Dear Peace:

I am well, thank you, and good to read back from you.

You wrote today about the man who asked you to marry him (Congratulations!): “He is a great guy …he is the person with whom I’m having a healthy relationship, who listens to me ,care for me, doesn’t react when something doesn’t goes according to plan ,respects me and respects my space and boundary“.

You also wrote that today is Eid (Eid saeed!) Eid is a religious holiday celebrated by Muslims twice a year, following a fasting period.

I will now connect Eid to your personal life-situation: a lot of your life has been about emotional fasting= not receiving the emotional food that you needed: being listened to, cared for and respected. You were hungry for emotional food for so long, that you adapted to the hunger by often not feeling the hunger anymore, and feeling numb instead. Recently, this man in your life has been feeding you with emotional food, and most recently he offered you a lifetime supply of emotional food (marriage).

The phases of your reaction to his offer: 1) You were excited: “My heart raced that moment“, 2) You felt happy: “After some hours, I..  was happy about it“,

3) You got scared and obsessive: “The next 3 days, I was thinking all day about different ways to convince my family… I woke up middle of night, it was on my mind“, 4) Having exhausted yourself obsessing, you “felt tired and exhausted and had  headaches“,

5) Exhausting yourself further, you became “emotionally numb..  depressed“, 6) Exhausted and numb, old beliefs about yourself being unlovable and unwanted filled your brain: “Nobody loves me or want me, I have no friends, My family doesn’t care for me, My mom doesn’t talk to me.. I’m so alone in this world .. I have no one“.

By the time phase 6 came about,  you forgot that there is a man present in your life who listens to you, cares for you, respects you and wants to marry you. It is as if he disappeared, and other people from your past replaced him, people who did not (and do not) listen to you, care for you, etc.

Eid- it is a celebration following a period of fasting/ hunger. Problem is that when a person has been hungry for too long, starving.. when presented with food, after eating just a little solid food, the person’s stomach, not being used to food,  gets overwhelmed and the person gets sick and throws up. I think that this is what happened to you, only we’re talking about emotional food, not physical food.

Feeling sick, and not understanding why, you mistaken the cause of your sickness to be that you don’t love the man who wants to marry you. This is what phase 7 is about:  “Do I really like him..? Do I really want to marry him? I started to question my feeling for him.. why I’m feeling such way when he is a great guy?”

You lost your feelings for him because you are sick (just as a person who vomits and is sick loses his hunger). Because you are sick (like any sick person, and sick animals as well)- you want to be alone, at home and in bed, so to rest, recover and get your strength back: “Yesterday I sat with him.. (and) just wanted to come home ASAP .. Today is Eid.. I don’t have any energy to talk to anyone“.

“I  am flat, empty, numb all inside ..I feel like I m going toward depression .or may be something triggered me“- when a starving person ate more than he can stomach and he throws up and feels sick, he should go to bed and recover, have hot soup or cold, liquid food, sleep a lot. This is what you should do: rest, relax, recover. And when you are recovered, feeling better, then eat just a bit every time.. take it easy, so that you don’t get sick again.

“I wasn’t sure who could understand me and help me in this phase ..I hope I get some understanding and Help here“- I hope that you received the understanding and help that you were hoping for.

anita