Dear Robi:

Monday morning here and I’m smiling imagining 🚶‍♂️ 🛣️ your walk, which is, by the way, exactly how long it took me to walk from the Winery to the taproom (both businesses closed). I miss those days and that walk.

I read your post and I want to take my time responding. I will by tonight. For now: there’s a positive message behind every emotion you feel, and behind every emotional state (that’s true for everyone). Sometimes you don’t see the message, but it’s there.

“It was pretty nice to be able to be on my own a little in a neutral, quiet space.”- that pretty nice feeling’s message seems clear to me: you need to be on your own in a neutral, quiet place, just like you said.

* If by neutral you mean feeling Calm, the opposite would be feeling Charged, upset, agitated, triggered (antonyms of calm)

“Then (in Spain or Warsaw) I was often complaining I didn’t have my own space.. maybe I didn’t like sharing a house with a flat mate in Spain”- I think that you felt charged, upset, agitated, etc., when sharing the house with a flat mate in Spain, and when living with your girlfriend and her mother in Warsaw. Didn’t you?

“My girlfriend wants to come visit me for a few days… the relationship is being questioned too, again. I don’t really know why. I sometimes feel like I don’t feel anything. I sometimes blame myself for not feeling that much excitement about my girlfriend. When she’s here, or I’m there and we’ve spent some time together I feel good about her but after a few days on my own I already start feeling distant and question the relationship.”-

I’m asking myself what’s the positive message behind you not feeling anything (or feeling indifferent or distant) after a few days of being on your own, or now that she wants to visit you?

The image (again) of Robi minimizing his computer screen when intruded upon- unexpectedly, anytime, and without your control- popped back to my mind.

Maybe that experience conditioned you to generally experience people in close proximity as intruders, people who are Robbing Robi of control/ privacy/ calm? And the positive message behind feeling distant from your girlfriend is protective (as in: I don’t want to be intruded upon; I want privacy and calm)?

Anita

Continued:

Robi, Feb 1, 2023:

“You know I’ve been asking myself why do I feel so bad around her mother? It has to have something to do with my parents/ childhood/that apartment where we lived… She triggers the f*ck out of me and I don’t quite know what it is.

“All I know is that I feel angry at her, like I want her to go away. I can’t even look at her, so 90% of the times I avoid any kind of eye contact…  So, I avoid her almost at all costs, I avoid eye contact, I keep conversations to a bare minimum… 

“So, I would look at her, and I would instantly feel tension… In time I started being irritated by the sound of her in general, walking, talking etc. so very often I would get angry inside,

“Sometimes I would just say things. Bad things, like oh, she’s here again.. I would even insult her in all kinds of ways. It’s like I’m angry with her but.. I mean.. there is no reason to be angry with her. But I’ve felt like this before, for a long time during my childhood. I’ve said those kinds of things in my mind, and I acted in a similar manner.

“I think It was my mum I was always angry with…So, I’m basically experiencing a past experience that had a traumatic effect on me and caused me a lot of discomfort and anger. It made me feel trapped, constantly monitored, constantly seen but not really seen for real.

“I hated it and I’ve had no choice but to bottle up, get angry in my head, call her (or them) names, get angry at them. I suppressed my authenticity, my voice, myself in order to keep the relationship, the shelter. I’ve had no choice as a child and for months now, it felt like I’ve had no choice as an adult.”-

Reading those words again, I can’t help but notice how relevant they still seem today.

I think it’s possible that what you’re interpreting as sabotaging commitment is, at least in part, an attempt to avoid a re-living of the entrapment you experienced as a child.

I wish you were given some measure of privacy, of autonomy and agency growing up (or is growing inward more accurate?)

Looking at what you wrote in 2023, and reading your post today, I can’t help but notice how often the themes of Freedom, Space, Privacy, Choice and having A Life of Your Own appear.

So, when you think about your girlfriend visiting, I wonder: is the strongest feeling really about her, or is it about protecting a recently regained sense of autonomy?

After all, you have been describing how much you enjoyed having some time alone in a neutral, quiet space. Perhaps that need deserves to be listened to before it is judged.

Maybe the question is not ‘Do I love my girlfriend enough?’ but ‘Do I currently have enough room to be myself?’

In my own life, Autonomy and Agency felt as essential as Oxygen. Reading your posts over the years, I wonder if AA feels similarly important to you?

Anita

Dear Robi:

I just lost my reply that was so close to being submitted because Bogart decided to sit on my lap for just long- enough for the phone to get moved the wrong way, and the message to disappear 🥴

Again then:

The first part of your message reminds me of my mother: she didn’t view me as a separate person with my own thoughts, feelings, preferences, etc., that were different from hers, such that were given space to be, a right to exist.

She viewed me as something that was residing in her 🧠 (which should make mind-reading easy, lol), having direct access to HER thoughts, HER feelings, HER preferences, etc., at any moment in time.

And that something (me) refused to get with the program and accommodate what she needed me to say, do, or express.

Ha- ha. I think she thought of me (without thinking it in these words) as a part of her brain, but not a good, cooperative part.

More like a brain tumor 👽 that disobeyed, disrespected, refused to cooperate and was not under her control.

Talking about entraptment.

Congrats for labeling your parents lack of clear communication and organization skills instead of “just getting trigerred” 👏

I agree, of course, that everyone gets attracted from time to time to someone who is not their partner. For someone who grew up entrapped, the attraction to other people, to other places.. to possibilities of freedom gains flavor and intensity.

Let me send this message before I lose it.

Anita

Dear Robi:

I spent some time trying to respond to your recent message, but I find myself overwhelmed again and again. The commonality I feel between your experience growing up and mine is just too much. I find myself emotional and not clear. Hoping not to confuse my experience with yours. (Calm, breathe..)

I wrote: ”she (my mother) didn’t view me as a separate person with my own thoughts, feelings, preferences, etc., that were different from hers, such that were given space to be, a right to exist.“,

and you wrote: “I couldn’t have described it better than you did right here.”-

I never had this commonality affirmed so clearly with anyone, in real life or online.

I wrote: “For someone who grew up entrapped, the attraction to other people, to other places.. to possibilities of freedom gains flavor and intensity.”,

and you wrote: “And this one.. this one hits really, really deep. I’ve been thinking about it since I was very young… Exactly! God damn! This reminds me of something.

“I remember being a kid and sometimes, someone would visit my parents… I think I was feeling like a trapped animal at the zoo would feel. It felt like I wished someone took me with them… I remember thinking I didn’t want my parents to come back..”-

When parents execute the psychological annihilation of their human child.

They could raise a healthy turtle, not a human being.

“I realise now, again, how much I didn’t want to be living with my parents and how much I was hoping for other people’s company. This sounds pretty crazy but back then I felt I needed to be saved.. “-

Save Me was middle name, ha-ha (sad).

We had the misfortune of being born to parents who were closed circuits.

Closed.

I am reading your message part by part, stopping before I read what’s next.

“To be saved”- YES, my Longing. 2 B SAVED.

To be saved from being completely taken over, annihilated, as in nothing left that’s me, nothing left that’s mine.

When the parent’s ongoing mental-emotional state (not just having one bad day), has no room for.. me.

The threat is being swallowed whole. Nothing left that’s me or mine.

“and that feeling came out every time someone would come over (and I felt like I didn’t want them to leave/felt like I wanted them to take me away from there).”-

You wanted them to take you away because alone with your parents, there was no you.

“I’m guessing it must’ve felt like any place, or anyone is automatically better than where I’m at.”- A turtle would be okay living with your parents; a human child suffocates.

“I do often feel like anything is better than where I’m at right now.. “-

Anything, anywhere is better than psychological annihilation.

I better stop here. I am not very focused. Close to midnight. Yet..

“I wonder if my romantic relationships are gradually taking a similar form in me (as the way I feel about them) to my relationship with my parents. Perhaps the closer someone gets to me, the closer it gets to.. well.. me! – me from years ago.. who is still around in some capacity. And me from years ago feels scared of being trapped, wants to escape and doesn’t know how to hold space in his heart for both his parents and his partner. That space feels polluted.. and dirty.. and whoever enters that space gets mixed up with all that…”-

I will need to process this Wed morning.

“My nervous system feels overloaded and my brain feels pretty fried. I know this feeling well. It’s the feeling of being on to something deep and true.”- yes, Wed morning..

“I wonder what you think of all this.. I know its a lot to digest.. so please take your time.”-

You got it! I read this part just now for the first time.. yes. a lot to digest.

“I’ll be crashing now, it’s 40 past midnight here…”- and guess what, it’s 25 minutes before midnight here. B back 2 U in the morning.

Anita
Robi

Good Wed afternoon, Robi 🙂

To me, there was so much in your message yesterday that I might have been carried away. Or maybe not.

Let me see:

Looking at your words through my own experience, this image comes to mind (I’m thinking of it to be true to you and to me, but I don’t want to be carried away into saying that my experience = yours, which is never 100% the case for any 2 people, even when it feels like it, so I’ll talk strictly about me):

Like any human, I was born 3-D but had to contract and distort myself into a 2-D existence. Needs, feelings, preferences, etc. were largely repressed and suppressed, condensed into a flat existence.

My 3-D was limited to daydreaming fantasy (in your case, computer games fantasy?), but otherwise, real- life was flat, holding my breath, waiting to exhale when space becomes available.

When I left my mother and country, I felt intoxicatingly free for a while (like you did in Spain?), but long-term, a person condensed into, stuck.. entrapped in 2-D, cannot thrive in a 3-D world.

I was able to physically survive the world, not thrive in it. I remained a shell of myself- in different places, different people, different times.

It happened that new places, new people represented the opportunity to fully inhale and fully exhale, to relax enough 2 B me.

But shame, guilt and self- doubt formed a glue that kept me 2-D-ed.

The idea of being seen and known for who I felt I was (defective, inferior, inadequate.. shameful) was threatening.

It takes a particular kind of parent or set of parents to set all this in motion, or more accurately, lack of motion, long-term.

And it takes a particular kind of person to reclaim that lost or surrender 3-D.

Maybe the first step is to dissolve that shame- glue, to truly see that I reacted to very harsh psychological- emotional (ongoing, 2+ decades- long) circumstances, not because I was weak or wrong but because I was strong and there was no other option to survive.

I don’t have to become strong. I was always strong.

..

Anita

Dear Robi:

Thank you! I hope you sleep well 🌙😴💤

Anita