Dear Anita,

Sure. I will share with you about it a week from now. About the previous therapy session, here is what I wrote in my previous thread dated yesterday-

I could not share anything at all. She tried to begin with asking the reasons why I couldn’t share this with her or with anyone else but I did not speak on that too. We then first looked at a ‘support system’ that would help me, which included things like watching something or reading, talking to a friend, practicing faith, breathing exercises, gratitude journal etc. She asked me to also maintain a journal where I write one good thing that happened in the day. I told her that I have been trying many of these for quite some time but it does not help usually. We then discussed that how I can help myself by changing my environment in the coming summer breaks. But we did not talk about the thoughts and emotions more or less. She told me that while I do not have to get ‘uncomfortable’ in therapy, I should also understand that this is something urgent and needs to be addressed. I do not know whether/how much I will be able to share in the next session.

Thanks,

Kshitij

Dear Anita,

Thanks for checking on me. The session with my therapist went okay, I could not share anything at all. She tried to begin with asking the reasons why I couldn’t share this with her or with anyone else but I did not speak on that too. We then first looked at a ‘support system’ that would help me, which included things like watching something or reading, talking to a friend, practicing faith, breathing exercises, gratitude journal etc. She asked me to also maintain a journal where I write one good thing that happened in the day. I told her that I have been trying many of these for quite some time but it does not help usually. We then discussed that how I can help myself by changing my environment in the coming summer breaks. But we did not talk about the thoughts and emotions more or less. She told me that while I do not have to get ‘uncomfortable’ in therapy, I should also understand that this is something urgent and needs to be addressed. I do not know whether/how much I will be able to share in the next session.

About how I feel, I have been feeling depressed the whole day. Tried to uplift myself by watching something or studying, but there is a heaviness inside me. It did get slightly better in the evening. As far as medicines are concerned, I will not take that option. Sorry Anita if I sound stubborn or rude but I cannot and will not go down that road. I hope things get better (even if slightly) without them, that’s my only bet.

Thanks

Kshitij

Dear Roberta,

Thank you! Indeed – an attitude of gratitude has been something I’ve been working on for some time. I express gratitude, part of my daily practice of meditation. With no exception after I meditate, I think of lets say a number of aspects of my life I am grateful for – I feel good, positive, balanced and connected.

I think, in reality what I am doing is not adopting an attitude of gratitude but expressing gratitude in the first part of the day for a couple of minutes. Later on I switch back into my ”original” programming and this way the rest of the day my attitude doesn’t match what I previously cultivated during my morning practice.

The gratefulness practice I’m doing in the morning must be hosted by my conscious mind and the rest of the day I probably operate from my programming ( which is unconscious ). Making the unconscious, conscious – that’s what everyone keeps talking about. Interesting 🙂

Thank you for your insight, funny enough these days I’ve been thinking a lot about how my beliefs are affecting the way I perceive the world around me and I was thinking a lot about gratitude.

[quote quote=433333]Hi Simon I’m sorry to hear that you’re feeling burnt out in every corner of your life. Would you like to talk about it? I don’t think that eastern lifestyles are more peaceful, there is a culture of overwork, similar to America. Perhaps you have a specific idea of what you might be attracted to in this idea of an Asian lifestyle that you have? These things are so personal what makes us happy and gives our lives meaning. It’s very much individual to the person and means exploring your core values. What do you care about? I think that if you’re feeling burnt out and stressed seeking balance might be helpful. Focusing on downtime and relaxing can be helpful. What do you do to relax? Problem solving can be helpful for any difficulties in your life. Do you have strategies for addressing the issues with your business, relationship and finances? You mentioned feeling like you have it all so what is left. Practicing gratitude and meditation can benefit happiness, helping you to appreciate what you do have. Sometimes the difference between happiness and unhappiness is nothing changing except your state of mind. Savouring the small every day good moments can be a place to start. And if you don’t have those, try to work some into your life. For me, I enjoy food, watching a good television show, socialising, completing a goal. Appreciating when my husband or anyone else does something nice for me is another thing too. Wishing you all the best! ❤️🙏[/quote]hello and thank you for your reply I am from the UK. Yes I am burnt out in every corner. I feel like I have been battling all of my life since I was 18 years of age to find peace and direction for myself. I’m now 52 and can not face the future feeling this way of being detached from life just wanting to be quiet in my mind. I talk of the eastern way of life referring to their religious beliefs maybe Buddhism springs to mind perhaps that’s what I mean. I dream of going to a monastery in Thailand or china to recharge and reset my mind. I don’t seem to enjoy the daily pleasures which other people around me do. Everybody seems so excited about their latest Costa coffee or latest waffle with ice cream and maple syrup. Everything seems so materialistic to me without any depth to it so shallow.”have you tried the latest burger with skin on fries they’re so good” it’s the same with cars houses holidays everything seems to be a competition that I don’t want to be in. I don’t have any strategies in place as I can’t seem to ever be consistent I think this may be due to having ADHD and anxiety issues. When I said I have it all, I meant that I gained all the things I wished for, my own business a loving wife a family my own home but still I am empty. I read and listen to heaps of self help books but still can not find my happiness I am a tortured soul.

Thank you. Please send me some strength as despite everything, I love this person very much. A break would completely gut me and I feel I’ll have to get my memory erased to get over her. I wish I read all the warning signs from the beginnings but I ignored and opened up to her like I have never done with anybody else. In seven months I feel like I have experienced a decade worth of experiences with her. I think I finally know why is this killing me so much more than it is killing her. This will be my third time being in love and walking away in my 47 years on this planet while she has been in and out of love 100s of times. Maybe she’s not capable of building permanence with anybody or maybe she thrives on the novelty of a new relationship till it fizzles out. Either way, I wonder how has the heartache of losing someone she loved has not scarred her if she’s been in love as many times as she claims? Perhaps, I’m just trying to find some method to her madness. She’s certainly not self aware and even if was made self aware, I don’t know how much she’s willing to work on herself. I should walk away with gratitude that for a brief moment, I experienced divine love and joy and hope because of her. Maybe there is no such thing as permanence.

Dear Helcat,

” It is a parent’s job to learn to manage the situation and their own emotions properly instead of blaming the child.”

I am a nanny to a 20 month year old girl right now. I have been a nanny to 5 other families in the past, it was my job of choice through highschool and college. After college I thought I needed a “real” job so I worked for Verizon, a place that I did grow so I know was meant to happen, but overall not the world I belonged in. I know nannying is not the same as mothering, I get to be off the clock and don’t have to take worries home with me. But, I know what you are talking about here! There are moments I just clean something and she spills again, throws food or doesn’t show gratitude for all I do, infact the opposite of gratitude. In these moments I try to find laughter in myself haha, do I expect this child to walk around properly and express gratitude?? that is a ridiculous image haha. But in these moments I am also reminded that my dad did, he blamed me for being a child. It is hard to imagine a father treating his daughter this way :/ it makes me very sad. I would like to believe that treating this little girl with love through child behavior, can be healing for me in some way?

“You deserved to feel safe, happy and loved in your own home. Such difficult circumstances that you had to grow up in.”

I have heard that having understanding for an abuser can be harmful for us.. I wonder if this is true? Because although I agree, it was a grim childhood in relation to him. I also think of the time he raised me, 2008 starting his own business, 4 kids to provide for while he made no profits for a year while his new business was sinking. Somehow still able to afford the expensive soccer team I was on, have food on the table and have cars for him and my mom. We never lost our house, like many of my friends did. I always had my own room! Is it damaging for me to have sympathy for him? It doesn’t justify his behavior once he got home, but I can understand his lack of energy. And his why he was annoyed at child behavior, we did not thank him when he got home every night, because we were children and didn’t know what he was dealing with at all just to keep us safe in a home with food.

However, and at the risk of sounding incredibly ungrateful and ignorant, I think i would have preferred losing our house and living with less if it meant I got to have a more joyful dad…

“My instincts are pessimistic and say that your instincts are correct about the gaslighting.”

I feel like the answer is both of what you are saying and what Anita said. He is changing the rules on me, and gaslighting me because he is uncomfortable with the image of himself as, Anita put it, a stingy scrooge.

“Has your father ever behaved like that at all before?”

Not in my childhood no. He would always find something wrong. But the thing is, that might be making him change the rules… is that I have become more articulate with my words. I have never typed in words my hyper-vigilance, perhaps seeing it on paper held up a mirror to himself. In my relationship with him, I see a seaturtle with tape over her mouth, tape she saw but didn’t know how to remove. Tape that gave him all the opportunity to speak and not have to hear any opposition, so he just kept criticizing because I just took it.

“I don’t know if you knew she had ADHD before this conversation or if you know much about ADHD as a condition?”

This is very interesting for me to reflect on lately. Because I have been friends with her for so long, and to her credit she has always been this way, so why am I only now bothered by it?  I think it is similar to what I wrote above about my dad. She has been critical of me to a small degree, she just “speaks her mind” as she puts it, but she will be rude like ask me why I still have clothes from 8th grade, “what are you wearing?” or just make fun of me and my style. But I think, because of how extremely critical my dad was, it was not only comforting for me to be criticized, but hers was such a superficial degree that I didn’t see it as a problem. Like I said above, there was tape over my mouth for alot of my childhood, I did not know how to express myself and I thought I couldn’t see myself..cause my dad convinced me I couldn’t. Now that I see myself better, there are things I am now noticing she says that I want to say “no that is false.” But she is unfamiliar with me being assertive, self aware and confident. She talked over me with her ADHD all the time growing up, but I didn’t think I had valid things to say so her filling the air was just comfortable. Now I want to speak more, I have things to say that I feel like are over-due and this is making me realize how much she talks because it is hard for me to get a word out.

“I think a difficulty for you may be that as you have said you try really hard to work on yourself. It isn’t easy the work you are doing but you are doing amazingly and should be proud of yourself. Understandably, you feel like she should try to and see her as an equal in this way…I also think that her being triggered and her comments about her feelings could be hurtful to you? Do you feel hurt by her?”

Yes, and what bothers me is as I am trying to work on myself, like I have told her, she says she is too. But I see the situations she puts herself in and I just don’t know if I believe her. But like it says in the bible, it is easier to see a splinter in someone else’s eye, when there is a log in your own. I know this judgemental view of her is not helpful, but it is hard for me to get rid of when I see contradictions in real time. Her comment that I lacked empathy as a person, hurt me. Because I know I am an empathic person, and the fact she doesn’t see that, hurts me. But it also makes sense that she can’t see it because I don’t have alot for her situation because, to me, it is so obviously an abusive relationship she entered into. Also what contributes to my lack of empathy for her situation is I removed myself from the relationship that was harmful to me, but she complains and yet remains with him…

“The problem isn’t really the ADHD, it is the depression.”

I do empathize with her depression, and I told her this. Because no matter how it got there, being in it is not easy and I understand that part. That is what makes the excessive talking so negative, which highlights the amount of talking because it is heavier.

“For both of you right now, it can be difficult to show someone empathy when you are feeling defensive. What do you think?”

Yes agreed. When you said she didn’t show empathy for my situation, I didn’t think of that, but it’s true. She didn’t see how my position, of being on the receiving end of her negativity, is heavy. Something she kept saying that hurt me too was “ok well I guess I just have to walk on egg shells with you now which is fine but it hurts cause you are my best-friend and one of the only people I confide in.” What she doesn’t understand is how much negativity it is, because I am willing to be there for a friend but she is cannot acknowledge that she very heavy with negativity right now given the volume of her words. Also she is unaware if she thinks I am one of the only people she confides in, when I introduce her to people she talks about all the same stuff she tells me. My roommate, when introduced even pointed this out to me, how much she complained. I wanted to tell this to P when she said no one else has told her this but me, but my roommate asked me not to.

I am feeling self conscious about this thread being all about me and my problems… I am growing so much from all the feedback, but my fear of my authentic self being selfish is kicking in and I don’t know how to resolve it.

Seaturtle

Hello All,

I haven’t yet read recent messages, but I have a recent false self discovery and would like to go deeper into it.

I have always known I have some people pleasing tendencies, but I thought I had them under control. When I moved away from home I realized all the things I did for my fathers approval and began to seek what was actually important to me. I now realize I fell into that habit in a past relationship, in that when I felt disapproval it affected my self esteem significantly.

When I reflect back on my childhood, there was not much, if any, praise for trying. Instead I remember feeling like there was always something I could do better. Even as an adult living in my fathers home he constantly told me he did not feel appreciated by me. If I was free in the evening and didn’t think to make him dinner, if I didn’t volunteer to do things for him, if I didn’t show enough gratitude for things he did. Or if I ever confronted him about how he hurt my feelings, he would call it being ungrateful for the list of things he does for me.

I notice in my adult life now, I often ask how I could be better… I told my employer once to let me know if I was doing anything that bothered them so that I could fix it ( I work as a nanny). I seek validation from my roommate about my behavior… after going out if I questioned something I did or said. I want to understand the balance, because when I read that the solution is to stop doing things for others approval and do what feels in align with me, that is how I behaved living with my father and I was constantly called selfish or ungrateful. I don’t want my actions to hurt other people or offend them, but I also want to live in alignment with my true self. Is our true self selfish? How do I think of others and care for them, without comprising my true self?

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

” (1) by using the word cleaning, do you mean that F referred to any sign of you (your words) such as your backpack, your shoes being .. dirt? If not, what did you mean by cleaning?”

He called the conversations “house cleanings.” He said cleaning as if “clearing” the air. Or, clearing his perceived air… He used those times to get everything off his chest that I had done to not show gratitude, such as leaving my stuff out, a dish in the sink or not talking with him enough when he got home from work. At one point it also bled in to how I treated his girlfriend, I made a comment about age that I don’t remember and apparently it hurt her feelings and she told him, he told me I was unaware at those house cleanings, unaware of what might hurt his girlfriends feelings even, all the things I was “unaware” of.

2) “we have to talk, there have just been too many things piling up. I just don’t understand why you do these things, why can’t you be more thoughtful of me. I have done all of this for you and you don’t even acknowledge it. You could acknowledge it by having a meal ready for me if you had free time, or at the very very least have your things cleared. Infact I think you should start to cook around here since you have so much freetime to sit around and watch your shows. That shouldn’t be too much of a sacrifice for you. (does she have any awareness? does she care about be at all? why doesn’t she understand how to be grateful, she must not even see what I am doing for her. But oh she’s crying, maybe she does have some emotional awareness, she sees that I am hurt and seems to understand and not want me to. maybe things will change). Let’s come up with a plan.”

– his plans involved inspiring me to cook for him or clean, but the plan would always start to dwindle away, I think cause it wasn’t my true self, once the inspiration he temporarily gave me to care for him in this manicured way I would stop, then a month later would be the next house-cleaning. They were just about every 3 months.

Seaturtle

Hi Anita,

My sincere gratitude to you for taking the time to go over my responses again and responding.

Sorry for responding lately, I’ve been feeling a little under the weather. I will read this and reply tomorrow – but I cannot deny what you’re saying!