Dear Anita,

I apologize for the late reply to your thorough and thoughtful response.

“he said please and thank you and all other social-butterfly expressions, but didn’t mean any of them, forming a superficial persona, saying all the right things but not meaning them, remaining on the surface, avoiding depth.”

“I think that his elated, optimistic, excited expressions are not genuine. They lack depth. He is doing his social lubrication/ public relations kind of communication with you.”

My whole life, and perhaps a personality of my soul is that I am, sensitive to people being fake. When someone is fake with me, it makes me feel cold inside, and void of my desire to connect, in fact I would rather leave. But I learned this “superficial persona,” and I learned it well enough to get through highschool, somewhat ok. Outside of my experience being bullied on my school soccer team. I think my mom had a superficial persona as well, but my dad’s is/was a lot more successful in social situations. My mom has an “extroverted persona” but when she is not in public it goes away. I learned this as well. I learned both of my parents superficial personas, making me appear socially equipped. But I learned this persona wasn’t attracting authentic people, so I have been learning to undo it, and in fact stop caring how I come across to every single person. I have gotten much better, but still have moments with the people closer to me, where I wonder what they are thinking of me. But I do my best to consciously refuse to act a certain way to get some perceived approval from them. I am proud of this 🙂

Good morning,

I have been reading “the Seat of the Soul” by Gary Zukav

“All the energy of the soul does not incarnate. To incarnate, the soul creates a personality from those parts of itself that it wants to heal in the physical environment, and from those parts of itself that it lends to the process of healing in that lifetime.”

“So powerful is the energy of the soul that it could not advance into a physical form without, literally, exploding that form. In the creation of personality, the soul calibrates parts of itself, reduces parts of itself, to take on the human experience. Your higher self is that aspect of your soul that is in you, but is not the fullness of your soul. It is a smaller soul self. Therefore, “higher self” is another term for “soul,” yet the soul is more than the higher self.”

“Intuition is a walkie-talkie, so to speak, between the personality and the soul. This happens through the higher self.”

It is making me ask myself, “what is my soul here to heal?” “does the personality have its own set of wounds it needs to heal? wounds that were accumulated in this life? or was I born with my wounds.”

I’ve spent a long time, practicing self awareness and healing wounds of my personality. When he says the soul creates a personality, does he mean we were born into this world with our personality?

Are/have any of you reading this become familiar with the process of healing your soul? I wonder if what needs to heal becomes clearer, and what is the light at the end of the tunnel like, after you have healed an aspect of your soul?

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

Thank you for your thoughts. I want to heal my wound and thank you for your exercise recommendation. I will start it today.

Seaturtle

Dear Helcat,

“I think it is apt because sea turtles are peaceful, gentle souls, they live to a long age which represents wisdom. They are adventurous and free spirited. You share all of these qualities. “

I like all those things! Thank you 🙂

“You might not feel it and see it as much yet. But since you first message you’ve grown a lot. You’re still the same awesome person, but you are trusting your intuition more and finding your voice. It’s lovely to see. Long may it continue!”

Cheers to this. On my recent trip home I also had some family members tell me similar things. That they see growth happening.

I don’t want this to let me avoid being in another relationship, but I have this new fear that came along with the positive growth, and it is that I will lose myself in a relationship again. But that would have to mean I stop listening to my intuition again, so my solution has been to really get in line with my intuition so I don’t ignore it repetitively, again. Relationships create a barrier between me and my intuition.. I wonder why this is and if it is possible to get my intuition to always be at my forefront.. ?

Anita, I’d also love your thoughts on this!

“Ah well Buddhism has a great deal to say about attachment. I would recommend looking into that side of it as well. I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun.”

I will thanks for the recommendation.

“It is honestly very hard to maintain a warm demeanour in difficult situations especially with people that aren’t necessarily trusted.”

I have an intuition question. When we don’t trust someone, how do we tell if it is because of our own trauma or it is our intuition?

I actually have similar difficulties. For me, it’s the feeling of vulnerability that I don’t like. I feel very soft and squishy during disagreements, easily hurt. I used to think that the only way to protect myself was to emotionally distance myself from the situation.”

This is how I feel in hard conversations with a loved one as well. It’s strange, it’s like there is a part of me that really wants to skip to the end of the conversation and hug. But I cannot accept a hug during the disagreement, I feel repulsed by closeness, but I love closeness so I get irritated that I feel that way. I would get upset with N because he (the situation with him) made me feel repulsed by closeness, yet I knew that is all I really needed/wanted. I think it was this contradiction that was the most painful part, and I wanted out of that space so badly, and so did he, that we didn’t truly finish many disagreements and instead skipped to the end.

“I read something that basically said that if you approach a relationship with negativity it will not heal. Whereas if you approach a relationship with positivity, the person will be inspired by your character and respond in kind. Not entirely true. But that is what ancient Chinese philosophy is like. “

It is certainly optimistic. If only positivity was all it took to heal a relationship.

Did you have a good fourth of July?

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

“When you don’t reply to me for an couple of weeks, I think that you don’t have a desire to talk to me, or you have the desire to not talk to me. At times I felt a bit hurt, a bit angry.”

I appreciate your honesty. I am sorry you have felt that way. Those certainly aren’t my reasons, I think about you often as I would a close friend. I think the struggle is it is a long distance friendship. If we met in person I am sure we would talk for a few hours, back and forth, the same amount we get across in several days here. I don’t have anyone else I talk to virtually like this or for that matter have a need to open my computer more than once a week. Last summer when we spoke daily, I was on my computer daily for work. I suspected you feeling a certain way and just wanted to avoid any built up feelings because I would like to stay friends! You are important to me.

“When you say “silent and cold”, you mean silently hurt and angry?”

I would say silently hurt for sure, I wouldn’t say “angry” it was more like disappointment and frustration that he didn’t have more care for my feelings. Because he knew it bothered me when he answered the phone while we were spending planned time together, but he preferred answering the phone to my feelings. That was an issue in general was him repeating things after I had already told him they hurt my feelings, like answering the phone, being late or smoking with our roommate as I fell asleep alone.

“– wait, these are your words or mine (all of it, with warmth substituting the feeling of being ALIVE (my words).. ?”

I was using your words to help me express mine 🙂 the layout of what you said and content had alot of similarities to me so I thought it would be a helpful exercise for me. I bolded the words that I changed for my experience.

“you are mentally healthier following the breakup, congrats!!!”

Thank you 🙂

Did you celebrate the fourth of July yesterday? if so what did you do?

Seaturtle

Hello Anita,

I miss the time where we frequently talked, I feel bad that my schedule, since then has made my responses less frequent. Does this make you feel badly? When I am not on the site for a couple weeks, does it make you feel like I am selfish, using you, or cold?

Also I apologize for my horribly grammatical phone message here a couple weeks ago. I won’t use my phone again because my autocorrect changed some words and it is just a small typing platform, but you did great with it!

To your post June 12th

“Let me ask you first: did you behave coldly and selfishly with him- Sometimes? Often? Rarely? Never?”

Not never. I was cold when I felt cold. There were rare occasions where he would do something, and I would then be so bothered (like picking up the phone mid conversation). And after he did it, I found myself feeling cold, infact I disliked the feeling so much I almost wanted to just pretend not being cold, but as you know, I display my authentic feelings and in those moments I went silent and cold, while being kind and straight forward. I am glad you asked me this question so I could reflect, him calling me cold sometimes is accurate.

June 13th you wrote:

“…my true self was loving and trusting and felt ALIVE, but then, it was terribly abused by my mother, twisted into knots and generally emptied of the feeling of being ALIVE”

It is helpful for me to hear about your experiences as it helps me express mine. For me ‘my true self was warm, but then was terribly abused, twisted into knots and generally emptied of the feeling of warmth. Leading to me feeling cold. My dad was also paranoid and emotionally detached from me, angry at me.. And I also feel it created and angry, judgemental and misguided loyalty. Everyone hurt him so I hated everyone including myself. All with the purpose of his acceptance, “togetherness.”

“The danger he saw was that ‘through this false self, the infant builds up a false set of relationships, and by means of introjections even attains a show of being real’, while, in fact, merely concealing a barren emptiness behind an independent-seeming façade”. “

After reading about false selves being created by needy parents who deprive their child’s spontaneity, I am tracing back to times I remember feeling my spontaneity was shut down, and times my parents were needy. I am trying to put together how/ which experiences I went through created this “barren emptiness.” It honestly feels like I have only been out of this “show of being real,” since I was 20 years old. I certainly had people and moments I was real with, but through my childhood I remember very clearly feeling like my real self was too awkward to be, so I just behaved like what I thought would blend in, or be accepted. When I started dating in fact, at about 20, I promised myself to be my real self. But I was out of practice. There are parts of my real self that I have not been comfortable to be around certain people. In the past few years I have challenged myself to really be myself, but it is delicate and if rejected too much I put it back on the shelf.. I felt the majority of my real self was rejected and judged by N. It is making me wonder if he only appeared to accept me in the beginning, then when he got tired it started to show that he didn’t anymore.. why would this happen? There is no question I did my best to show him me, and did not receive that from him. I honestly don’t think I ever saw his truest self, either him hiding it or not even knowing it himself..  It is out of the relationship, the past 6 months that I have been able to be my real self, I am not afraid to be rejected by new people and find it so exciting to find people who are real with me. That attitude has lead me to new relationships with new people and even some family members. If you’d like to ignore the note I made connecting this to my relationship with N I would completely understand, I almost deleted it wondering if it was only redundant and shouldn’t let myself be so curious about him the relationship still.

Seaturtle

Oh my gosh Anita! I have not yet read the messages, but I saw emojis on your post and I was so excited!

Seaturtle

Helcat,

I forgot to respond to your question “I don’t know if you felt like you were thinking about the relationship when you didn’t want to?”

The answer is yes. I have also felt myself talking about it here and with others when I haven’t truly wanted to. But I recently heard something from a book that stuck with me, the author said he asks himself ‘would you rather know what your mind has to say or have the opportunity to experience an absence of the personal mind.’ From it I created a sort of mantra I have been repeating to myself when thoughts of the relationships come or an urge to speak it comes, I say in my mind ‘I would rather experience a quiet mind than go down all these mind trails and visions of “what if this, what if that.” ‘ In the book the author pointed out that what our personal mind is yapping about is statistically insignificant because it is based on so many “what ifs.”

Seaturtle