Home→Forums→Tough Times→anxiety, health and being hurt
- This topic has 479 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 8 months ago by Anonymous.
-
AuthorPosts
-
January 26, 2018 at 1:28 am #189129AnonymousInactive
Dear Mark,
I’m 31. what makes me anxious: most of the time arguments with others, or in general relationships with people.When someone leaves or doesn’t accept me, or doesn’t love me. I keep beating myself up for that. Criticism.Also getting up early and going to work although it changes depending on what I do. I’m a teacher in a language school for a two years now.
what brings me joy: animals, travelling, running. Unfortunately I do not have time to travel also it would be difficult.
January 26, 2018 at 5:07 am #189137AnonymousGuest* Dear Mark: you are welcome to jump in, as far as I am concerned, into communications I have with Original Posters. This is a public forum. I read your posts here, and a few other threads, and I believe your input is excellent. Thank you for it.
Dear joanna:
I re-read all your posts on the thread. You stated your core conflict, core problem yourself, here are your words:
“my father used to ignore me… he just kept ignoring me… He didn’t even see me.”
This led you to “when it comes to people with bad influence I always seek their attention, and see them as a challenge. To change them, to make them see me, to make them care.. Which I never do. And then I suffer…. don’t know how to stop suffering. How to let go and not feel hurt so much”
Regarding your ex boyfriend: “when I met this guy he reminded me of my father so much, felt so familiar, so nice and safe. And then when I failed to make him love me… I failed again… what is wrong with me… I can’t forgive myself I couldn’t make him love me… I always want to punish myself, why am I like that, why I can’t be a person he wants”
My input: that “familiar, so nice and safe” feeling you referred to is what you need most. This is your most desperate need: to feel safe. As a child you needed to feel safe so badly, that you imagined that .. if only your father saw you and liked you, then you would be safe. If only you deserved his attention, if only you proved yourself worthy of his attention, then you will feel safe. That hope kept you going, it had to. Something had to keep you going.
You are stuck in that hope, to earn the attention of an inattentive person. This is the trap you referred to in your posts.
What hurts so much is that experience of the child that was you, the child who is still in you, still hurting because her father doesn’t see her. You keep blaming yourself, tortured not only by not being seen, but by believing you are being and doing wrong, and therefore being responsible for not being seen and liked.
I was wondering, where was your mother in this childhood dynamic. Did she notice you? Did she notice that you tried so desperately to make your father see you?
anita
January 26, 2018 at 6:34 am #189143MarkParticipantThank you anita for your compliment. Thanks for sharing more about yourself Joanna.
I have found running a great meditative activity. Animals are known for helping anxious people. Therapy dogs are one example. I have a dog myself. They make great running companions.
I want to share what really worked for my anxiety for my running, sitting meditation and self talk helped but still was with me. When I went to a Body Talk practitioner, she helped resolve my anxiety in two sessions. I can give this particular practitioner’s name/website if you ask but you can Google Body Talk to find others out there. Some have a You Tube channel.
Take care,
MarkJanuary 26, 2018 at 10:17 am #189203MarkParticipantOff topic:
Anita,
I find it fascinating how our Family of Origin (FOO as I like to refer to it) drives our relationships.
I wonder how I would fit in someone else’s attraction to me what would fit in their FOO past.
I know from my past FOO, I was unconsciously attracted to women who had underlying anger toward men. Fortunately I became aware of that and worked hard on all aspects of myself, especially self love to alleviate that.
I see those relationships I attract are an indicator of my spiritual and psychological health.
I feel optimistic from my last relationship by being with a woman was not angry.
Mark
January 26, 2018 at 10:33 am #189207AnonymousGuest* Dear Mark: if you would like me to respond to your post above, will you copy and paste it into your own thread, maybe the one you started today? I will be glad to respond there (before or after I take my soon to be sixteen or so hours break from the computer).
anita
January 26, 2018 at 10:57 am #189215MarkParticipantanita,
Reposted under my own name/thread.
January 26, 2018 at 3:36 pm #189257AnonymousInactiveDear Anita
Thanks for that. I keep analyzing my thoughts and behaviors hoping get better but it never helps. You’re right. I never feel safe. it’s a feeling. I’m no longer that little child, I’m an adult just like other adults I have to care about my feeling of safety myself, and not depend on anyone. I’m no longer a child so it’s just a feeling. So how can I start feeling safe and not need a person in order to feel safe ? A person who would never help me with this, by the way.
My mother didn’t notice me either. She was angry with my father everyday, bad mood and took it out on me, yelled at me. When they argued she used me to make a point. I was a tool. (sorry English is not my first language). Then she didn’t want me to visit him, I was a kid so her opinion was very important. So I didn’t visit him. And then he died.
That guy wasn’t my boyfriend. We dated for over a year. He didn’t want commitment, I didn’t accept that but he ignored it and didn’t let me go. So a year has passed and I slowly started to accept what was already a fact: that I agreed to not be in a relationship but I loved him so much I couldn’t leave. I met this guy 8 years ago but we weren’t so close at that time, just a couple of dates, but still took me a while to get over him when we stopped seeing each other. Last year we met again and this time a lot more has happened between us. I feel like I’ll never forget this man. I met many people in my life and I was in a couple of relationships, some good, some worse, I always get over people fast and meet someone new. I always do, no matter what heartbreak or failure, it never lasts long. This one has dominated my life in a way that scares me. I’m scared that I lost him forever because there is no way we will see each other again. That scares me so much, I’m afraid of suicidal thoughts but sometimes I feel I cant stand those thoughts, I cant stand the feeling of losing him, and living the rest of my life with those thoughts, blaming myself, I cant stand blaming myself. I don’t do this on purpose, if comes naturally, those thoughts just come to me and remind me what I did, what I should have done, what I did wrong and how could I fuck this up, and now it’s all gone. From the moment I wake up to when I fall asleep, everyday.
You talked about medicines earlier. I dont want to take medicines, I did in the past for a short period of time. They don’t cure anything. They help but they don’t cure. They create even bigger problems, I don’t want that.
January 26, 2018 at 7:39 pm #189265MarkParticipantHow can you love yourself better Joanna? Can you start/do that? Bit by bit?
Hugs,
MarkJanuary 27, 2018 at 5:48 am #189293AnonymousGuestDear joanna:
Regarding medicine, or psychiatric drugs: I agree with you, they don’t cure a thing. For the 18 years I consumed heavy doses of three psychiatric drugs every day (excluding those times I tried to stop, failed and took them again, before my final successful withdrawal), at times I felt better, but my functioning in life deteriorated during all those years, got worse and worse.
Regarding your sharing about your mother: I understand better what you needed your father to see, to notice. Your mother attacked you when angry, yelled at you, used you to make a point… she scared you. Your father, he was indeed your hope. If only he saw you, if only he saw you scared and suffering, maybe he will help you.
But your mother didn’t allow you to visit him and then he died. Your hope died. But you didn’t and so, there is still hope. This man, not your boyfriend, I understand, was your hope, still is.
Not that a better life for you is possible through this man, but your hope is in him. Just like it was with your father.
If you re-read our communication on your thread (I just did), there are plenty of potentially helpful thoughts and ideas there. Please do re-read at times, when calm. Somethings that escaped you before when you read, may sink in a second or third time.
You wrote that you keep analyzing your thoughts and behaviors but it never helps. You never feel safe, you wrote. I have input about this safe feeling that I didn’t present to you yet, and it may be helpful: when we are children there is much magic to our thinking. We imagine safety to be more wonderful than it is, a happily-ever-after, all sunny, dreamy like experience. Because as adults we cannot experience such a magical existence (except momentarily, with the help of powerful drugs… before they stop working), we fail to experience the safety feeling that is realistic and possible for us to experience.
In other words, our expectations of what safety feels like are too high and unrealistic, and in comparison to that expectation, any feeling of safety doesn’t measure up.
When you find yourself alone, no one there to yell at you (like your mother did), when you, for a moment, are not yelling at yourself, when all you can hear is silence- there is safety in that moment. Isn’t there? Will you make a moment like this happen in your day, or night, listen to that silence and tell me about it?
anita
January 28, 2018 at 5:26 am #189395AnonymousInactiveDear Mark
The only thing I do for myself is trying to feel better, because I’m really scared about how I feel. Besides that I don’t really care about most things for myself. How to love myself?
Dear Anita
You’re right. For most of my life I thought my dad was the problem, well he was because he was an alcoholic etc but what you wrote is 100% true. He never yelled, hit or got angry with me. He never “did” anything wrong to me. Besides ignoring me he never did anything – and that can be understood in many ways but you’re right. She scared me and he was always nice and gentle to me, but in the bad moments he just never did anything.
I don’t want to sound like this guy I met was an evil person. He didn’t love me yet many times he pressured me to keep meeting him and couldn’t let me go,which I know is cruel, but at the end when I told him I loved him he said we both know he would never make me happy and that he doesn’t want me to suffer. I don’t want to hate him, hating him or resenting does not help. I don’t want to hate or blame myself, and don’t want to hate and blame him. I want to forgive and let go.
Thank you about what you wrote about feeling safe. It’s a really new thought and very refreshing. I’ll think about that and try this, maybe in the moments of mediation. It’s very helpful, thank you.
He texted me he wants to come by “for 2 minutes” on Thursday to get his things he left at my house. I know I should just be nice and normal and I will of course, but I start to overthink and get nervous about seeing him, since it’ll be probably last time.
January 28, 2018 at 6:09 am #189403AnonymousGuestDear joanna:
You are welcome.
You don’t have to wait to Thursday for him to get his stuff. You can let him know that you need his stuff out today, or tomorrow. You can let him know that you need him to pick up his stuff today, or tomorrow. If he can’t, he can send someone else to do so. If that is impossible, you can gather his things and secure them in a place outside your home, maybe a storage place for a week, so he can go there Thursday to pick up his stuff, not in your presence.
Notice the following, if you will: is there a motivation in you to cause him to change his mind Thursday, to … make him love you this one last time?
Also, as you “overthink and get nervous about seeing him”, you can make this an opportunity, with a pen in hand, and list all the things you say to yourself, all those self blaming statements you make. You are welcome to share those here, it may be helpful to you.
anita
January 28, 2018 at 8:28 am #189441AnonymousInactiveDear Anita,
He asked whether I want to see him or not, and that I can send it to him if I don’t want to meet. I said it’s fine. I don’t want this to look like I’m angry.
Surprisingly I do not hope for anything to happen between us anymore, I came to the point where I no longer want this since it started to destroy me every time he left or disappeared after. It took me a while but I’m sure I wouldn’t agree now. I also do not want to let him know I still care or miss him. Or maybe should I because I almost never speak my mind and always hide my feelings like I did over this year and pretended I do not have feelings for him and he has nothing to worry about, we’re just spending a nice time together. A friend told me I always hide my feelings and never admit I feel hurt, and that causes misunderstandings. He told me this many times too. So Should I? or is it too late anyway so should I just let it go already.
He thinks I met someone and I’m happy, well I did but I decided to be true to myself and not get involved with someone I do not love, so I want to be alone right now. I do not want to pretend I’m happy and that there is “a someone”.
I know these are issues I need to fix, issues that does not have anything to do with him, and his presence won’t help me, although I strongly believed it would. Whenever he was around I felt like everything would be fine now, and nothing else mattered. I still now feel that when he comes here he will take all the pain away. And then he will leave, like everytime he did over the past year and a half now. That’s the thing I’m thinking the most now, that he will fix everything again.
January 28, 2018 at 9:31 am #189461AnonymousGuestDear joanna:
You wrote that “Surprisingly I do not hope for anything to happen between us anymore” but later on the same post you wrote: “That’s the thing I’m thinking the most now, that he will fix everything again”-
Well, how will he fix everything again if not by making something happen between the two of you?
Maybe at one point you lost hope, but then the hope re-emerged?
You wrote, if I understand correctly, that you chose to see him for the transfer of his belongings because you don’t want him to think that you are angry at him or that you miss him-
what does it matter what he thinks unless you still want him in your life?
anita
January 28, 2018 at 10:17 am #189477AnonymousInactiveDear Anita,
Well, I can’t change this that I still want him. I know there is no chance but the fact that we’ll see each other again brings hope, however illogical.
January 28, 2018 at 10:38 am #189481AnonymousGuestDear joanna:
I understand. I understand “hope, however illogical” very well. You do have the option, I figure, to call him and let him know that you will be sending his stuff to him, but having the hope you do, I think you will be keeping the Thursday meeting. Do you think you will be thinking a lot about it from now till Thursday? Maybe if you wrote down a few scenarios of how it is likely to happen, you can plan for each one, plan what you will say and how you react.
Maybe such planning will reduce the amount of time you will be re-playing the anticipated event Thursday and feeling nervous?
* Will be back to the computer in about seventeen hours or so.
anita
-
AuthorPosts