Dear Julia,

for me, addiction was a way to soothe the pain of not being good enough. You said:

But I thought about what brings me to starting going down the path again and again and like you described it probably falls back to anxiety – of being alone (with my thoughts?).

What are those thoughts? Do you have a harsh inner critic, telling you how bad or inadequate you are? Maybe your inner dialogue is quite painful, and that’s why you need to distract yourself from it?

Dear Katrine,

I was forced from a young age to do things that was way too overwhelming for me, and I wasn’t ready for it. That’s the thing when it is mental, people expect you to go from 0-100 and if you can’t they say it’s because you don’t have the will.

You mean mental as opposed to a physical problem? I am guessing that it was different with your sister, who had a physical/neurological disease. She probably wasn’t expected to simply “heal” with the power of her will. And she wasn’t criticized that she was weak when she didn’t succeed, was she?

Am I sensing this correctly that there is wound there related to a different treatment that you and your sister received? Your problems were minimized and you were told to “just get over it”. While your sister got your parents’ full attention. And they never minimized her problems, but took them seriously, right?

People didn’t (and still to this day) respect my boundaries. Which is one of the reasons why i am so hard on myself. I was always told just to push myself harder and that it was not okay to say no because that way your anxiety wins.

I understand. Your boundaries, or rather, your limitations weren’t respected. For example, you were pushed to do a presentation at school, even if you felt horribly anxious. While your sister’s limitations were respected, I guess. Nobody pushed her to do things she wasn’t able to do.

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but perhaps there is another layer of pain – namely not receiving the same kind of care and attention as your sister, even though you too had significant issues and challenges, only of a different type?

So listening to my body and giving it rest when it needs is super important. Be my own gatekeeper and if my body is giving me the red light, people should’t try and convince me that it’s a green light.

That’s true! For example, you shouldn’t be pushing yourself to work overtime. Recently you said: I am working 11 days in a row to help pay for this treatment so not a lot of rest. That’s an example of pushing yourself too hard and not paying attention to your physical limitations. I mean, assuming that it wasn’t your supervisor who forced you to work 11 days in a row, but that it who you who chose to, to pay off your debt sooner?

Dear Sadlyconfused,

you are very welcome!

It’s wearing your heart on your sleeve (or rather, your face!) and having no control over it. It leaves you feeling so vulnerable and exposed around people who aren’t always very kind about it.

Added to that is the secondary shame of having been bullied for my shame reactions by my father, sibling, people at school and a particularly nasty teacher.

I had the luck that my mother (or my father) didn’t shame me for blushing. And neither did my teachers. I am not sure about my classmates, I don’t think they teased me for blushing either, since my blushing started mostly in secondary school, and they weren’t as cruel as some of my classmates in primary school. So I don’t recall having been teased for blushing (although I did believe that everybody thought of me as a freak because of that!)

You unfortunately were shamed by your father, your sibling, a particularly nasty teacher and your classmates. That’s very very hard and I feel for you.

The kids I can forgive because they were insecure bullies, but the fact that there wasn’t a single, empathetic adult to reassure me that there was nothing wrong with me meant that it became more of a complex than it should have done. I feel so angry at them as a I recall it, which is probably a healthy reaction!

Definitely, it must have been devastating for you. Not just the children bullied you, but also the authorities figures, whom you admired and looked up to. In fact, this teacher should have been called to responsibility for his unprofessional behavior…  Your classmates were probably encouraged by his attitude, and therefore felt free to mock you even more.

You said you had a well-meaning mother, but it seems that she didn’t protect you from this kind of shaming? Have you told her about this nasty teacher? What was her reaction?

I feel so angry at them as a I recall it, which is probably a healthy reaction!

And you should feel angry! This teacher should have lost his job! And your father – well, he really was a cruel, heartless man.  A sadistic man, I should say. I think it would be good if you could express your anger in a safe, therapeutic setting, because it will help you to build the capacity to say no, to set boundaries in the future. To not allow people to bully you and disrespect you.

Thank you so much for sharing your positive outcome with healing your shame, it’s so reassuring that your cheeks became less reactive as your self-compassion grew! …If you don’t mind me asking, how long do you think it took you to start noticing that your change in self-talk was having a positive impact?

You are very welcome. I think I took me a few years of intense work on myself. But I think the largest impact was when I started feeling compassion for my inner child – that’s when I could slowly let go of that core shame and of the core belief that “something’s terribly wrong with me”. When I no longer believed that I am defective at my core, I could relax more and it didn’t feel like torture to simply sit among people, or in a lecture, or at a public event.

I’ll aim to get into the habit of speaking to myself kindly before doing things I know are likely to trigger me. I think at the moment I get preoccupied with the discomfort of feeling panic and have been feeling that anything kind I try to tell myself will have no impact, so it helps to read that someone else has been through it and managed to make such inroads with healing.

Perhaps it would help you to do some EFT tapping (EFT – emotional freedom technique). I haven’t tried it personally because I didn’t know about it at the time, but apparently it helps to calm our nervous system.

Dr Nicole Lepera, a clinical psychologist, has a youtube video about it, titled: “Emotional freedom technique (EFT)”. You tap on 9 meridian points, while telling yourself “Even though I am feeling anxious, I deeply love and accept myself.” Perhaps this method has a stronger effect than just speaking to yourself kindly, because it involves working on the nervous system too.

Dear Casey44,

there’s no way I’m going to have sex with him to ease his ‘tantrum

You’ve noticed it very well – it’s almost like he is restless and uses sex to “calm down”. There are such men (and I guess women too, but less frequently) who use sex for emotional regulation, without being aware of it. Specially men who aren’t in touch with their feelings, as it seems to be the case with your husband.

I find his practice of texting you to get ready for a “quickie”, in between his two meetings, rather degrading. This too seems like venting off stress via sex. Using you like a tool to meet his own needs, without taking into account your needs and your feelings.

It would be much healthier if he would come downstairs for a hug or a quick chat with you in the break between his meetings…

I am here to talk more if you feel like it…

You’re welcome, Caroline. Good talking to you too!

Take care and take it easy 🙂

Dear Dan,

You said:

I get really down on myself thinking what more could have I done?  I’m stuck ruminating a lot wishing things weren’t the way they are.

In this post I’ll try to explain why in my opinion, your relationship didn’t succeed, and what both you and her could have done differently. I’ll say it right away: I think that your relationship didn’t succeed because of unhealthy patterns in both you and her. It’s not just your fault, and it’s not just her fault.

Let me give you an example. You said you wanted to go on mini vacations, but she always refused. You said it was because you didn’t go on a honeymoon and wanted to make up for that.

It’s normal for a married couple to go on a honeymoon, and to go on a honeymoon alone. So if she refused that, because she didn’t want to leave her children – that shows an unbalanced approach, where she feels guilty for doing something for herself. For having alone time with her new husband.

Besides, her children aren’t that young as she claims. 10 and 14 isn’t so young, they don’t need constant supervision. So she could have left them with their dad for a few days. Claiming they are young and using it as an excuse to not set any boundaries is a mistake on her part.

Returning to the mini vacation example: At the other end of the spectrum would be a scenario where you would want to go on mini vacations exclusively without her children. Where you would say “the weekend is coming, the kids are their dad’s – why don’t the two of us go to XYZ place and have some fun together?” I am not saying this is what you were pushing for, or hoping for, but it would have been an unbalanced approach too, because it would exclude the children altogether and make them feel unwanted.

If your wife was more on one end of the spectrum (never want to go anywhere without her children), and you were more on the other end (preferred not to go to trips with her children) – then it would have caused friction.

I do want to say I understand you: you got a deal which you didn’t want, because covid came and her children ended up spending all of their time with their mother and you. And you didn’t get to have any time with her alone. So going for a mini vacation just the two of you, would have been nice from time to time. And it wouldn’t have been selfish to ask for that.

But if what her children felt from you is the vibe of impatience, something like: “God, when are they going to leave already so I can be alone with my wife?” – then they would have been offended and start turning against you. I am not saying this is what you were thinking, at least not consciously, but unconsciously you might have been giving off such a vibe.

But it must have been hard for you, and you did find yourself in a difficult situation. Let me turn again to your question:

What more could have I done?  I’m stuck ruminating a lot wishing things weren’t the way they are.

Well, if your wife didn’t have so much guilt, she would have understood your need and would have gone with you on one or two mini vacations (provided that it was possible to travel during covid?).

At the same time, if you weren’t so needy, you probably wouldn’t have been so negatively affected by the living arrangements during covid (being stuck with her children 24/7), and you wouldn’t have felt so deprived when she was attending to her children. So maybe there wouldn’t have been this rivalry between you and her children.

But this is only maybe, because if she spoiled them (and probably she did, because you said she had no boundaries with them, e.g. she lets her son sleep in her bed), then even if you were more patient and less needy, they might have still been jealous of you. I don’t know.

Anyway, to wrap this up: it seems to me that your responsibility in the breakup of the relationship is in being too needy, i.e. expecting her to meet all or almost all of your emotional needs (to feel loved, cared for, appreciated, seen, validated). She was your best friend (and maybe your only friend?), and it seems you depended on her to feel good about yourself. Due to this neediness, you might have unconsciously felt jealous of her children, which they picked up on.

While her responsibility in the breakup of the relationship, as I see it, is her strong feeling of guilt for not being able to please everybody, as well as feeling guilty for having needs of her own. Depriving herself of the things she loves, so she can please others.

What do you say? Does this seem like a plausible explanation to you?

Dear Katrine,

Exactly, I would feel so guilty if I didn’t critisize myself then I wouldn’t move forward.

OK, so now that you realize that criticizing yourself won’t really help, maybe you can stop yourself when you notice it. Just notice it and tell yourself something like: “This is my inner critic, I am not listening to him. He thinks he is helpful but he is not, he only makes me feel worse. My inner critic doesn’t help me change. Loving and accepting myself does.”

I am learning to identify triggers. If I am reacting to something in the past or present. Trying to stop myself from self sabotaging, putting up walls, isolating myself.

Also trying to learn healthy coping mechanisms and self soothing so I don’t end up reacting instead of responding. It’s hard work and sometimes you just new to go out and not focus about healing but also living.

It is hard work because you want to be mindful of yourself and not just react from your wounds. I think the most important is to remain mindful as much as possible, i.e. to observe yourself as you go about your day. If you notice you react to something strongly, you can make a mental note of it that it’s your trigger. You can then later explore it (or share it here on the forum): what is it that you reacted to so strongly, what feelings came up, and what is the negative core belief behind it.

I know it’s hard to be mindful all the time, and specially to remain relatively calm (or rather, not too reactive) when we are triggered. Because that’s when our thinking brain shuts down….

I’ve recently been watching Dr. Nicole Lepera’s youtube videos, and she has a really great video on the topic of triggers. The title is “Here’s what to do when you’re triggered“.

She gives 3 key steps: (1) Breathe deeply, (2) Observe yourself as you are getting upset/”freaking out”, (3) Don’t judge yourself for the strong emotions you’re feeling, i.e. practice self-acceptance.

If you do that, a part of your thinking brain (the observer) will remain active, and it will help you not to be completely overwhelmed by the strong emotions you’re experiencing. I don’t know if you’ve tried this technique already?

It’s hard work and sometimes you just new to go out and not focus about healing but also living.

Right… Well, living involves triggers, and triggers cause us pain because they take us back into our childhood wounds. So if you just “live”, you’ll experience a lot of pain, until you heal that pain. But if you are mindful of yourself (i.e. observing yourself and noticing your triggers, e.g. as shown in Nicole Lepera’s video), you’ll experience less pain. So I think that being mindful while living/going about our day is actually well worth it…

Dear Katrine,

Yes, I will focus on this as a learning opportunity. I have noticed that i have started self sabotaging again, i get more defensive and push people away but that’s understandable with everything that has happened.

It’s great that you are observing yourself and noticing when you slip, or are tempted to slip, into the old patterns. I think one of those old patterns is to start judging and criticizing yourself, and not giving yourself credit for the achievements you’ve made. Recently you’ve criticized yourself for being a hypocrite, telling yourself that you are behaving the same way as he is – when in reality, you have broken your pattern of avoidance and emotional unavailability.

The good thing is that in spite of succumbing to the voice of the inner critic from time to time, you are also able to snap out of it pretty quickly, and see that this was a learning opportunity and not a failure. This is super important! To observe yourself and when you notice that your inner critic is rearing its ugly head, to tell him: “STOP! I am not listening to you. You want me to stay stuck in the past, blaming myself for my past mistakes, believing I can never change. But that’s not true! I am able to change and I have already proven it! I am making progress, I am changing my patterns, and I am not going back to my old ways! With every day, I am becoming more of my true self!”

You can also tell yourself: “I am not perfect, I make mistakes, I won’t always react in the best way possible. But it’s okay to slip up. We are allowed to make mistakes. If I fall down, I’ll get back up and keep walking. And that’s what really matters.”

I don’t know how this sounds to you, but perhaps it would help you to be more compassionate with yourself. It could be an antidote for those situations when you start criticizing yourself and minimizing the progress you’ve made.

What do you think?