Hi Shve and thanks for your acknowledgement and clarification.

Just a suggestion to try which I need to do myself more oftenbwhich nay help.  Before you go to sleep at night, work out a simple routine and do a positive meditation.  In the mornings, you could read from one of those books or online, a daily positive reading. Also having a gratitude list to acknowledge thanks for.  I know when O have done these things myself, I seem to function much better so thank you for reminding me. When I get out of the habit, I forget.

Hi Ivygrl!

Sorry I’ve been busy for a few days. I made a mental note to reply to you, forgot and finally remembered again today! Well done on entering a contest. That was very brave of you. I’m glad that your artwork got many likes. I’m sure in the future you will be able to win. Keep up the good work practicing.

Regarding your questions about subconscious and conscious.

There are things that your conscious mind believes.

Then there are subconscious emotional beliefs.

For example, throughout childhood my subconscious absorbed a message that “I am not good enough” and formed a belief around it. My conscious mind as an adult knows this isn’t true.

What kinds of thoughts make you feel upset and want to give up?

Fortunately, there are things you can do to change subconscious beliefs and make them easier to deal with.

Keeping a gratitude diary is important. Writing down when people compliment you and keeping a list of that is important. There have been many compliments in this thread. Finally, learning to challenge negative conscious thoughts is important. Whilst validation from others helps, they cannot change your beliefs about yourself. Only you can do that.

In time you will learn that negative thoughts aren’t necessarily true and be able to see them for what they are without being upset by them. Mindfulness is a skill many people practice to help with this.

Please see an example of how to challenge negative thoughts below:

“I’m not good enough.”

What does being a good person mean?

What does being a bad person mean?

What historically has made me feel this way? What is the context of the current situation that made me feel this way? Is there another way to look at the situation? What would I say to my best friend if they were in a similar situation?

To address this negative thought, I would keep a list of all of the good things I do and the good things I like about myself and add 1 or 2 things to it every day. These good things can start out small.

I held a door for someone.

I cheered up my friend.

I picked up someone’s keys and returned them when they dropped them.

I try to be kind and caring to others.

I am intelligent.

I try my best to work hard.

Dear Shve:

You are very welcome! I have so much to say, so I know that this will be a very long post. I hope that you have the patience. Take as long as you need to read/ re-read any particular part.

1) About Words: words are easy to say… for those who don’t care if their words hurt others (hurt others right there-and-then, or later). This is particularly true in regard to men who pursue women for sex, not caring if their words end up hurting the women: “he said he loved me and wanted to marry me” – how fast and easy it was for him to say these words, it takes less than a minute and a tiny portion of a calorie to move the muscles required to utter these words.

Later, when he was no longer interested in you and you confronted him, “he just said I loved you at that time, so I said that, now I don’t so I’m saying that“- When he told you that he loved you, he felt something: that feeling may have been, at first, a feeling of affection, but it became predominantly a feeling of excitement at the idea of sexually conquering a woman. When he told you I-want-to-marry-you, it was part of his plan to conquer you. Men have been suggesting and/ or promising marriage for the purpose of sexually conquering a woman since the invention of marriage!

What he said, in the sentence I boldfaced above is that he is ethically okay with saying and then unsaying whatever, his excuse: I felt it then, I don’t feel it now.

“He also did mention to me once that in our office the talk was that I was a girl that men could not ‘get hold of’. May be in his male brain this became a challenge“-

In regard to sexually conquering a woman/ sexual conquest, an online definition of the word conquest: the subjugation and assumption of control of a place or people by use of military force; sexual conquest: a seduction culminating in sexual intercourse.

2) About Pleading, Crying and Begging Persistently: “He was persistent, pleaded cried and begged and said he could not live without me. He said don’t leave me for these silly reasons, I will keep you very happy” – he said what he said as part of his sexual conquest mission. He pleaded to your reason (“don’t leave me for these silly reasons”), to your empathy, pity and guilt (“cried and begged”), to your need to feel that you are important and special to someone (“said he could not live without me”), and he promised you happiness.

Pleading, crying and begging repeatedly takes more time and energy than just uttering words once. What gave him energy was the excitement about the prize at the end of his sexual conquest mission, if it ends successfully.

“He asked me to ask my family about him if we could get married… He persuaded me and even was getting angry about why I’m not talking to my family about it… he said we should keep convincing them until they get convinced and then we will announce it among our friends and everyone” – he was making himself more believable in regard to his alleged intent to marry you, a non-existent intent. He was okay with you and your family getting hurt once his mission was accomplished.

3) About Promises: “he said… I will make you very happy… and he said I promise you I will not touch you before marriage” – again, these are only words, and uttering words is easy when a person doesn’t care about hurting another’s feelings; uttering words is the easiest part of the sexual conquest mission.

4) The Next Phase of his Sexual Conquest Mission: “One fine day he said he could not proceed with this because his family did not think this was suitable… I was shocked and cried to him. He said this will not work out. We met in office the next day and we talked, and he said he would drop me back home. He stopped on the way home and asked can I kiss you” – by persistently pursuing you for a long time, day after day, he got you to the point of emotional dependence on his Words, Pleading, Crying, Begging and Promises. Once he removed what you were dependent on, you were shocked and upset, and while shocked and upset, he arranged to be alone with you in his car where he went for the Prize.

“On hearing that I thought he’s back to normal he was just angry… I was just happy hearing that” – when he asked if he could kiss you, he was approaching the culmination of his sexual conquest mission, but you were not aware of it. Like a person dependent on a drug (his Words, Pleading, etc.), you were relieved and happy at the thought that you didn’t lose your drug, that it’s still available for you.

“I said no you can’t and asked if I could kiss him, I kissed him on his cheek” – When he asked if he could kiss you (on the lips), you felt a gratitude to him, for not taking away from you what you became dependent on. You did not want to say Yes to a sexual kiss, so you offered him a non-sexual kiss, a kiss on his cheek.

5) The Culmination of his Sexual Conquest Mission, going for the Prize: “I kissed him on his cheek, and he suddenly kissed me on my lips.  I felt something I never did before. From there it was downhill…  The next few weeks he would call me to come with him and this would happen… This continued for 4-5 months“.

“I would think… surely, he would not just throw me and go because he promised he would only touch me after marriage” – you were so confused at the time, that you still expected him to keep his promise, not being aware that he already broke his promise.

6) He didn’t need more than 4-5 months with the Prize: “One fine day he said his family found a girl for him… He stopped calling me to come with him“.

7) Post Mission for the Conqueror: “he said she was young and beautiful, and that he was the first guy for her…He was so happy…  kept flaunting her pictures and engagement to everyone at office… And then he got married… he had twins, a boy and a girl, exactly what he wanted… He did pretty well in his career too“.

Post Mission for the Conquered: “I felt very dirty, cheap, humiliated and shocked…  I could not figure out what was going on. I was like is this real? … it was very painful. I was still in a shock, slowly I started realising he had used me because I was a challenge and he wanted to show that I could be ‘captured’” – you became aware that indeed you were captured (or conquered, the word I used).

To capture, online definition: to take into one’s possession or control by force.

To conquer, online definition: to overcome and take control of (a place or people) by use of military force.

– the force he used was not physical, it was psychological.

Deceiving you (Pleading, Crying and Begging, and making false Promises to you, etc.) = using psychological force against you.

How does the conqueror feel (the one who deceived and took control of his victim)? Elated. How does the conquered feel (the one who was deceived and lost control)? Humiliated, shocked.

“He blamed it on me saying ‘why did you come with me when I called you’?” – he (the perpetrator) succeeded in his mission to deceive you (his victim), and then he blames you for… his own success.

“I hated myself for letting this happen to me” – the one deceived accepting the responsibility conveniently given to her by one who deceived her.

“All of this triggered my path to depression, weight gain… And here I am still unmarried, depressed, gaining weight and still have flash backs about the whole incident that make me cry“,

“Everyone around him thinks he is a very good person. I don’t know how to move forward, feels like I am still stuck at the time that he treated me like trash… For him it seemed normal to just go about life… I’ve shared about this to 2 friends of mine, one just said these things happen” –

– Lots of people passively accept the abuse of power; many admire those who successfully abuse their power.  In addition, people gravitate toward those who appear happy and powerful/ in control and gravitate away from people who appear sad and powerless/ not in control. So, in the office, people likely gravitated toward him and away from you. This gravitation tendency keeps the perpetrators powerful, and the victims… powerless.

“Yes, the person was cruel. He took advantage of my vulnerability, when I was at the lowest point in my life. But when such a long time goes by and nothing happened to him, I think maybe he’s not cruel, maybe I deserved this” – Nothing happened to him because much of society passively accepts the abuse of power, and many people encourage and participate in it, in some form or another.

“I could never share my story to my family due to the immense shame I feel even thinking of talking about it… I spend many sleepless nights just thinking that I betrayed my parents but could not bring myself to tell them about this. Tried so many times but could not…. I even thought of ending my life, but I can’t imagine my family going through that horror” – your immense shame does not belong to you. It belongs to (1) the perpetrator/ conqueror, (2) the many people who supported him along the way, starting with his parents who encouraged (or did not discourage) the idea that it is okay for a man to abuse his social-gender power against women, (3) the people who did not provide you with guidance in regard to this widespread and well-known practice of men seeking to sexually subjugate women, the people who failed to teach you how to detect men-on-a-sexual-conquest-mission and how to respond to them.

Power is successfully abused in many ways, all over the world. Shame belongs to the millions of people who are (1) aware of this or that abuse of power, (2) are capable of doing something against it, (3) passively accept it (ex. your friend who said: “these things happen”), and/ or encourage it and participate in it.

“I did not expect him to break my trust and me ending up like this… He did come over home once with my friends. He is very good at keeping appearances in front of others to seem like the perfect guy” – your parents should have taught you that trust can be broken by people who appear perfect.

“Had I not gone through this experience I would never have thought he was like this” – if your parents taught you that people are too often not what they appear to be, you wouldn’t have to go through this experience.

“I did think to myself during the aftermath of this, why did I not have anyone to tell me he was not good for me” – it would have been very, very helpful if your parents, or someone else, told you that it is possible that he (or any man/ person) is not what he appears to be, and then tell you the common ways in which men seek to sexually subjugate women (ex. promising to marry her), so that you would have been aware and alert to such ways.

“I also had an intuition about him not being good for me but at that time I could not figure out why my mind thought so because he was so well behaved” – if you were taught about the ways men seek to subjugate women, you’d have more than an intuition about him not being good for you, you’d have an understanding of the motivations behind his “good” behavior.

The combination of Intuition + Understanding would have been powerful enough against his efforts.

“My feelings of shame and disgust are still strong even though it has been 10 years now. I’m now 37, I can’t think of getting into a relationship for the fear of being used again” – with more understanding comes power. If you use your power of understanding, you can protect yourself from current and future abuses.

“Most of the anger during the time with him was because of his behaviour in relation to other women when we were talking. He would tell..  a friend lost weight, he would tell her did you transfer your weight to her(me). He even said another girl was the most beautiful among our circle of friends” – like I said in the beginning of this post, for people who don’t care about hurting others with their words, it is easy to say whatever they feel like saying.

“Hearing these things made me jealous, but I did not know how to handle that jealousy, I tried to hide it and suppress it to maintain peace… I know I was not to blame fully for that anger” – you were not to blame for feeling anger at his verbal cruelty. Your anger was an instinctive/ natural response to his cruelty.

“How can I move forward knowing that someone is out there enjoying their life after destroying my dreams?” – a person like him, who does not care about honesty, decency and justice, a person who cares only for personal power and appearances, hurts the most when he becomes aware of his disappearing youth and health as he ages and becomes more aware of his mortality.

“I also dreamt during my teens that only the person I get married to would touch me and I had made this clear to him too, but he destroyed those dreams” – if he, or a man like him (and there are plenty) would have married you first and then touched you… you’d still be touched by a bad man.

Your dream, I am sure, was to marry to and be touched by a good man, an honest, decent man. Maybe you can still have a First, a first with a good man, one you are yet to meet and get to know.

It has taken me more than 5 hours to put this post together. I hope it is helpful. Please take your time reading it.

anita

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by .

Ugh…the love of his life? It’s like, ok thanks, so what was I? Nothing? Ugh…. talk about feeling jipped. Not sure if that’s what you meant, but that’s how I read it!

It’s interesting.  I knew I recognized something in your post that felt familiar to me. Like you, my mother and older sister suffered from mental illness.  That is so hard to deal with. Our mothers and sisters are our first friends in the world, I’ve heard it said. I felt so unloved on really deep and primal level. I kept people at a cool distance my whole life. Over time, I’ve come to see it wasn’t their fault – it was their brain chemistry, not them.  Children love so easily – so there’s proof right there, you know? It took me a long time to make that connection. And to forgive. Not to their faces, but in my heart. As a result, I feel much lighter. But I didn’t want to be the same person anymore, you know?

Over time, I learned to open myself up more to people. To be vulnerable. Small moment by small moment. I’d do it literally with anyone – a co-worker, the grocery clerk. What I’ve learned is that everyone – I mean, EVERYONE – really longs for authentic connection. It’s pretty amazing and wonderful to experience. And restorative, I have to say. Maybe something to try?

In gratitude is a great place to be. I’m so glad you’re into it!  It will completely reframe the way you look at your life. Like in a major way.

Small steps, girl. You know? That’s all we can do.

Hope this helps,

Pink 🙂

Ugh the sadness is the worst, girl. I get it. I was sad all the time for years, and I felt bad talking to anyone about it b/c I didn’t want to burden anyone. But I came to understand that the Universe, God, whatever you want to call it, kept me away from certain people because they weren’t right for me. Meaning, there’s a purpose to all of this mess of life. And I started to see the miracle of being alive every single day–of watching children play, the leaves change, the great fortune of having a roof over my head and food to eat, since there are so many who do without. In short, gratitude – it saved me. Maybe having gratitude for all that you do have may save you too. There’s a bigger reason you are here, and maybe it has nothing to do with a relationship right now.

Hope this helps,

Pink 🙂

Hi Brian

Lovely speaking with you again!

Personally, I find that positivity is about challenging unhealthy thoughts and beliefs.

I’ve always had difficulty with positive affirmations if I don’t believe them to be true.

I do find practicing gratitude helpful. Also, writing positive things about myself enabled me to develop self-compassion.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about positivity too.

Dear Notebook6:

You are welcome. “Sometimes it’s still nerve-wracking thinking that he might lose interest and now he got a new working environment that he will meet new colleagues/friends” – it is interesting, isn’t it, how your brain and body react to the idea that he would lose interest in you, as if him losing interest in you would mean injury or death to you.

For a little girl living with her mother, the idea that her mother will lose interest in her would mean, in the little girl’s mind, that there would be no one to feed her, no one to cover her with a warm blanket when it’s cold at night, etc., and all this would mean death to her. So, naturally, when her mother is repeatedly inattentive, depressed and/ or angry, the girl fears for her life and becomes a very anxious little girl, being anxiously attached to her mother.

Fast forward, the girl is now a woman, and she imagines that if some guy living in another country, a guy who is not a source of food and shelter, etc., that if he loses interest in her, then she’ll die, or experience some other physical catastrophe. This woman is experiencing an anxious attachment style.

I wrote to you: it is possible that he prefers a long-distance almost-relationship over a committed, in-person relationship, and you responded: “It might be true because he mentioned he needs lots of personal space before” – this means that he is likely to keep being invested in a long-distance almost-relationship with you and avoid a short-distance committed relationships with a different woman, a woman in the office/ hometown.

Your online therapist since March 2021 seems to agree with me, having told you that the guy “has been quite consistent and stable” in his communication with you. You also shared that you’ve been practicing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the past month, and more recently, you started a gratitude journal so to improve your “sense of self/ self-esteem“. I wonder how a gratitude journal can help your sense of self/ self-esteem?

“Currently I’m suffering from loneliness after working from home for 2 years, most of the time there is nobody I can talk to, I’m socially deprived and have no life. Which can contribute to my neediness towards him” – yes, of course this would contribute to your attachment to your friend. Two years of working from home is a long, long time. Is there no way for you to socialize in-person with people?

anita

This might seem funny to ask, but are you a grateful person, and do you practice gratitude?

Dear Javier,

it’s good to read you had a productive therapy session, with lots of self-reflection and making a kind of inventory of where you are at mentally and emotionally. I am glad it helped you! And it’s also great that you’re going to mass, socializing with people, listening to their stories and how they’ve overcome their hardships. It’s so sweet that you primary school teacher recognized you, and that you opened up to her, expressing your appreciation and gratitude.

To be honest, I have always felt ungrateful towards people who helped mold me.

No wonder, since the most important people who molded you (your parents) did a poor job. Your father abused you, your mother failed to protect you from abuse. It’s no wonder you didn’t feel any gratitude to authority figures, including those who were good and kind, like your primary school teacher.

In a response to Sarah’s question: “How are you protective and caring?”, you wrote:

I always feel responsible for other peoples feelings. Especially towards my family, as I feel responsible for all their pain and hurting.  As a result, I go to great lengths to avoid conflicts, and seldom admit when my feelings are hurt.

In trying to protect and care for others, you suppressed your own feelings and needs. You blamed yourself for your mother’s pain, when it wasn’t your fault at all. That’s what a child does – it always protects the parent, and blames themself, trying to change and become “better”, hoping that this would make the parent happy.

From very early in your childhood, you thought that something was wrong with you, first when your father was beating you, and then when your mother wouldn’t protect you from him. You took responsibility for their abuse and lack of protection, you thought you were bad and deserved it. And then later when you started acting out, you kind of “proved” to yourself that you are indeed bad and deserve poor treatment.

See how it goes? You were an innocent child who took the blame for being abused, believing there was something terribly wrong with you. And you lived your life with that false belief, acting out, doing drugs, not paying attention at school etc.

How does it feel to protect and care?

Honestly, it sucks big time. Because, it reminds me how neglected, hurt and tormented I was. And, I tend to start with the “what ifs”, “I wish”, and “Why wasn’t there anyone there for me”. The more I protect and care about my nieces, the more devastated and anxious I feel. Somehow, I see myself in them, my brittle inner-child that is broken into thousand pieces.  I get reminded of how brittle and weak I really am. A tiny bump in the road will break me.

You indeed were neglected and hurt as a child, and you had no one to protect you. A small child left to his own devices in the midst of domestic violence is horrible indeed. That’s why you feel brittle and weak now. It’s the inner child in you. What you are doing now, with therapy and self-help and sharing here, is you’re strengthening your adult self. Your adult self isn’t helpless like your inner child is, it has resources to help you. So the task would be to strengthen your adult self, so you can defend and protect and care for your inner child.

One way to strengthen your adult self is to understand and accept that it wasn’t your fault that the abuse happened. That you’re not inherently bad and worthless, that you didn’t deserve it. So you stop taking the blame and responsibility for other people abusing you. Specially for your parents abusing you, i.e. failing to protect you. This is how you will start protecting your inner child. If you believe you deserved the abuse, you cannot protect your inner child, and healing cannot happen. Can you see that?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.