Hi prudence

Do I understand correctly that he ghosting you for three months and that for those three months you continued to call him everyday?

The question I might ask myself if the above is true is why I don’t think I deserve to be treated better then that?

Hi Nelum

Viewing the world through the lens of social media is bound to distort what you see.

The personas we create are not fake but the means in which we engage with the world. How you relate as a son to your parents is different then how you relate to a stranger, friend, boss… as it should be.  The mistake happens when we mistake our identity’s and others identity’s as being a persona. We are more then the sum of our parts.

To get to know oneself and others one needs to engage, develop trust and drop the guards we put up to protect ourselves. I get the feeling that the observations in your post could be your way of justifying a desire to stay safe and disengage. I say that as it’s a tactic I have used in the past. If everyone is being fake why should I engage with them, better to keep to my introverted self. End result…. loneliness.

Advice for what its worth is to avoid these types of judgments and measuring standards. Focus less on what you imagine others are thinking about you or what you imagine they want you to be and instead be yourself. Engage honestly with people that interest you and eventually if you are courageous in refusing to hide behind your wall of fears, you will find your tribe.

Hi Belle

I know that for my sake (more than his), that I have to forgive, forget and move on. But my rage boils over sometimes

Forgiveness is an art that most of us practice badly. Most people feel that when they forgive they are also giving up on asking for accountability from the person that hurt then and so they must forget as in never remember the event of being hurt. If you think about it, such a perspective likely creates resentments and anger.

Forgiveness does not remove accountability. You can forgive someone and hold them accountable. By forgiving in this way, forgetting is a decision not to dwell. You become mindful when you are dwelling on the past hurt and taking a breath to let it go.  Let it go is not in pretending the hurt didn’t happen but realizing that when you dwell on the hurt it only intensifies. The practice of ‘forgetting’ is to notice and allow the experience to flow vice damming it up. Other attributes to forgiveness are to forbear and forgo. We forbear as in we sit with what we are feeling, a time to feel what you feel without reaction or responding to it. When we forgive we also forgo desires of getting even and revenge. Revenge and getting even are not the same of holding those that hurt us accountable. We hold them accountable from a place of love. If I give you my key and you steal from me taking back the key is not done from a place of anger but accountability and love.

I suspect your right that much of your anger is coming from a place with the feeling of a loss of personal power and control.   If such is the case the practice of mindfulness might.

“But I still love him”

I suspect your learning that love does not mean that relationship will thrive or last. That you can love someone even as you end a relationship. Perhaps even that Love requires that a relationship end.

Responsibility, accountability, discipline, meaning, growth… are all attributes of the experience of love.  Love requires that we hold those we are in relationship with accountable and sometimes that means the relationship must end. Ending not because you do not love but because you do love. Love continues even if a relationship does not.

Hi Greenshade

I like what L.B. Smedes said about shame

If you persistently feel you don’t measure up, you are feeling shame—that vague, undefined heaviness that presses on our spirit, dampens our gratitude for the goodness of life, and diminishes our joy…. Most shame we experience and take on is undeserved.

“Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counterforces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace. . . .

“The lightness of grace does not lift all the sandbags that drag the spirit down. It lightens life by removing one very dead weight in particular—the weight of anxiety about being an unacceptable person. Grace gives us courage to track down the sources of unhealthy shame, see it for the undeserved pain it is, and take steps to purge our lives of it completely. It sets loose the lightest feeling of life; being accepted; totally, unreservedly accepted. . . .

“I believe that the only self I need to measure up to is the self my Maker meant me to be.

“I believe that I am accepted by the grace without regard to my deserving.

“I believe that I am accepted along with my shadows and the mix of good and bad I breed in them.

“I believe that I am worthy to be accepted.

“I believe that grace has set me free to accept myself totally, and without conditions, though I do not approve of everything I accept.

“I believe that nothing I deserve to be ashamed of will ever make me unacceptable.

“I believe that I can forgive anyone who has ever infected me with shame I do not deserve.

“I believe that I may forgive myself for anything that I have ever done to shame myself or another person.

“I am gratefully proud of being who I am and what I shall be.

“I believe that the grace heals the shame I do not deserve and heals the shame I do.

Hi coconut
Read this mornings feature article and thought you might find it helpful.

I hope you find a way not to be so hard on yourself

https://tinybuddha.com/blog/you-dont-suck-at-life-how-to-stop-believing-your-inner-bully/

Hi Coconut (great handle)

Like you I’m a great story teller. My mind just won’t quite down at times and most of the stories I tell myself are negative. end result low self esteem  = social awkward.  The advice I was most commonly given was to stop telling myself negative stories and only tell positive ones. As I never fully believe the positive stories I was spinning it didn’t work.  It actually made things worse.

What did work was when I noticing when I was telling myself a story and just stop telling it without filling the gap with other stories or the like. No labeling, no judgments, no excuses, no incrimination, no ‘positive thinking… When I couldn’t stop the story I acknowledged that and moved on.

You may also find Viktor Frankl’s work helpfull

1. Dereflection: Dereflection is aimed at helping someone focus away from themselves and toward other people so that they can become whole and spend less time being self-absorbed about a problem or how to reach a goal.
2. Paradoxical intention: Paradoxical intention is a technique that has the patient wish for the thing that is feared most. This was suggested for use in the case of anxiety or phobias, in which humor and ridicule can be used when fear is paralyzing. For example, a person with a fear of looking foolish might be encouraged to try to look foolish on purpose. Paradoxically, the fear would be removed when the intention involved the thing that was feared most.
3. Socratic dialogue: Socratic dialogue would be used in logotherapy as a tool to help a patient through the process of self-discovery through his or her own words. In this way, the therapist would point out patterns of words and help the client to see the meaning in them. This process is believed to help the client realize an answer that is waiting to be discovered.