Dear D:

No need to apologize for not posting earlier: any time you post is fine with me. You are welcome, and thank you for your appreciation and kind words, a pleasure to read!

“reflecting on my current union and how boredom played a role in creating limerence. And why being in a stable relationship where your partner is really solid and a good soul, would I crave chaos instead of stability“- when coming out of a chaotic childhood/ teenage years, one where we felt repressed, depressed and bored, feeling that all the happiness and excitement that life is supposed to be happened to other people, but not to us… what we crave as adults (I am talking from personal experience, generalizing) is the excitement that passed us by. I don’t think that we crave chaos; I think that we crave excitement!

“I know if chaos was your upbringing, then stability would seem boring. This whole thing was just very much subconsciously driven and consciously confusing“-  if chaos was your upbringing, and you were repressed and depressed, then … something in you wants to AWAKEN and be excited about life!

“I am just focusing on  gratitude  and really sitting with myself and accepting things for what they are, and how to make the best of it“- gratitude is good, sitting with yourself is good and so is accepting things for what they are and making the best of it. But that something repressed-depressed-bored within you needs to express herself… How?

anita

Dear srk:

I am sorry for yet another kitty loss, srk! I went back to your old threads looking for what in those threads may help you in your current situation, placing those things in boldface:

February 2018: “I have begun journaling my thoughts… I have set aside a diary for this purpose. I have also incorporated a healthy dose of Yoga and brisk walking in my daily routine”.

March 2018: “I have been doing Yoga and also go out for a jog/walk in the evening. I also play soccer on the weekends.. I have started playing my piano again after a while. I am also taking piano lessons on the internet… I am gardening more than earlier…. I am meditating more than before”.

April 2021: “The grief has now evolved to gratitude. I feel thankful to my cat for illumining my life, albeit for a short while. Everything around me feels more appreciable than before. I am more patient and calmer while dealing with other living beings. The whole experience has evolved me into a better person. Every once in a while, whenever his memories recur, they are the happier ones”.

In your recent post, you mentioned being married, something you didn’t mention before: congratulations for getting married! But not all is well in the marriage:  “My wife…  does not understand or empathise with my grief. It is life as usual for her. This is hurting me even more and disconnecting me from her” (Nov 2022)-

In the past, you shared, in regard to relationships: “I live alone, I am single, introverted, and subject to long hours of isolation as I work/study alone” (Feb 2018), “I am a workaholic who is driven by goals. I never paid a lot of heed to relationships of any kind…  I am feeling this loneliness and emptiness in my heart. I suddenly realised that a lot of ‘friends’ in my life have gone out of my life. It has always been revolving doors. People have come and gone. No one has stayed… I am longing for stability in relationships. I want people to stay in my life. I want to be a part of other people’s lives. I want to open myself up to others. I have had enough of these revolving doors…  I did not mindfully cultivate relationships as I was always running a race. There was ‘no enough time’ for anything” (April 2018), “I am an introvert and do not have any friends. My family members and relatives do not care about me. I do not care about all this. I have accepted all of this” (June 2018).

My input/ suggestions today: although you no longer live alone (being that you are married), still in some fundamental ways, you’ve been living alone, feeling loneliness and emptiness in your heart (before your latest kitty loss), haven’t you?

Pay heed to your relationship with your wife. Be part of her life, open yourself up to her. Take your time and mindfully cultivate a relationship with her and make it stable. Be a friend to her and expect her to be a friend to you, care about her and expect her to care about you. Empathize with her griefs, her sorrows and expect her to empathize with yours.

anita

Dear Sadlyconfused:

You are very welcome. I understand your need for a good solid block of quiet time to respond. Thank you for being concerned that I would take it personally that you don’t respond as quickly as I do (taking things personally is indeed my tendency).

“Interestingly, I’m self-conscious of coming across to others as ingratiating and potentially insincere in my gratitude… being ‘too nice’…  As you say: ‘most people are not that careful with their language’“- something for me to remind myself whenever I take a person’s wording personally. Also, I need to pay attention in regard to a person’s writing: how is the person trying to appear (nice but not too nice, in your case), and in response to what earlier-life criticism (‘you’re too nice! ).

“It’s the fear of the unpleasant sensations of anxiety and shame that I fear more than the actual situation“- in regard to many actual situations, different people feel differently (fitting different interpretations)  about the same actual situation.

“One thing I’ve struggled with ever since I was a child is the feeling of unworthiness when I fear something innocuous, like a conversation with what I perceive to be an authority figure… when the physical sensations happen (flushed face, trembling voice) it turns into panic and shame over having such an ‘over the top’ reaction… It seems that the goal is to be the kind, assertive, emotionally mature adult for ourselves in the present day, which our caregivers failed to be“- imagine that you have a child whose face is flushed and voice trembles.. you wouldn’t shame the child for these things, saying something like: what is wrong with you?! Why is your face flushed?! etc. Instead, you’d express empathy for the anxious child (and the child will calm down as a result). Next time your face flushes etc., try to peel off the shame about the symptoms from the fear that caused the symptoms, so that what remains is the fear itself. You can deal with the fear better without the shame getting stuck to it like hair on soap!

“I read this with wide eyes and huge empathy for you as it all sounds so familiar and I know how deeply it hurts. I’m so sorry that you had to endure this kind of insidious abuse too. Thank you so much for sharing and relating because in doing so it helps me to have more empathy for what I myself went through“- empathy for yourself is key! And thank you for your empathy for me.

“I think ultimately we’ve had very understandable human reactions to very unfortunate circumstances; our brains had to wire themselves in the way they did for survival“- it is interesting how we take personal responsibility for nature-determined reactions that have nothing to do with personal choice. Ex: we are not personally responsible for our voice trembling when we feel fear any more than a dog is responsible for whimpering when afraid.

“My father lived only 25 minutes away by car and I think even if I had more physical distance I would have still felt like he could drive round the corner at any minute“- what scares us about our childhood’s tormentor is the images of their face, the sound of their voice, their words.. these all “live” in the short distance in between our ears.

“A big weight did drop from my shoulders a few days after I learned that he had passed away“- Understandably. The images in-between the ears are not so scary when we really, really know that these are only memories.

anita

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