both internal and external, to give hope to the millions of people like me who haven’t found what they are looking for through pharmaceuticals, and hopefully create a model that can be easily taught and duplicatable in communities to help heal the world without so much need of “professionals”. It is obvious to me the societal disconnection or collective trauma we experience has sustained my depression, i want to help engage in healing this disconnection, not put a band-aid over it.

5.) I don’t want to mute my awareness. This is contrary to #3 because i am dampening my awareness through cannabis and sometimes alcohol, but the hope is that one day I can feel every inkling of a feeling until completion without a need to escape be it cannabis, alcohol, or SSRI’s. When I’m depressed i don’t feel, which is part of the problem, I’m not trying to run from my moods anymore, and SSRI’s would just be one more thing muting my awareness. This might be the most important reason for me, is that I want to be aware of my “symptoms” and create a life that is aligned with my needs using my “symptoms” as an indication of a need, not as some nemesis that needs to be defeated.

I feel like when people suggest medication to me it is because they want to help and don’t know how, even though just being heard is all i need from them. It suggests a discomfort with pain. Please don’t recommend medication to me. I don’t have bipolar disorder either, while my moods are cyclical they don’t fit criteria for bipolar, i don’t have the mania or hypomanic episodes, it’s more like a relief from the belief of “not good enough” which is boost for my motivation sure, but no where close to mania.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by noname.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by noname.

Thanks Anita,

Your imagery is a wonderful illustration of my experience. Think it’s time for me to give up on being loved by another though, too destabilizing to my life to think about right now. Maybe I’ll revisit my emotional needs later when I have some material security. Until then I think I will need to be willfully avoidant of the topic to avoid missing any work because of despair.

Anita

thanks for your response. You are correct when I’m in relationships I do feel that anxiety and anger along with the love or attachment.

I like the idea of visualizing love, I will try this tonight. I feel like my dreams have been doing this a lot for me lately. Dreams of love and connection seem to be the only ones I have or can remember. Sometimes upon waking up it can be tough realizing the connection I felt was in a dream. I have a harder time with pleasant dreams like those when I feel bad about myself, luckily the few I’ve had over the past weeks have felt comforting.

“The meaning/ benefit is in your child-like cognitive understanding of your pain, of its origin, of where it’s coming from.”

Yeah I think this makes sense to me. If I understand, you mean the benefit could be less suffering from the child like understandings of “I’m not good enough to be loved” and other beliefs and judgements like that…not necessarily complete alleviation from the pain of being alone?

I was reading some of the Dhammapada last night and there was a line that caught my attention that read;

“it is hard to leave the world and and hard to live in it, painful to live with the worldly and painful to be a wanderer. Reach the goal and you will wander and suffer no more”

There was also a section on selfish desire and it’s relation to suffering. I’m not trying to overthink this and I believe I am starting to grasp the point you’ve been making to me over and over for years now. What I feel is that it seems like there really is no escape from pain, maybe some escape from the added suffering we put on ourselves through desire. I think I can take the pain and avoid the suffering if I can avoid the selfish desires to escape through women, drugs, and other thrills I chase. Am I starting to understand? Or am I still missing the point