Dear Nar:

This will be a long reply, and please take your time reading and considering what I will be writing to you. First, I will put together much of what you shared in this thread and in the other thread (the more information I have the better, and when I retype quotes, paraphrase and re-arranging information helps me to better process information). Second, my thoughts and suggestions:

First part- you had “one or another form of OCD” since you were a young child: compulsively washing your hands, ruminating (“remuneration”?) and “getting stuck in thought loops”, and for the last 2 years, you’ve been suffering from “episodes of intrusive thoughts”, thoughts that are “unwelcome and unpleasant and usually something a thinker wouldn’t ever imagine doing”. The current intrusive thoughts are in the form of “strong images” that come in waves: there are periods when they are gone but then, “out of nowhere”, the images return. These images scare you and you feel shame at the idea of talking about them to anyone. You think that behind these images is “deep fear.. fear that I don’t understand and can’t face yet”, and that “maybe it is best to face the fear”.

Three months ago, you met a girl at a retreat. This is your initial description of her and your reactions to her: “She talked really a lot without a proper structure to her conversations” and you “really wanted her to stop talking”, wanted to leave but thought it would be rude for you to leave, and you didn’t talk to her for most of the retreat because you “wanted to have peace and quietness”.

Following the retreat you spent many hours chatting with her on WhatsApp and on the phone and you met her in person. Ninety percent of the talks “were around her and her life problems”. Her behavior is “full of contradictions and conflict. For example, she says ‘everything is love’ every time she is in a difficult situation or has a really bad argument with someone.. delusional.. does not acknowledge there is a lot of pain and suffering in this world, not everything is love.. she uses this phrase as her shield against everything bad happening… she says one thing but does something else. She says she had no expectations from our retreat, but in reality right before our retreat she told me all about her expectations”, and she talks a lot about an ex-boyfriend whom “she hadn’t met for a year” but “she meets him very briefly and sleeps with him”, and “she says her body is sacred but.. is very open to sleeping with anyone and wants to be a sex worker”. She “is  just really lost and confused and full of contradictions. Also, completely oblivious to the consequences of her actions. She is emotionally deeply disturbed”.

Your reaction to 3 months of communication with her: “Clearly she is impacting me very negatively… for 3 months now.. I got too involved…way too involved.. I got attached to her.. felt very sorry for her”. The many conflicts and contradictions in what she says and does bother you. In addition, it bothers you that when you brought it up to her once or twice, “she just became very angry and attacked me”, and therefore, you “can’t talk to her about it… she wouldn’t understand my point”.

Second part- you stated your objective in regard to communicating with this woman to be this: “I wanted to open my heart and mind more, slowly bring down the wall I built around myself”-

– I believe that it was indeed your objective: to open your heart and mind more.. to you, to slowly bring down the wall you built around yourself and see what is inside those walls.

Because she is visibly and audibly so much more disturbed than you, you felt relatively safe to get a glimpse at.. your own disturbance while believing it is her disturbance, not yours.  There are contradictions within you too, there are delusions in your mind too, and that “deep fear… fear that I don’t understand and can’t face yet” is about seeing those contradictions and delusions.

Seeing your own contradictions and delusions more and more- will be disturbing. This is why it should be done gently and patiently, best in the context of quality psychotherapy.

Here is a contradiction on her part: she clearly experienced a lot of pain and suffering in her life, but  “She says ‘everything is love’.. does not acknowledge there is a lot of pain and suffering in the world”.

Here is an example of a lesser noticeable contradiction that is very common in the minds and lives of many adult children of abusive parents: a child is repeatedly yelled at by a parent, year after year, scared, startled every time his parent’s voice goes up in volume and every time any anger registers on his parent’s face.. the parent sees that fear but continues to yell. Even when the child begs: please don’t yell.. the parent keep yelling. Fast forward, the child is now adult, visiting with his parent, still feeling uncomfortable but visiting anyway because otherwise he feels guilty. He feels guilty to not visit because he says to himself:  my parent loved me all along, he/ she always did the best he could.

What I italicized above is a contradiction and a delusion (the two words you used in regard to the woman you met at the retreat), and this delusion keeps the adult child unwell. Truth is that when a parent yells at his/ her child repeatedly, seeing how scared the child, hearing the child beg.. and yet, keeps yelling, he/ she is not loving the child and is not doing his/ her best.

Healing is about confronting significant contradictions and delusions, such that I mentioned in the example above. It is about seeing reality as it is, including the inconvenient truths.

Regarding “everything is love”, you wrote: “she uses this phrase as her shield against everything bad happening”- what do you say to yourself to shield yourself from the bad things that already happened (?)

Your stated objective for this thread, comment and question were: “I want to understand what happened, learn and move on… maybe I just got involved with the wrong/ very unstable person. This is my problem.. what do you think?”

I think that she is a very unstable person, and I think that communicating with her further is a bad idea.  You can’t possibly have a healthy relationship with “an emotionally very disturbed person”, such as this woman. She needs professional help. A competent professional is trained at how to deal and manage attachment to a patient. You are not trained that way, so.. if you try to be her “therapist” she will drag you down. (It will also harm you to continue to be her silent audience).

Not only are you not trained to be a therapist, you also have an excessive difficulty managing attachment to people (“I can’t easily detach myself from anyone I care about, be it a healthy or unhealthy relationship. I feel guilty”)- therefore, the more you communicate with her, the sicker you will get.

I think that the motivation to communicate with her so far may has been what I suggested above: to get a glimpse into yourself, into what’s inside the walls you built around yourself. I think that it is a good idea to see more and more of what’s inside your walls in the context of psychotherapy, which you began attended.

anita