Dear Simon:

Since my summary post in your thread, you added the following information: you live in the UK where you view people/ life to be “so materialistic… without any depth to it, so shallow… cars, houses, holidays, everything seems to be a competition that I don’t want to be in… not good enough for me or  authentic“.

As a barber for 20 years, you felt not good enough because you didn’t do a traditional apprenticeship, and as a chef running your own business, you give yourself no credit because  you didn’t go to culinary college. You never felt good  enough in relationships either, “I’ve never felt good enough in any way shape or form hating on myself for 34 years“. You are  judgmental of yourself and of others (it’s 2 sides of the same coin: judgmental of self/ judgmental of others).

You have “ADHD and anxiety issues.. catastrophize everything“, a “tortured soul“, and you are “in physical pain constantly from my feet all the way to my eyelids, years of standing on my feet“. You enjoy holidays with your family, but less so since your little girls are no longer little girls (now 18 and 17)- “the last few years things are not the same“.

“Everything I have ever done has been rush, rush, rush, my jobs even gave me an opportunity to rush barbering cutting hair as quickly as I can,  to make money cooking in my cafe quickly making meals to get people in and out of the restaurant…  I’m afraid of running out of time. I had kids for my grandparents so they would get to see them before they passed… It’s scary to try and just stop and not rush, but I think it’s the only choice I have which is why I feel that escaping to a monastery for a year would help“-

– I like the idea of you staying in a monastery for a short while because for one, you’d be off your feet, giving your body the rest it needs, and secondly, it’s a quiet place, especially if monastic silence is practiced. I imagine it’s noisy in your busy cafe/ busy life. It’d be nice to have silence instead, for a while.

You’ve experienced noise since your childhood, a disturbing, distressing kind of noise: “extreme shouting and swearing… sounded pretty violent” (when your parents were fighting, from what you shared Feb 2022). I am guessing that their violent shouting and swearing translated to Noise Within you, expressing itself as ADHD, and severe self-judgment ,the latter translating to the Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder which you mentioned back in Feb, 22: having to do everything perfectly, an impossibility long-term, leading to constant failures at achieving perfection, and as a result.. more self-judgment, more Noise Within.

Your Rushing Habit, as I called it, is perhaps about you trying to run away from the Noise Within.

The problem with your idea of escaping to a monastery for a year, is that a year is a very long time. It may be that you are currently rushing to a 1-year stay in a monastery without thinking it through. Back in Feb 2022, you shared that you are afraid to be alone (“I’m just too afraid to be alone“), that you’ve been afraid to be left alone since you were a child: “lying in bed next to my sister as a child in the dark, wanting someone to talk to. That’s been the story of my life“.

You may feel very alone in a monastery day after day, month after month, a whole year, no one to talk to..?

* I suppose there is such a thing as good noise and bad noise: the first is peaceful, accepting, forgiving, enduring; the second is violent, rejecting,  critical, judgmental.

Which reminds me: you shared back in Feb 2022, in regard to your wife: “I swear at her… it’s like I have Tourette’s with the insults“- is this .. bad noise still happening?

anita

* Just as I was to submit the above, I noticed that you added a post: “... whoever you all are, when I get these wonderful replies to my messages I fall in love with you. Why does this happen to me? my heart actually yearns for whoever you are to help me and I feel you can heal my life for me. I feel this way about lots of things careers, people, cars and motorbikes. I’ve read that this is an ADHD trait I hope this doesn’t put anyone off replying to me.”– no, it doesn’t discourage me from replying to you. I think that the reason you get hopeful about being helped and healed is because you need help and healing. Connecting this to my post above: you very much need to replace bad noise with good noise.

anita

I’m glad to hear that you feel comforted by the messages you receive. 😊

You can change being judgemental towards yourself and others, by practising giving yourself and others a little credit. It is not all of the time you see. It is not always easy to read such truths about yourself. But you have handled it with kindness. Another credit to you!

It is not your fault. These things tend to start in childhood. Anita shared from your old thread that you had a difficult childhood. I’m sure you know that children are like sponges and the environment they grow up in is really important for their development in so many ways. The voices of our parents tend to get mixed in with everything else and become part of our thoughts. This is why spending time with good people is so important. Everyone rubs off on us. We need to replace those old unhealthy messages from difficult times with good healthy messages.

Neuroplasticity is really helpful that way. We can train our minds slowly over time to think in certain ways if we practice regularly.

I’m sorry to hear that you are in pain up to your eyeballs every day. That must be really hard, especially when you have a physical job. It may interested you to know that there are links between anxiety and pain. Pain makes us more anxious and anxiety increases pain sensitivity. Yoga sounds like a very good choice to practice as it manages both pain and anxiety. I wish you good luck with it! I’m glad that you are making an effort to rest when you get back from work. It really is essential. ❤️

I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed a wonderful life raising your family. It does sound hard with one leaving home and the other one not far behind. Them not needing you as much anymore. And teenagers have famously awful moods. Have you been dealing with difficulties like this?

When it comes to your family, what does the catastrophising tell you?

This period doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You get some much needed time to yourself again. Some of which you can explore with your wife, I have heard people say it’s like getting to know each other again. I almost feel like after having children that you have to act in certain ways for the children because they pick up so much. I feel like it could be easy to lose sight of yourself and each other doing that over time.

My sister is a very passionate person too. I enjoy that trait in people! The difficulty is that no one can fix another person. They have to learn how to fix themselves. This is why changing our own beliefs about things that hold us back is so important.

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏