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  • #428550
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    Anxiety is about being afraid of what already happened. Again, anxiety keeps the past in the present, and the present in the past. The two (past and present) are one. So, no wonder we are afraid of what already happened… as if it didn’t happen. For example, I am afraid of being shamed as if it didn’t already happen, but is about to happen.

    Fears of childhood, over a long period of time, transform into Anxiety. Anxiety solidifies past, present and future into one, and it seeks new topics to inhabit (example: fear of feeling pain in my knees, later in life), but it’s the same Anxiety inhabiting different focus points at different times, or more accurately: anxiety inhabits different focus points in the continuum of one time.

    I need to place the intense, original fears of my childhood in a designated area: the past.

    To be continued.

    anita

    #428519
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I wrote above, “stuck in the absence of a mother“. It’s synonymous with saying stuck in the absence of love. Love for a person is like water for a plant. Without water, a plant withers; without love, a child withers.

    In the absence of love, a vacuum is created, a vacuum that quickly gets filled with Anxiety. Here is a proposed definition: anxiety= the condition of being stuck in the absence of love.

    I wrote that my mother was not a mother but a monster. It is interesting how similar these two words are.

    I say monster because of all the people in the world, it is this one person who took it upon herself to personally and directly inflict massive pain on me. It was just me and her alone in the small apartment when she did that: the family members who abused here weren’t there, politicians and criminals who created wars and crime that harmed her.. these people weren’t there. It was just me and her alone. And so, in my life, she is the monster.

    Notice I used the present tense: she is the monster, not she was the monster. When I write about her elsewhere I automatically use the present tense. Sometimes I go back and correct it to the past tense, but what comes out of me first, is the present tense. And that is because Anxiety prolongs the past, extending it into the present. The present and the past are one for the Anxious person.

    About the massive pain that she inflicted on me personally and directly: whenever I told about it in the past, I told about it from a minimally-feeling, maximally- dissociated state of mind. As I now try to tell about it from a feeling/ associated state of mind, I feel an unbearable distress and a sense of panic. And so, I am scared to go there. But I will say, it feels like an internal collapse, a death approaching… if I re-experience it the way I experienced it then.

    This is what I felt back then when alone with her, at 5, at 15, at 25 (and in-between), she told me with great emotion and theatrics that she was going to kill herself.. and that she was going to kill herself because I hurt her so much, because of words I said or didn’t say, acts I did or didn’t do, expressions on my face she said meant to hurt her, thoughts she said I had when I was silent.

    You see, my monster suffered from a combo of Paranoid, Borderline and Histrionic Personality Disorders, which meant that she repeatedly suspected that I (as well as other people, practically everyone, at one time or another) was actively trying to hurt her feelings, and feeling victimized by me, she ragefully attacked me repeatedly, at length, and creatively, theatrically. In her mind, she was defending herself from me.

    I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t the case (can you imagine a child trying to hurt a monster and bring rage-attacks against oneself?). Her response was always to argue against my claims of innocence by listing “evidence”: my past behaviors over months and longer that were aimed- so she claimed- at hurting her, and in so doing, prolonging the rage attack.

    Her attacks and abuse included, but were not limited to the following: (1) shaming words and messages, going out of her way to deliver a shaming message in all ways possible, from every angle available, drilling it in thoroughly, for a long time per shaming session, (2) heavy-duty, at length guilt-tripping, (3) feasting on my empathy for her by describing in great detail, during long sessions, how hurt she felt by me and by other people, while insisting that I was a lucky girl with no valid hurt feelings, (4) using a loud, high-pressured voice, yelling, crying, never-ending theatrical expressions of her misery, (5) threats to commit suicide, (6) slapping my face with her open hand, and/ or kicking my body with her foot.

    My Healing is about accepting that all the above happened, that it hurt a whole lot, that the damage she inflicted on me was real and severe (to no longer minimize it, as I have done). To give my feelings, my experience the validity that she took away from me.

    To accept and acknowledge the severity of the abuse I went through, and to clear the present time from the abuse of the past: to no longer project her into other people (expecting them to do what she did).. to remove her from people in my life now.

    To not accept the severity of what happened causes what happened to keep knocking on my door, so to speak, insisting to be fully seen and heard. The knocking is not just about what happened but about it re-happening in new forms, new contexts, new people. For example, as a teenager, I never worried about my knees failing me and not being ale to walk (I worried about other things, of course); as an older woman, the Anxiety took over a new area due to aging: my knees.

    Anxiety is like glue that is keeping shame, hurt, and guilt in my life in the present time. Healing is about removing the anxiety from these feelings/ emotional-mental experiences, so to allow them to move to the past and stay there.

    To be continued.

    anita

    #428503
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    The coyote scared me, but he (or she) did not hurt me. He considered it.. but it didn’t happen. I vividly remember him looking at me up and down, assessing me as potential prey. I’ll never forget it.. it was clear, in his eyes, that it was strictly business, the business of nature, nothing personal. But he didn’t prey on me. Following the two encounters, on two different days, I resumed my walks, there was no pain and injury left over from the encounters.

    On the other hand, my mother- my emotional predator- did hurt me. And it was very personal. There was pain and injury carried on from one day to the next, and to the next. It was emotional pain (hurt, shame, guilt, loneliness, despair), and it was physical pain and distress: there were occasional beatings, but mostly the physical pain I am referring to involves a whole lot of physical discomfort and distress aka anxiety which is my experience almost every moment of every day, when I am awake. Like right now (right shoulder twitching and in pain, being sore from the tics, breathing interrupted, unnatural).

    My mother was my monster, not a mother. She or it.. was not for me; it was against me. She didn’t kill me, but it would’ve been less painful to me if she did. And throughout it all, I craved- deep inside- to one day make her a mother. This craving, this hope kept me close to the monster, forevermore craving her absent love… stuck in a vacuum of love, stuck in the absence of a mother.

    To be continued.

    anita

     

    #428482
    anita
    Participant

    The reason I feel this anxiety whenever I am alone in the evening, is because she used to work and I was waiting for her alone, in the evening, anxious as hell, worried that she will never return, that she is dead and (my) life would therefore end that same night.

    Notice I use the present tense: she is… Past indeed extends into the present, decades later.

    To be continued.

    anita

    #428477
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    When I was confronted by the coyote less than 3 years ago, it felt like time stopped. But Time resumed on that same afternoon, some time after the confrontation was over (the coyote ran away and into the brush). I haven’t been significantly afraid of being confronted by that coyote or by any other coyote since, and resumed my regular walk- including walking through the same stretch of road-  a couple of days after the confrontation (although with some weapon in my hand, pepper spray or a stick). It all seems so far away now, a memory that is secure in the past.

    On the other hand, even though I didn’t see my mother (who lives in another country) in close to 13 years and didn’t talk with her for 11 years (my choice), I am still significantly afraid of her. I’d be afraid to be in the country were she resides in fear that I will find myself in her presence, accidentally. My memories of her are far from being secure in the past. Time has stopped in this context, past is one with the present. I indeed lived in the past for too long.

    Fear stops Time for a little while; Anxiety stops Times for decades; too often, it stops Time for a lifetime.

    It is beginning to get dark as I am typing this, sitting in bed, looking at the stillness of the outside through the window, alone. Whenever alone, at this time of the evening, I feel anxious, fearing that my mother will die. Not because she is old now, but because when she was 25, and I was 5, she said (in a very emotional, convincing way) that she was going to kill herself. I am re-living now what happened decades ago. In my mind, I am still that 5-year-old, afraid that mother will die.

    Anxiety extends the past into the present, and the two are one. Healing is about securing these memories in the past; removing these painful/ scary memories from the Now, and seeing a Now that doesn’t have her in it.

    anita

    #428464

    In reply to: Choosing Love

    anita
    Participant

    Dear Lisa:

    This morning, I re-read most of your posts on this thread and a few of my long replies to you.  Your started your first of two threads, the Alone thread, back on May 1, 2017, and I replied to you on that same day.  You wrote back then: “I am female and 48 years old. I have never had a relationship. I have always longed for one. Every day since I was a teen I have imagined being in relationships“.

    By the end of your 26-page Alone thread (Jan 1, 2019), you were optimistic: “Happy New Year!! I would like to take your advice Anita and start a new thread. I think I have said all I can say in this thread about my insecurities, frustration, jealousy, hurt….I am just going around in circles. I would like to make a more positive tone thread… I want to start with what is going on right now and talk about and being more proactive in reaching my goals. I am very optimistic right now but I have not come up with a name for my thread. I will think about it today. It will be optimistic“.

    Two weeks later, on Jan 15, 2019, you started your 2nd of two thread, this one, titled Choosing Love, indeed an optimistic title: “I want to start this new thread to open myself up to the truth about why I am alone and what I can do to change that… I call this thread Choosing Love because I feel that maybe I have rejected love… I want to change my focus from wondering why love does not come to me to why I am obviously pushing love away“.

    Today, 5 years, 1 month and 21 days later, I want to reply to the above in the simplest way I can:  you ‘ve been Alone for five+ decades because people hurt you too much and for too long, too early in your life. It started before you were even born, when you were still in your teenage mother’s womb, and it continued throughout your childhood aka your Formative Years.

    And throughout those years, no one protected you; no one helped you. You were truly a child/ adolescent Alone. Emotional pain and severe anxiety were Formed into your brain-body (expressing as ADHD and OCD early on). Understandably, as a child and onward, you’ve viewed people (in real-life, not in your threads) as dangerous. Therefore, you reject and push away people=danger.

    Except when daydreaming, something you’ve been engaged with as an adult: when daydreaming, you accept (not reject) people and love,  people= love (not danger)… in your daydreams: “I have an even bigger obstacle, something called maladaptive daydreaming. I have been relying on this since I was around 12 years. Anyone who knows how old I am knows how long I have been using this coping mechanism. I am completely aware of what is real and what is not so it’s not delusional… I do not engage in maladaptive daydreaming when I am with other people but a great deal of my time is spent on it. This is a challenge because I have become quite accustomed to it.” (April 7, 2019)

    Feb 14, 2020: “I am right now alone in my misery again… human beings are insensitive creatures… vile disgusting hateful creatures to ever walk the planet. I hate humans. I hate them. No one stops these creeps from stomping all over the world and do whatever they want. No one protects the helpless“- back to pessimism, back to people=dangerous creatures, and Lisa alone vs dangerous creatures.

    April 14-17, 2020: “I am alone with no one to help me…. I wish I had someone in my life to help me along the way… I don’t know what to do. If only I had that one lifeline growing up“- Lisa Alone vs dangerous people.

    Jan 21, 2023: “Nothing to report except more of the same. People whose only goals in life are the same as reptiles…crushing the hopes and dreams.. they are free to break rules, oppress, ban, and spread lies about others“- people= dangerous reptiles.

    March 2, 2024: “There is not much I can say right now. I would just be saying the same things I have said before“- a childhood experience re-lived.

    Back to the title of your 2nd thread, Choosing Love: is there a way for you to choose love outside daydreaming: to see a single person in real-life as Love, not as Danger: to see a person not as a bully or someone who supports bullies (the two kinds of people you described), but as something else, someone who can be trusted..?

    I hope so, it is my dream that it will happen in your life.

    anita

    seaturtle
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

     

    “We see (3rd eye) when calm, not when under the influence of stress.”

    • I thought this would be a good place to start, from your post on February 28th. Ever since the text exchange I feel like stress/worry was slowly encroaching on my third eye, but it took me 11 days to realize this, from the conversation on the 19th until March 1st. The realization came with the help of two people. The family I nanny for, both parents are very down to earth and kind people, during my lunch and the child’s nap I spoke with the dad and he told me he could sense I was in pain, I explained the stress of my things at my ex’s and he offered to help me go get my stuff if needed. I appreciated this but I decided if I was to do that I would have my friend P come with me. That day I concluded in my head that I needed my passport. Still unaware of where my pain was coming from I thought the solution was to show up at N’s house for my things, thinking this would bring me the conclusions I needed and relieve my anxiety about “getting my things.” I thought it was my things that was making me ache. P agreed to go with me on Sunday. (It still being Friday the 1st at this point. So first person to help me on my way to discover how to solve my pain was the dad I work for, realizing where the pain was, around that text exchange…”my things.”
    • That same night, my roommate, M, became the second person to help me discover further how to solve this pain. I told her about my plan to show up at N’s, and she said something that helped my third eye to waken. She pointed out, if that text exchange made me feel that badly for over the past week, that she witnessed, then why would the solution be to see him? She said “If you go to see him you will forever remember the way he looks at you and it will just be another image you will have to work hard to get rid of.” She also said she didn’t judge me if I did go to his home but that “you are entering his territory and that seems dangerous to me.” Her pointing these things out joilted part of my third eye awake, what was I thinking? Enter N’s territory so that he could show me more contempt? The idea of not seeing him again, relieved me… that was when I decided getting my passport was not worth it, the hassle of getting a new one is less stressful to me than risking seeing him. My roommate also said “the text exchange showed his maturity, but it was also you initiating it, you entering places for him to harm you.” This hit my hard, me putting me in those situations, it was under my control to do this. I felt empowered when I realized the control I have over him harming me… Thank goodness for M.

     

     

    “- what do you see when you “look” at me via the computer screen?”

    • I like this question. However I will look forward to respond when my third eye is completely awake again soon, because I want to do the answer justice 

     

    “he healthier I am, the less complex and simpler I become”

    • At the moment it seems my life was much simpler before I met N, yet meeting him introduced me to more of my complexities. I am curious the difference in blissful simplicity and true simplicity. A Teflon person like N and F, they claim to be simple, proud of their lack of needs, yet this is a complexity in itself..

     

    I wrote: “If there wasn’t better then I’d still rather be single than with him“ and you responded “- remember this realization next time you forget it.”

    • This is hard for me to remember when tired…third eye must rest sometimes right? So when it rests, how do I remember this, when only the children are awake, sacral and heart. I assume over time of the repetition, the third eye repeating to the children over and over until absorbed.

     

    I wrote I feel guilty that I couldn’t be the love he needed in his life, and you responded “I hope that this guilt is not great, and that it will shrink over time and be no more.”

    • I hope it will shrink as well and believe it will. However the guilt is great, it is something that took over me the last week, triggered by his messages. Probably triggered in the relationship… he told me before that I didn’t listen. I remember when he said this how unseen I felt, because I really believe that I do listen. F told me I didn’t listen too, prior to the “house-cleaning.” It feels so far from who I am that it confuses me into thinking I don’t know myself, that I am blind and my third eye is wrong. I do listen.

     

     

    I wrote “one day I wanna hear more about what it was like to do what you are doing. I thank you, because I need this, someone who cares to see me as much as they can. And you are that person right now (heart emoji, and leaf emoji because this feels very natural)“ and you responded “- it makes my day reading this!!! (a huge snow flakes emoji… it is snowing here right now, and the snowflakes are huge!)”

    • This put a smile on my face  huge snow-flakes makes me wonder where! My grandma texted me the other day about lots of snow in WA, she is from Hawaii and not used to this weather there I hope she can find joy in the large snowflakes too!

     

    I wrote “This is interesting because as mentioned above, having a parent who shamed your authenticity led us to question what our authenticity was. Creating this desire to understand ourselves“and you responded “- in all our communication, I never felt so similar to you, having so much in common.”

    • This brings me joy and understanding as to why you see me so well. Clearly I am still impacted by this and still question myself, given the past week or so.

     

    “- I didn’t share this in your thread.. how do you know I have a partner?”

    • I can’t remember where I read this, I thought it was my thread but perhaps it wasn’t. Towards the beginning of this thread, as I was curious about this site and you I was waiting for your response one day and recognized on the main page your name was in quite a few different conversations. I went to one maybe two and read very little as there is so much dialogue happening and I felt I was intruding on another persons conversation. It could have been then when I saw you write that you had a partner but I don’t know anything further than that.

     

    “- people would look like infants, the age of zero bias.”

    • I thought about this further yesterday as I read “the untethered soul.” It says “Take a moment to examine the difference between your experience of the outside world and your interactions with the mental world. When you’re just thinking, you’re free to create whatever thoughts you want in your mind…This inner world is an alternate environment that is under your control. The outside world, however, marches to its own laws…The mental manipulation of the outer world experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in…You re-create the world within your mind because you can control your mind whereas you can’t control the world.” When I read this, I thought about how when I nanny this 18 month year old, me and her parents are telling her “that is a tree” “this is yellow” “that is hot, this is cold.” From my understanding our formative years are creating this inner world… Now as an adult, I am attempting to undo some of the inner world that was created incorrectly/misleading… right? What would happen if a child grew up with no one telling them labels, I suppose they would create their own inner world anyways right because that is a human trait. Is the world too over stimulating for us if we don’t label things and instead just move from experience to experience? I imagine entering another world that is completely new, new senses. I heard once on a podcast, this girl sees her life as this; (‘paraphrasing’) ‘I was once a celestial being, and God approached me and asked how I would like to go to this place called earth for a millisecond of time (unquantifiable in our language) and have a human experience with a huge range of emotions and sensations, and I said absolutely!” I wonder what you think about this, I like philosophizing this type of thing to put my life in perspective so that I can appreciate it and not waste my time here.

     

    – I am not the same person I was before communicating with you. I see more of me because of you.

    This is amazing, I wonder what more you see now?

     

     “actually, I watched a lot of standup comedy during quarantine, (YouTube videos, not TV)!”

    • This is a bees knees moment!

     

    next I will respond to your reply on March 5th, yesterday. Then with some more potential realizations, ah-ha moments I have had recently.

    Seaturtle

    #428427
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I noticed an improvement (not the disappearance of, of course) in my level of daily anxiety since I started this thread, and last night I had the best night sleep I had in the longest time, what an improved feeling this morning!

    The improvement I am experiencing makes me hopeful as to the process of (partial) Healing the dis-ease of Anxiety. I am crediting this improvement to first, my hope that there can be long-term Healing of Anxiety, that it is possible, and second to my most recent realization, an understanding I didn’t have before: that in Anxiety, there is an instinctual belief that Fear helps one survive, or be better equipped to effectively manage life.

    Fear, as I experienced it when I faced the coyote, my first 1-to-1 experience of a natural predator/prey kind was not a distressing experience, there was no lack of ease (a dis-ease). It felt good! Now I understand why many people enjoy scary movies (I used to). If scary movies caused people anxiety (dis-ease), people wouldn’t keep watching them. I suppose this is why many people seek scary sports and activities like rock climbing and jumping off a plane: if those activities caused the people who did them Anxiety, they wouldn’t do them again! Fear feels good.

    Fear is part of Anxiety, but there is more to anxiety than Fear, and that more makes anxiety a bad-feeling experience. Anxiety never feels good. Fear led me to focus on the coyote and the world around me; I was one with nature/ the world around, I felt elated, capable, powerful. Anxiety leads me to focus on the inside of me, in a negative way, being turned inward, separated from nature/ the world around, feeling depressed, incapable, powerless.

    Because Fear is an ingredient in the mix that makes Anxiety, our instinctual belief that Fear HELPS is carried into the Anxiety experience, and we support and maintain that which we believe is helpful, or will help. But this belief is a false belief: anxiety is never helpful.

    What’s more to Fear in the experience of Anxiety?

    My answer (to my question): damage that was accumulated over years and longer.

    To explain the Damage, I will go back to my experience with a predator, but a different kind of predator than the coyote of 2021: my mother, my personal emotional predator. Looking back at the 2021 predator-prey moments, I didn’t and don’t feel anger at the coyote: for one, I did not suffer any injury, no negative consequences, second: the natural job of a predator is to prey on species smaller or weaker than itself (and if very hungry, considers preying on a bigger/ stronger species). it wasn’t personal. My experience with the coyote did not interfere with me continuing the same daily walk after the 2- days confrontations.

    But with my emotional predator it was very personal. And very unnatural. A mother is not designed or supposed to attack her own child. It is not in her instinctual job description. I bet it never happens in nature unless the mother is deranged, and is in very abnormal circumstances.

    * It happens in human society, it happens a lot, that people, including mothers, are deranged and life circumstances are indeed too often abnormal.

    Back to my emotional predatory childhood experience: unlike the short-term (a few moments) of my experience with the coyote, two days of a few moments of encounter on each day, my experience with my mother lasted days, months, years.. an eternity (with breaks, of course). At first, I am sure there was Fear, but that Fear- over such a long, long time- metastasized into something else: Anxiety.

    Facing the coyote, I knew the danger, and when he ran away, I knew the danger was gone. With my mother, I didn’t want her to run away, I needed her to.. (change and be what a mother is supposed to be), and I had nowhere to run, too needy to run, no way to fight, too guilty to fight because I believed (falsely) that I deserved her attacks.

    And so, what happened, over time, to the instinctual need within me to run or fight my personal predator?

    The running and fighting turned inward: “running” inside of me, creating that sickening rush that characterizes anxiety; “fighting” inside me, creating this disquiet/ distress/ dis-ease that characterizes anxiety. The natural, helpful Fight-Flight Response to Fear turned inward, repeatedly, over a period of years, unnatural and harmful, creating damage: TS, OCD, ADD, cognitive and emotional dysfunction, in my case.

    To be continued.

    anita

    #428403
    anita
    Participant

    Continued, this is my new understanding:

    Fear is helpful and necessary when facing real-and-present danger. There is a real positive association between fear and survival. Fear makes a person strong and capable. When a person is Anxious, he/ she is suffering from fear-gone-haywire, a diseased-fear, if you will. Anxiety makes a person weak and incapable.

    The anxious person believes- without necessarily being aware of the belief- that anxiety (like fear) is helpful, that there is a real, positive association between anxiety and survival. Therefore, the anxious person worries and ruminates on and on and on.. sort of, extending the anxiety, thinking that the extended anxiety will pay off.

    Fear promotes survival, fear is helpful;  anxiety is never helpful, it never promotes survival. While anxious, the person is less likely to do what needs to be done to survive/ improve his or her situation. It is very important for the anxious person to distinguish between fear and diseased-fear, aka anxiety, and to remove the deep, false belief that anxiety is helpful.

    anita

    anita
    Participant

    Dear Robi:

    You are welcome, and congrats on having started your new job!

    Saturday and Sunday I felt quite anxious.. I would very often start crying. On Sunday I cried for a long, long time, talked to my girlfriend and went to sleep early… I think crying helped me a lot… So on Monday I woke up a lot more relaxed, almost ‘careless’… but I feel ashamed to talk to her when I’m in a very low mood.. especially if I feel like crying. I don’t know.. maybe it’s the way we’ve been told masculinity is supposed to be like“-

    – It is sad and unfair to boys and men to grow up with this message that “big boys don’t cry” (as the song says) because statistically, men end up dying at younger ages than women because of unreleased stress/ anxiety. So, please, do cry.

    The head teacher seems to trust me a lot giving me responsibilities I have no idea about so I feel like I’m impersonating someone who knows what he’s doing“- keep impersonating someone who knows what he’s doing until such time that you know what you’re doing..

    I don’t feel like teaching English is necessarily my kind of job.. but then again.. nothing seems to be“- some day you will find yourself feeling, on a regular, consistent basis, that you belong somewhere, that you are a real part of something (a place, a job, a relationship).

    I have to make sure I don’t procrastinate and put in the effort needed to plan my lessons. I think, If I do that, things might work quite well.  I have the habit of walking in the classroom with no plan at all ( because I procrastinate ), then panic because I have no plan at all and don’t know what to do“- it is difficult to change habits. Procrastinating has served a valid need for you, which is, seems to me, to lower your anxiety level. To change something that serves you takes a strong motivation and a plan.

    Today and tomorrow I want to focus on planning my Wednesday classes – this time I hope I’ll have the structure and make everything work better“- planning and having structure in your day are very important when it comes to changing a habit.

    As for the anxiety, I don’t know what to do. I’d like to deal with it and heal that wounded child in me. But what if I cry.. for a little bit, whenever I feel like it? Isn’t that a way of releasing some of the stress?“- crying is fine! And so is planning and structure in your day, these three things will help lower your anxiety and form a new habit.

    Have a good day Anita, take good care!“- thank you, and you too!

    anita

    #428397
    Peace
    Participant

    Dear Teak,

    It’s great to hear from you! Welcome back after such a long time.

    how are you doing? how is life on your side?

    “My health is so-so, still suffering from health anxiety. And it is not helping that I have various health issues (smaller but not insignificant) popping up rather frequently… which kind of gives me the reason to worry. So it’s hard to break free from the cycle of worrying… Anyway, I am working on it, hopefully will see some results soon.”

    I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’re keeping up with your daily check-ups. Please do share any results with me and let me know how you’re doing.

    “congratulations on getting married in your homeland too! And having a big wedding that you enjoyed, despite your family not being super happy about it.”

    Thank you very much! It’s hard to believe, but it’s already been nearly three months. Time really does fly by, doesn’t it?

    “It’s not your mom’s fault – it’s just how she was raised and what she knew. But she also gave you a lot of physical touch and cuddling, which is super important, and she was also never abusive (she never criticized you, yelled at you, shamed you, or emotionally manipulated you). This all means that you did get a lot of her love, only it wasn’t complete. As you yourself said, emotional protection and support was missing… but now you are getting it from your husband, and are also giving it to yourself. Which is why you’ve had a major healing!”

    You’re right, it’s not my mom’s fault. She’s full of love. But sometimes, I feel sad. I wonder sometimes who I really have in this world. My mom is very old now, and sometimes she doesn’t even recognize me. My dad passed away, and my siblings treat me like I’m worthless. It hurts a lot sometimes. I struggle with a lot of anxiety, maybe because I’m afraid of being abandoned. Sometimes, I wish I was stronger mentally and had healthier thoughts.

    When I’m with my husband, he’s calm. He doesn’t feel anxious like I do. But if someone doesn’t reply to me, I start feeling like I did something wrong. I’ve always felt afraid and guilty, like I’m always in the wrong.

    Peace

     

    Robi1992
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    Indeed, you are right!

    I think that your anxiety is about you feeling not grown up, at 30 (“Growing up- becoming adult” is in the title of this Feb 2024 thread), not like an adult, but like a boy, alone in a new country. Children are afraid to be all alone by themselves; they are afraid that they can’t take care of themselves, as in “to get a job, get things sorted“. They need .. a grown up to get a job and sort things for them.

    Part of you will need to be the grown up that the other part of you needs. Robi the adult has a scared, anxious child with him all the time, a child that needs care.

    I feel this description is very accurate. Thank you 🙂

    I wanted to write back here but yesterday I started the teaching job, only 3 hours on Monday and 3 hours on Wednesday for now – but still, It was a big challenge for me. Saturday and Sunday I felt quite anxious.. I would very often start crying. On Sunday I cried for a long, long time, talked to my girlfriend and went to sleep early.  It did help a lot, I think crying helped me a lot – I guess I’ve been bottling up a lot in the last months – a lot has happened. So on Monday I woke up a lot more relaxed, almost ”careless”. Although I was going to have an interview, I didn’t feel than anxious about it.. I felt quite relaxed. I felt as if something has lifted off my chest the day before. Maybe I needed to cry.. Maybe also talking to my girlfriend helped, but I feel ashamed to talk to her when I’m in a very low mood.. especially if I feel like crying. I don’t know.. maybe it’s the way we’ve been told masculinity is supposed to be like – you are not supposed to cry in front of your girlfriend, you have to be strong and stable. Well – I do it sometimes.. we both do.. we both cry when things get tough. I don’t mind her being vulnerable and I guess she doesn’t mind me being vulnerable either. We are both very sensitive human beings 🙂

    Today, after yesterdays classes I feel okay.. I am a bit anxious and I feel a little like crying still.. I feel like I’m missing something. I do miss my girlfriend and I miss being with her, all though I didn’t like being in Poland. Also, I would have to learn how to structure my classes properly – which is something I don’t know how to do at all. The head teacher seems to trust me a lot giving me responsibilities I have no idea about so I feel like I’m impersonating someone who knows what he’s doing. It’s quite hard.. I’ll have to learn on the go. But I want to try my best, maybe I can make it work. I don’t feel like teaching english is necessarily my kind of job.. but then again.. nothing seems to be. I think if I managed to plan my lessons well and follow the books, I might be able to do it, and it’s quite a flexible job so it might work for now, for my growth. I feel now, less anxious than before.. I feel like I can do it but I have to make sure I don’t procrastinate and put in the effort needed to plan my lessons. I think, If I do that, things might work quite well.  I have the habit of walking in the classroom with no plan at all ( because I procrastinate ), then panic because I have no plan at all and don’t know what to do. I end up improvising, doing all kinds of activities with no clear aim, avoiding teaching grammar and mostly making conversation. This is not only unprofessional but it’s also a major source of stress. I gotta work on this.

    Today and tomorrow I want to focus on planning my Wednesday classes – this time I hope I’ll have the structure and make everything work better. I will have to learn on the go, but I think It’s the right thing to do right now.

    As for the anxiety, I don’t know what to do. I’d like to deal with it and heal that wounded child in me. But what if I cry.. for a little bit, whenever I feel like it? Isn’t that a way of releasing some of the stress?

    Have a good day Anita, take good care! 🙂

    Robi

     

    #428373
    anita
    Participant

    Continued, a note: Fear is short term experience, it makes a person feel strong, capable and powerful; Anxiety is a long-term experience, it makes a person feel weak, incapable and powerless. This is an important distinction.

    Are you afraid or are you anxious? If you feel strong, capable and powerful.. you are afraid. if you feel weak, incapable and powerless, you are anxious.

    Fear is followed by a return to a healthy, calm and alert baseline; Anxiety is followed by a loss of a healthy baseline. The baseline becomes.. anxiety.

    anita

    anita
    Participant

    Dear Seaturtle:

    I just wonder how that conversation would have gone and if him hearing me say I was considering breaking up and more clear as to why..“- he’d say that he has no words to describe how you made him feel.. wouldn’t he?

    I wonder if he would have heard what I was saying and felt the urgency to be more aware of his feelings, feelings he denied, passive aggression that he had previously denied and gaslighted me about“- it’s a fantasy that following just the right words and an explanation coming from you, he’d go through a metamorphosis. It’d take many months of active psychotherapy and lots of proactive work, and not using weed daily, to make such profound, deep changes.

    (I)  Question if I did try my best and make me worry that if I could go back I would have given him more of a chance to get better“- there is a fitting saying: you can’t squeeze water (introspection, insight etc.) out of a stone (a person whose regularly stoned, pun intended), no matter how long you stand there, day and night, squeezing.

    It is very painful for me to think that if only I had given him the opportunity for a full conversation, rather than ending it so quickly out of fear that he would gaslight and confuse me, that maybe it would have worked out“- fantasy.

    maybe this is all just the sacral (child) acting out because of how much I miss his physical presence… I either need to reach out to him and see if he will hear me out; or I need to squash this potential regret somehow“-  I think it is your suppressed need and desire of childhood and adolescence to be seen and heard by those who won’t, that is acting out at this time.

    The interesting thing about the tiger dream was that.. My level of fear/anxiety was equivalent to the aggression or affection of the tiger. Low fear and the tiger was your friend… My anxiety was barely simmering and the tiger very slowly bit into my leg, insinuating that if I showed more fear I would be attacked. Then I woke up“- this reminds me of the spider (N) and the fly (Seaturtle) analogy that I made earlier: the fly caught in the spider’s web, vibrating it with fear, the spider notices and approaches the fly to attack/ prepare it as a meal.

    Still anxious Seaturtle“- can you watch a good movie/ listen to your favorite music.. do art, take a hot bath, so to relax?

    anita

    seaturtle
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    I feel bad for my anxiety and I feel also anxious you will be disappointed that I am doubting myself so much and not confident Seaturtle. I do think these thoughts are because of the text message exchanges and I also think my anxiety is a mixture of the thoughts and bad sleep do to these lucid dreaming nights.

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