Dear John:

This morning I re-read and studied your posts, and I am ready to answer your question: “what’s wrong with me?”

You answered your question here: “I needed to be #1 right there and then. And I didn’t feel like it”- you need to be number one, to be the one on the stage performing to an audience. The audience was your ex girlfriend, is your current girlfriend and all who responded to you here on your thread.

Like an actor in a theater, you exaggerate everything so to create a strong emotional response in the audience. And then, no matter what a member communicates to you, you will be okay with the reply because all you need is attention. It doesn’t matter to you what I am typing right now. All my reply means to you is that I am paying attention, that I am in the audience watching you perform.

You have a relationship with a woman and you’ve been thinking about an ex girlfriend. That is all that has been happening, no catastrophe, really, nothing recent and catastrophic, yet these are some of your expressions: “I needed to be #1 right there and then… it freaking sucks.. it’s killing me… killing me though… sucks…OMG. This is so hard… sucks… I will never be the same again… there is still a hole in my chest… I’m so screwed up… I’m so lost..”

Yet, nothing really happened: you had a relationship that has ended long ago. You have a new relationship. You have been thinking and feeling for the ex girlfriend for some time. Nothing dramatic happened in real life, yet you are acting on a stage as if something dramatic, urgent and catastrophic is really happening.

You are stirring up a storm that doesn’t exist so to get that attention that you need, getting more and more excited by your own performance. It is the performance that excites you, performing for an audience.

How does it feel for you when you are off the stage, alone, at night maybe… how does it feel when there is no one there?

anita