I’d personally take words away from you, not give you more 🙂 Perhaps you do analyze too much. You think about how to think. You say that you feel vulnerable, but I personally do not see that in your writing. Is your ego attached to your intellectual skills? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about abstract things?

I may be completely wrong, but if you use your intellect and words as your main tool in life, then you would need to be more centered, more grounded, more in touch with your physical body. To feel as well and not just think.

You can only live in this moment, but you can learn from the past and plan for the future. You just need balance and be aware of the tricks your mind may play. We don’t experience things exactly as they are, due to our limitations. We can also twist the events in our minds. This is especially problematic with a person who thinks a lot. They may rely solely on their analytical skills, and don’t give enough credit to gut feeling. That creates a very volatile world.

Try to be more comfortable with just feeling things and not thinking them. Observe with your senses, but don’t try to make sense of what you are observing. No narrative, just observing. Does that make any sense?

I have couple of books on mature romantic love, but haven’t read them yet, so I’ll need to give my uncultured thoughts on the matter 🙂

I see immature romantic love as clinging onto something external that is supposed to provide for our needs. We become obsessed and addicted to the source that sometimes gives us pleasure and other times gives us pain. How to control it and always get pleasure? We can’t so it’s an endless source of frustration and fascination.

I see mature love as accepting that the other person’s value does not come from what they can provide for me, but who they are as a different person with different needs and thoughts and ways of seeing and doing things. I don’t need them to fulfil a void or to validate my existence. I appreciate their companionship and care and love. Besides, if we are both already filled with love and then love each other on top of that, how joyous would that be?

• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by The Ruminant.

I would also like to add another point of view: how do you feel about yourself if you don’t confront him? Yes, it won’t be pleasant and he will blame you and be angry and that is never fun to go through. But if you tell yourself that your knowledge and gut feeling aren’t important enough, you’ll damage your ability to trust yourself. Your relationship with yourself is the most important one that lasts your lifetime.

I have been in countless situations where I knew that something was wrong, but I decided to not believe that feeling and allowed my ego and other people to convince me another story. Of course I always ended up getting hurt, but it all took a toll on how I felt about myself. Other people lying wasn’t the biggest betrayal to me, but that I betrayed myself and put myself in harmful situations even though I knew deep down that I should’ve protected myself by seeking healthier people to be with.

You seem like someone who has a healthy self-esteem. Protect that!

Lenne,

I got really moved reading your post and I don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about. I can relate and feel a need to help, to say something that would convince you to dare to open up and sing, but I actually feel a bit…intimidated. There is something incredibly beautiful in you desire to express yourself and what ever I would have to say would pale in comparison. I don’t want to offer a banal “you can do it!” cheer, but I do believe that you can do it, and when you do, it’s a start for something magnificent.

We all need to practice to master anything. Great artists put a lot of time and effort into mastering their technique. It would be unlikely that you would one day start to sing and it would be pitch perfect right from the start. It is much more likely that you would actually sound not so great 🙂 That’s because you haven’t practiced, not because you would be bad. Considering your desire to sing, you’ll probably become very good, but practice is needed to get there. So do not let any initial stumbling discourage you. Of course first you’d need to make a sound. Any sound. Seek a safe place where you know you can make a noise without anyone hearing and then…start. With anything. Just do it. Make a sound, a noise, anything. That would be your only mission and goal. Then celebrate that! Then make more sounds.

Learning how to sing and gaining confidence to express yourself are two different things which both support each other, but are iterative processes that take time. Luckily, you’ll likely enjoy the process! 🙂

Hi Elfie!

I believe that we all need to aquire certain things during our growth as humans. Whether that’s according to Maslow or the Chakras or some other theory on developmental stages. I believe that one of the things we need is the feeling of being an autonomous individual and have control over ourselves. I think that many people equate freedom and independece with travel and meeting new people, and travel may give a sense of freedom for a while just like food can give comfort for a moment. I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t travel 🙂 Just that it’s more important to listen to that need and that there are other ways to provide for that need. You can live in a small town and feel free and independent. You don’t have to, but you can.

I have a history of codependence and lack of boundaries, and because of that, a low tolerance for people who try to tell me what to do or what to be. The small child in me starts to scream in panic and lashes back. I love to help people and I even have a tendency for self-sacrifice, but when I notice that it’s no longer happening on my terms, I feel like I’m losing myself and I get very anxious. To prevent this, I need to cultivate my boundaries and the feeling that within those boundaries, I am in charge and in control and nobody else. It is my autonomous territory and nobody else is allowed to occupy it. I am free to think and feel what ever I want. Knowing that and treasuring that alleviates my anxiety greatly.

I have traveled a lot and lived abroad and have been a bit of a rebel. Those things did not give me the peace I desired. Don’t get me wrong. I still love to travel, but I’m not expecting it to provide for my fundamental need for personal freedom. I could be a prisoner and still feel free. What you want will be found from within you, not from outside sources.

So my suggestion is that you start to gently cultivate those boundaries. Take a moment to reflect on your feelings when anything happens and then compassionately follow your own truth. Compassionately and slowly and calmly. Find your center and imagine your boundaries. Focus on that area and be present in there. It takes practice and since we are talking about such abstract matters, it’s hard to give truly practical advice.

When you have your autonomy and your freedom, what you really want might be something different. Or perhaps it’s exactly what it is now. Whether or not you are a person who wants to travel or a person who wants to get married and have children early on is a separate issue from having a feeling of control over yourself and a feeling of personal freedom. You will have a better grasp of who you are when you occupy your own space and keep healthy boundaries. Just don’t let your fear or anxiety to make the decisions on what you should do, because that’s no different from allowing another person to decide for you. You can feel free regardless of what you end up deciding to do.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by The Ruminant.

Hello Cody!

Yes, I’ve had that experience. Right now, I don’t really know anyone who would be on the same page with me, but that might also be an error in my perception. In any case, there has been plenty of confusion on my part on how to relate to life and others. After any major changes, it’s hard to take the mundane seriously. Luckily, everything is slowly finding it’s place again. I do find pleasure in the most mundane things and superficial discussions. I could still talk about cosmetics for hours, because it’s something that interests me. What I’m not interested in though, is the drama and the whining and the complaining. I don’t enjoy Facebook anymore because of that. I have trouble with certain friendships where I need to listen to problems that clearly stem from the person with the problem and I don’t know what to say or how to help (female relationships usually require a lot of listening and agreeing instead of problem solving).

I feel more mature in my thinking and ways, which I enjoy. I’m also aware that the people I’ve known haven’t changed with me. The only times that truly bothers me is when I’m afraid of falling back to old habits, when I’m feeling insecure. Sometimes it makes me sad, because I feel the need to connect on another level or when I see the confusion and I can’t make them see more clearly. Most of the times though, I focus on my own life and connect with myself or my surroundings in a more abstract way.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not so much about changing interests, but about change in the underlying intention. If someone feels joy and excitement with me about a particular subject, I’m happy to participate. If I can see that the motive is based on fear or need for drama (different from excitement), then I don’t want to get involved.

I’m trying to figure out a way to clearly communicate my thoughts on this without having to type too much, as I’m on a mobile device 🙂 Anyway, I’m becoming more and more convinced that what a person needs is not only love and compassion towards themselves and others, but also confidence. Confidence in knowing who they are (which requires honesty) and knowing that they are allowed to be who they are (boundaries). I’m simplifying, but that’s the general idea.

Without healthy boundaries and self-esteem, it’s easy to get lost in other people’s lives and thoughts and actions. We need validation and don’t think that our lives aren’t special enough to get all our attention and energy. Yet our lives are what we live. Everything that I experience happens within my body. The more I pay attention to that, to my boundaries and how important it is for me to take care of myself, the less I become involved in other people’s thoughts and actions. I have even imagined being entangled in other people and things and events with thinstrings, which I have cut with imaginary scissors. I should be focused on what happens within my boundaries. The more I do that, the more I trust myself and the more I trust myself, the more I trust the world and that everything will be OK.

As a recovering codependent, I know what it’s like to spread yourself thin and feel pther people’s feelings and worry about them and get annoyed when they don’t behave like I want them to. I was completely confused about where I ended and other people begun. It was all me and I was not in control, but I tried to control it all. To find the boundaries, your own voice and being centered is an incredibly wonderful feeling. I still get annoyed by things that other people do, but I’m able to let go of it and get back to myself. I guess if the boundaries aren’t clear it’s not only difficult to let go, but where do you go back to if you have no idea who you are?

Perhaps this wasn’t terribly clear 🙂 But I do believe that the more you learn about yourself and establish boundaries and hold onto them (the confidence bit), the less you get entangled in other people’s issues.

It’s been couple of weeks since you last posted about this. What have you tried to do in that time to get over your obsession? Have you taken any literal steps to disengage from those thoughts?

If you haven’t done anything, then I think you might have a misunderstanding about how to take care of yourself. Asking and getting advice isn’t going to make you feel better just like seeking and getting a relationship will not change how you feel about yourself. Even if you had the perfect man today, who loved you more than anything, it would not help if you did not understand why he loves you. You have to actively choose to treat yourself in ways that will improve your well-being and everything else will follow.