Anita

okay thank you for the reassurance. Sometimes I don’t know if fully experiencing my emotions is helpful because I haven’t been doing it most of my life. Like you say it matters what part of me is holding that experience for me. The approach I have been taking has been to try to step into the nurturing parent role within myself and console my wounded child. Sometimes that means I end up going deeper into a feeling, I may cry harder., which usually starts when I try to be compassionate towards my pain. In the past I would shut it off more quickly with an immature parent part of myself, which helps me function and get work done, until it all becomes too much and I can’t ignore the pain anymore. So I appreciate you letting me know I’m on the path.

it is difficult to find people who are willing to talk about this kind of stuff. My friends are great but most are not doing their inner work, or when I do bring up this kind of thing to people it can be over their heads and they don’t understand where I’m coming from. It makes me feel isolated often.

I’ve been doing Dopamine fasting the past week, basically giving up all addictions for a week (porn, sex, alcohol, internet, tv, video games) and I didn’t realize how much I have been relying on distractions to regulate feelings of  loneliness, low self esteem, and meaninglessness in my life. I’m very motivated to make some changes in my life right now. I feel like I need to grow because I’ve felt stuck for the past couple years. One of the things that bothers me the most, is my avoidant personality. I must look/seem inviting because people frequently talk to me but I don’t know what to do unless I’m solving a problem for them. It’s almost like I don’t know how to connect with people unless they need something from me, when people just genuinely want to be friends it’s like I don’t know how, but this is exactly what I need in my life. I don’t need to be taking care of anymore peoples problems than I already am.