Dear humour,

You’re welcome. I am glad that you don’t mind my prodding 🙂

You’ve said that your go-to emotion is usually anxiety:

Since I have a slightly turmoiled background, I don’t understand the so called “normal” stuff. My go to quality is usually anxiety.

I am anxious in situations that does not require me to be.

So, in situations that would require a different reaction, you still react with anxiety, right?

It occurs to me that those might be situations that would require assertiveness… I am saying this because of what you wrote in 2016 and 2017, which anita kindly put together in a previous post:

I’ve had a challenge with being assertive because I feel that I might ‘hurt’ people. I take the hurt upon myself without speaking out. Once I am assertive, I get all sensitive thinking I hurt the other person (Oct 2016)

I want to be able to take care of myself and be less of a martyr. I am getting frustrated with regrets, things not turning out the way I wanted it to, my efforts not being recognised, me not able to meet my own expectations, people pleasing. I’ve had enough! (January 2017)

You wrote back then that you’ve got a problem with assertiveness, because you believe that if you’re assertive, you will hurt the other person. So you rather don’t speak out…

This might be still happening at your workplace, when your colleagues put you down, and you don’t say anything. Instead of reacting in some way, maybe defending yourself, you rather contract and the only emotion you feel is anxiety?

If so, I think the anxiety – which is your go-to emotion – became a guardian for your anger. It keeps the anger (which would be a natural reaction) in check.

This anger would tell you what is acceptable to you and what is not. It would signal that your boundaries have been crossed. But because you don’t want to feel it, you also don’t know what is acceptable and what is not. And as we’ve discussed earlier, this means you also don’t know what is “normal”, i.e. what is a normal reaction in a given situation.

Does this seem plausible? That anxiety may be blocking your healthy anger, which would otherwise signal you that your boundaries are somehow being violated or that your desires aren’t respected?

Just a slight correction in the last paragraph:

Does this seem plausible? That anxiety may be blocking your healthy anger, which would otherwise signal you that your boundaries are somehow being violated or that your desires aren’t respected?

sadly editing is no longer allowed

Believe yourself to be Purpose and everything you engage with will be a experience of being alive.
Life in this moment is as it should be. Seeking purpose outside oneself is like trying to grasp air with your hands.
You are where you should be in order to take the next step.

Everything experienced needed to be experienced so never wasted time.

Dear Humour:

Sometimes, without realizing it, I am very verbose: I use too many words and I repeat myself. Today as I started to read my own long, Nov 8 post, I got lost in my verbosity and lost the motivation to keep reading. When I typed that post a week ago, I did not feel lost, but today I do, and I figured: you might have felt lost in that post as well, and that’s why you didn’t respond to it. If this is what happened, please let me know, and I will be glad to repost with way, way fewer words and simplify that post so that it will not be difficult and frustrating to read.

anita

Dear humour,

I am glad you’ve watched the video and found it useful.

The points that caught my attention are, be aware of your emotions, embrace/feel it, do not react impulsively and that we are responsible for our situations and emotions(maybe not always- but the way we react- yes).

Yes, I also liked how he explained that it’s okay to feel ALL emotions, including those we might not necessarily like, such as anger. Once we feel it, we can examine whether it is justified (whether the fault is in us or in the other party) and what to do about it. I really like the idea of anger as a signal, and that we should neither suppress it nor react impulsively on it.

In my last post I played with a thought that maybe anxiety – which you say is your go-to emotion – might be blocking and masking your healthy anger. Because you might feel uncomfortable/guilty to feel your anger. Do you think there might be some truth in it?

Currently I listen to a lot of music to let my emotions dissipate in a healthy way but have caught the negative habit of binge eating too.

I’ve suffered from an eating disorder for many years, and I know that binge eating or any other disordered eating usually serves to soothe ourselves. To soothe the pain of e.g. not feeling good enough. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I didn’t know it was a way to soothe myself. So I judged myself harshly, hating myself for being so undisciplined and such a freak. Each ED episode reinforced my belief that I was unlovable, that there was something terribly wrong with me….

Many years later, I came across the concept of the inner child, and I realized how starved for love that little girl was… but instead of love, I was giving her food – a lousy surrogate for love. Once I gave her what she really needed – love and compassion and acceptance – that’s when my ED went away. It was a gradual process, it didn’t happen overnight, but the key moment was getting in touch with my inner child and meeting my unmet emotional needs.

Now that my environment is more peaceful and me having a lot of headspace unlike in the past, i am able to think more clearly so that I can work on myself.

You’ve mentioned that you don’t live with your family any more, if I understood well (“my family has split up and we don’t get on each others’ nerves anymore“). You also mentioned in June 2017 that you might get married later that year. Would you like to share some more about that? I am confused whether you’ve split up from your family of origin or perhaps your partner? Sorry for prying – please only share more if you feel comfortable talking about it.

I might recommend Joseph Campbell ‘Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation’

Campbell defined myth as “other people’s religion.” But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment — or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world’s most powerful myths support the individual’s heroic path toward bliss.

In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth.  Here he anchors mythology’s symbolic wisdom to the individual, applying the most poetic mythical metaphors to the challenges of our daily lives.

Campbell dwells on life’s important questions. Combining cross-cultural stories with the teachings of modern psychology, he examines the ways in which our myths shape and enrich our lives and shows how story/myth can help each of us truly identify and follow our bliss.

Another book you may like is  “Reflections on the Art of Living – A Joseph Campbell Companion” by Diane K. Osbon

Dear humour:

You are welcome!

“I do want to get out of the cycle of binge eating, even if it is gradual“- if you want to talk about binge eating with me, I will be glad to share my experience. Before I do, if you are willing, you are welcome to describe in some detail your personal binge eating cycle: what do your binge episodes consist of, when do they happen, what feelings precede it, and what feelings follow it…?

anita