Hi Soulgazer!

I’m glad that you had a good experience living in the moment.

Meditation helped me develop this skill. I also practice gratitude. This helps me to appreciate what I experience in a day. Relaxation can be helpful too. I feel like stress can be a factor that encourages us to yearn for things to be different.

Perhaps being comfortable in your own skin helps too? I used to be caught up in my thoughts when I wasn’t comfortable with who I am as a person. Or didn’t feel as capable in coping with challenges in life. Practicing self-compassion and developing boundaries helped me with that. Challenging avoidant behaviours helped me to grow, develop skills and confidence.

Do any of these experiences resonate with you?

I hope you have a wonderful day too! 🙏

Hi Hailey!

Lovely to hear from you again! I’m enjoying communicating with you. I love your self-motivated drive to learn about these topics. You

It is a shame that your parents didn’t compliment you more during childhood. Every child deserves to be complimented and praised regularly.

I can understand feeling pressure to praise people because they were proud of something even though you disagreed. Sometimes the best thing to say when you disagree with something is nothing at all. It is perfectly acceptable to do so. Non-committal responses can be more polite though to show that you are listening. Ahh and okay. That type of thing.

I’m sure with more practice you will get the hang of complimenting people in a way that you are comfortable with.

I wonder, do you have any strategies to lower anxiety at work? Is that where you have the most anxiety communicating? What situations make you most anxious?

I find that the more anxious I am, the more mistakes I make while communicating. Figuring out ways to lower the anxiety has been really important.

I tend to write scripts for myself to read from if I’m feeling anxious about communicating. Then I practice and memorise them at home and refer to my notes as needed.

It’s good to hear that you are practicing gratitude and meditation. In addition to that, I have found yoga extremely helpful. By learning to relax my muscles, I learned how to relax my mind and emotions. I’m also fond of practising diaphragm breathing and progressive muscle relaxation at the moment.

Various conditions such as autism, dyspraxia and mental health issues can cause difficulties with emotional intelligence. It is entirely possible to have no disorders and experience difficulties with emotional intelligence though.

Hi Felix

You say that you have nothing to show for your life then list a lot of good things that you have going for you. Your dog, your friends, your family, you’re not poor, you survived cancer.

You describe yourself as intelligent then suggest that other people aren’t special or bright and they haven’t done anything, yet things are much easier for them.

Life is rarely what it seems. We all experience mental health issues, relationships ending, illness, abuse, redundancy, debt, death… The list goes on and on. Just because someone seems like they have an easy life, doesn’t mean that they necessarily do. I think I’ve only met one person who had a perfect life and they were 16 at the time. I’m sure their life now includes trauma, the same as everyone else’s.

Other than being single and awaiting a new hob, it sounds like your life is going pretty well. Dating can take some time to meet the right person. People do say that dating gets worse as you get older.

I would suggest that some of the feelings that you are experiencing could be due to depression. You may wish to liaise with mental health professionals. Otherwise, practicing compassion and gratitude could be beneficial.

I hope I have not made you feel frustrated with all this.. I apologise for that if so..

Thing is my parents come from a different time  and how they see things is how they have been taught by their older generations. I can try to change their heart but may not exceed. Sad part is this caste system is so much deep rooted in us that even my boyfriend believes that he is from that low caste…. I constantly try to tell him you are not but what else can I do. My mother has so much fear of relatives as well that they’ll laugh at us or they’ll die of shame in the society.Our generation is more or less doesn’t care about what others talk about us but the generation of our parents do. They are not aware about the psychological impact of doing this  or maybe they do not even belive something like this exists.

I wanted to be with this man  to prove to society as well that no one is made less or more by God which i truly believe.Him giving up on us for this bizarre reason is also one of the reason how caste system will go on for generations to come.We should let these walls break down.

Although he has said we have time I am not going anywhere I am not getting married before you as well  & that he’ll talk to his parents after October.He then says that when it comes to asking God I’ll pray it’s you and me in the end.

My parents are also trying to move out of this village and we’ll be living in some other place hopefully.

I am so grateful to have someone who is taking so much time and putting effort to write so much for me.Thank you Anita ma’am.I don’t know you but it feels like i have a corner where i can come and share without feeling guilty.Thanks a lot🌻

Hardest thing about all this is knowing you are not wrong Caste system is wrong, having the strength to fight with everyone for that person and trying to show your parents the right thing as well……. Still seeing that sometimes life is just trying to teach you patience, acceptance and letting go and many more things.

It feels he is doing it less for him and his family more for my parents and their respect. I have left it to God now maybe.I hope he gets the best and if it’s not him and I in the end  in God’s plan May both of us move on and live our life.It hurts to see him trying to suppress his emotions and pushing himself so much.He tries to be happy but I can see what war is going within him.I hope time heals him and me too. Or if I could I’ll ask God to give him courage to stand by me.

Thank you.

I know you must be busy with your life too ma’am.I will not mind even if you’ll take days to reply.Do so only when you feel like it.

Sending love and gratitude 💕

Dear Eric:

“I won’t text her ever again… I also won’t post any stories with lame jokes or something like that anymore, I’m done with doing those kind of things to impress her“- wise choices, I say!

“Right now I’ll post stories to impress other girls“- you have real strengths to impress them with (ex. of a strength: your ability to make wise choices, such as the above).

“Tbh liking her is one of the greatest mistake I ever did in my life, it really disrupts my mind and giving me lots of anxiety….. Because she’s a girl with a bit of coquettish attitude and has attention seeking traits“- (1) it wasn’t really a mistake to like her, because liking someone (or something) is not a matter of rational choosing. It’s a feeling. (2) I am guessing that this means that in the future you will not try to impress another girl who is coquettish and attention seeking?

It will be helpful if you have a clear enough picture in your mind of the physical and/ or mental traits to look for in a young woman.

“You said that I need to focus on my strengths, I feel like I’m still not good at communicating with people… and I feel like I need to improve it…. Because I never dated anyone in real life…. my only experience is texting by phone“- I noticed a long time ago that you are pretty good at communicating with people right here on your thread, including in your most recent post: (1) you address me kindly (Dear anita) just as I address you, (2) you thank me, (3) you show me that you read what I wrote to you by quoting and responding to it, and you have let me know that you paid attention to my NPR suggestion and applied it: “and yes i did use the NPR method here”,  (5) you ended your post optimistically, perhaps because you know that I encourage this attitude.

All you have to do in real life is transfer the 1-5 above to your future relationship with a young woman: address her in a way she likes to be addressed, thank her when she says or does something kind, listen to her and show her that you listen to her by repeating something she said, and showing her that you took what she said seriously enough to apply it. These are big items of good communication that you can transfer from one medium to another.

“Few days ago I went to a temple, I pray so that I will be guided to the right path of my relationship life“- excellent: you took a real-life step (away from the computer/ phone) toward your future relationship!

“I pray that I’d be given an easier path to meet the right person that I’ll marry one day…. And I hope it’ll be someone that I really in love with… and vice versa“- it can happen for you: you have what it takes to make this happen!

“Tbh sometimes I’m also grateful for all the life lessons that I’ve learnt till now…. I can manage my emotions better now. I just hope that all the anxiety I’m feeling everyday could be reduced little by little“- this is the optimistic ending of your post, which I referred to: you acknowledged that you learned life lessons and that you made progress in managing your emotions,  you expressed gratitude and your hope for reduced anxiety.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I am proud of you, Eric!

anita

Dear nycartis:

You wrote “this feeling, this Lack or Void has always been with me.. a dark hole that can never be filled“- this Lack, Void, dark hole that can never be filled-  it has been with me too and it’s been with lots and lots of people. I want to work on my own Lack-Void-dark hole that can never be filled (I’ll refer to it as Lack, the 1st word you used, and the only one of the boldfaced above that you used more than once, a total of 4 times) this morning, using your posts to help me with my personal work. I hope that as I develop this post, it will help you too. First, I will research your Lack, then I will look deeper into my own.

The title of your thread characterizes the Lack very well: “Feeling Down/ Like  No One Cares“. Words in the title of your previous posts also fit this Void as well: “Fear… not coping.. Struggling.. haunted… Anxiety“.

You wrote yesterday: “Even now that I have a loving husband, ‘lots of friends’, and a daughter, and now finally a very attentive mom, nothing can fill it”- your focus when it comes to the Lack has been your “friends”. You chose quotation marks around the word because there is a mismatch between your expectations in regard to friends and the  reality you experienced  in regard to friends.

“Sometimes it scares me a little. I know I would never do anything drastic, like take my life or anything“- this Lack is so distressing at times that a person feels desperate enough to end that distress any which way, whatever it takes.

“I spend way too much time thinking about the Lack. In this instance, the friends who didn’t come, and not the ones who did (or the fun time I had with my husband and daughter celebrating separately). My mind reverts quite naturally to the Lack“- the Lack is so distressing at times that it demands all our attention and all of our thinking. It takes priority over anything else.

“I have been living with this Lack, like an elephant in the room for a very long time“- this Lack is as big as an elephant in a room. It is not a minor lack, its indeed a LACK.

“This birthday just sort of shone a light on it, but it is there all the time“- we feel the Lack more intensely times than in other times, but it is always, there, the elephant in the room.

“I think you are on to something that this has a whole lot to do with my childhood“- I read and re-read what you shared about your childhood before, but not with the Lack being on my mind. I want to look for the Lack in what you previously shared. I will try to not make it very long:

“My family is very small… I was ALWAYS the peacekeeper” (March 2019): you were always the peacekeeper because there was no peace for you as a child, in the context of your family.

On October 11, 2020, you submitted your one and only happy thread titled “A Happy Post/Gratitude“: “My daughter spends more time with my husband’s family and is very bonded and comfortable with all of them. I’m thrilled because, in the last week or so, she has finally bonded with my mom!! Today we spent the day together and the two of them were just talking, and walking my mom’s dogs at a park, and it was as if they were old buddies, so comfortable. I kind of stepped back a bit and let the moment last as long as it needed to. It filled my heart so much… to see this new connection of love forming makes my heart so happy… Today is a day I won’t ever forget… my daughter really enjoys being with her“.

In the same thread, you wrote: “My mom..  has exposed me to a LOT of pain“.

Your mother exposed you to a LOT of pain, which took away so much from the child that you were: it took away a LOT of your peace of mind and heart (and therefore you became “ALWAYS the peacekeeper”). Your bond with your mother was terribly interrupted, your feelings of comfort with her was terribly gone. You were so-uncomfortable- the opposite of “so comfortable”). Your heart was so-much empty, and seeing your daughter and mother filled your heart “so much”.

“It filled my heart so much“, you wrote on Oct 11, 2020. Yesterday, July 17, 2020, you wrote that you have “a dark hole that can never be filled“. The image of your daughter and mother did not fill your heart for long. All that was filled on that day was gone some time later.

On the same thread, you shared: ” in truth I’m so weak and timid because of this gnawing fear that I’ll have someone mad at me, or someone cut me out of their life and cast me aside. It’s something I’m struggling with very much and am actually in therapy to try to resolve” (Oct 12, 2020): I noticed this gnawing fear in your various threads in regard to your friends.

The day after, Oct 13, 2020, you wrote: “My husband, thank goodness, is such an amazing person… so different than many of the people I grew up with. He’s decent, respectful, and loves me, and reliable… But this issue of mine baffles him. He can’t understand why I refuse to let go of some friendships or even family relationships that are definitely toxic“- I think that the reason you focus on unreliable friends is because the shape of your Lack/ “dark hole” is such that it cannot be filled by an amazing, decent, respectful, loving and reliable person like your husband. It can only be filled- so the Lack’s intuition goes- it can only be filled by the person/s who created it. Or people similar to the people who created it: non-amazing, indecent, disrespectful, unloving, unreliable, definitely toxic.

I don’t think that it is possible (for you, for me, for anyone) to convince the Lack to be filled by what it is not designed to be filled with. I think that it is not possible to fill it with anything at all. It will always remain empty, and the only possibility is to shrink it. All the efforts to fill it end in emptiness and a continued desire to fill it, a desire doomed to be frustrated again and again, forevermore.

There are euphoric feelings that accompany the images of/ thoughts about filling Lack, such as you experienced in your Happy Post. But these euphoric, happy feelings are deceiving because they cannot lead to success. They in fact lead to failure and misery.

– to be continued later. If you’d like to react to what I posted so far, nycartist. Otherwise, I would like to return to your thread in hours from now.

anita

Dear Leaagain:

You are welcome. “How do you think one would go about learning those skills” – to learn people skills, you have to be interacting with people. Since you are interacting with me online, you can learn people skills while interacting with me.

You already possess people skills: you often thanked me, if not every time, and you often expressed appreciation for me: being polite and expressing gratitude and appreciation are people skills.

Listening (reading my words and paying attention to them, in this case) is also a people skill- you have this people skill as well. But you can improve on it: yesterday I asked you to summarize a post for me, to make it into “one paraghraph with a few sentences”. But what you posted next was not one paragraph but a multiple paragraph post, as long as the one I asked you to summarize.

Here is a current opportunity for you to practice your listening skill: please don’t thank me more than once a day. Once a week of saying thank-you is good enough for me! (I get tired of a frequent thank-you/you-are-welcome exchange as well as other forms of expressed appreciation when they happen too frequently).

Other people skills are assertiveness and resolving conflicts. You can improve on this one as well. A few days ago, I posted a sentence to you that didn’t feel right to you, so you deleted your account. Next time I post something that doesn’t feel right to you- do not.. disappear, deleting your account. Instead, tell me what it is that didn’t feel right and we’ll explore it together.

You asked me about overcoming your fear of abandonment: well, learning and improving on your people skills will help!

anita

Dear Mollie:

I decided, since I have the time and prefer to spend it this way, to re-read what you shared back in November 1, 2021, and then re-read your update May 19, 2022, six months and 18 days later.

Back in Nov 1, you shared that you were in a healthy relationship with a supportive man, and that a month and a half earlier (in mid-September 2021) you started, for the first time in your life, to question your sexual orientation, panicking about the idea of being a lesbian or bi-sexual. You mentioned that prior to obsessing over your sexual orientaion, you obsessed about other topics and suspected that you suffer from OCD.

This questioning of your sexuality led you to read a lot of forums online on the topic of sexual orientation, taking online tests aimed at determining one’s sexual orientation, and “whenever I see a woman… I imagine doing sexual things with her as a test to see whether I am bi/ lesbian or not”.

In your update yesterday, you shared that you have questioned all aspects of your relationship with your boyfriend. You have since gained insight into the motivation behind this questioning:  to protect yourself from future disappointment, given that all of your past relationships, before the current, were sour.

You read blogs that encouraged you to “trust yourself and your decisions, to find love within yourself”. You’ve also been practicing (1) Gratitude, so to help you appreciate and focus on what you have, instead of focusing on what you don’t have, (2) Relaxation techniques and Mindfulness skills: “when you feel overwhelmed with thoughts… pause and take a moment to breathe… take time each day to listen to a guided meditation… get comfortable in the now and appreciate every second”, instead of being in a rush to know what the future will bring.

Some days you still suffer from HOCD (doubting your sexual orientation) and ROCD (doubting your relationship), but day by day, you are feeling mentally stronger, having better control of your mind- being better able to overcome your obsessive thoughts.

Thank you, Mollie, for posting back in November and again yesterday- it is very kind of you to return to this thread with encouragement and advice for those who still struggle as badly as you struggled back then.

You read like a good person, Mollie. I have the feeling that the more you believe that indeed you are a good person, the more peace of mind and heart you will have. Feel free to post again anytime, here or anywhere else in these forums.

anita