Dear Maile (or do you prefer Fiest?)

The disclaimer to my theory from yesterday (first paragraph in that post) was that I have very little information about your childhood. As a matter of fact, I have very little information about your adulthood (I don’t know anything about your age, for one, a basic piece of info), way less information than I have had about any other member before suggesting an overall understanding of the member.

When I suggest my understandings of a person, it is not a permanent, or complete understanding, it is a beginning-understanding, a suggestion of an understanding that is open to the member’s input. With more information, more communication, I adjust and change that understanding. If you want, we can continue to communicate and I will adjust and change my understanding as we continue. Better said: you and I together can come up with a better understanding of you (and of me, as I learn more about me when I learn about you).

Your corrections: “I honestly don’t wish for him to be unhappy. I also don’t believe that I am a bad person”. So, in this earlier quote: “I can’t stop thinking about my ex being quarantined with his family. Resuming life.. constant painful  images and thoughts of him being happy with his family are overwhelming”-

1.  What is it that was/ is overwhelming? What feelings were associated with those images and thoughts of him being happy with his family?

You wrote that your “intense feelings of  inadequacy” manifest in you “putting on a happy face of getting along with everyone. Truly being diplomatic and often times fake”-

2.  can you give me examples of you being fake, circumstances when that happens and  in what ways you are fake?

Your self image, or “true nature” as you termed it (and it is well expressed in the way you interacted with me so far) is that of  “kindness and compassion and acceptance”. You added: “I do agree that my childhood has a lot of fear and anger”, “angry.. in high school.. I did have a lot of jealousy and anger in my relationships from college until my last serious long-term relationship”, that you did a lot of work “acknowledging my anger and tendency to be bossy”, that in this last relationship you “never showed my jealousy”.

3. Can you tell me what you mean by what I italicized in the following: “until this relationship I’ve managed to turn all that anger inwards and really lose who I am?”

“The only thing that kept me from disregarding your thinking that anger is fueling all my behaviors”- I didn’t write that to you that anger fuels all your behaviors. What I suggested to you is  that your childhood was filled with a painful combination of fear and anger.

You asked if anger “at times .. manifests as strong feelings and depression/ anxiety?”- when we feel anxious and/ or angry for too long, it drains us and we end up depressed, in a state of emotional/ physical exhaustion.

In nature, fear precedes anger, first an animal feels fear, then the animal either runs away, or if it is designed to fight a threat, then it feels anger after the fear, and that anger motivates it to fight.

If a person feels bad about feeling angry, feeling that it indicates being a bad person, then the feeling of anger is followed by a feeling of fear, the fear of experiencing the emotional pain associated with the belief that one is bad/ guilty of bad things happening.

anita