Dear Josh:

“I’ve began looking into assertiveness training videos and lectures… It’s beginning to feel like I’m being punished for things I’ve never done- when I try being as good a person to others as I can be every day of my life”-

The reason you haven’t been an assertive person is not only a lack of knowledge and training (some simple acts of assertion, such as suggesting a woman online to meet in person, or stating: “I want this!”, do not require knowledge or training), but that you believed at an early age that an assertive person is a bad person, and you wanted to be good.

This is why your  assertive training will be difficult- sometimes you will feel like a bad person when you aim at behaving assertively, and that will feel distressing and cause you to want to give up on changing your behavior from passive to assertive.

I think you mentioned that you feel punished because you felt bad behaving assertively, and we do tend to imagine that some power  out there will punish us for having been bad.

If you somehow change that core belief that being assertive means being a bad person, that will make your learning how to be assertive so much easier.

How are you feeling today, regarding the woman this thread is about?

anita

Dear Josh:

Accept that toothache then, don’t resist it, don’t fight it, don’t try to talk yourself out of it. Let it be. Practice this then, letting that ache be without thinking about it any which way- feel it, don’t think it. Let me know later how did with this exercise, will you?

anita

Dear Josh:

A few days ago you wrote the following: “there’s so much before the age of about 16 that I just (don’t) remember. I remember some big events and small bits and pieces of things, but generally I can’t recall most of my childhood”. When we experience a lot of emotional pain in childhood, on and on, those emotional memories do not go away when we are adults, they come to the surface when events in our adult lives trigger those old emotional memories.

So you don’t remember your childhood, but you are experiencing now the same emotional experience you had then, and so, these emotional memories are telling you what happened then. You wrote in that post, April 25, I think it was, regarding the one-date woman this thread is about: “I think my soul has been yearning for the connection her and I had that night… getting a taste of what we shared that night”- minus the sexual element, your current yearning for this woman is the same yearning you had for your mother and/ or your father as a child, on and on and on.

“I still feel the tightness in my chest and almost nausea in my stomach. Still am not eating very much and it’s fatiguing me”- this is what you experienced as a child.. and forgot. As a child your chest was tight, you felt nauseous in your stomach, you didn’t want to eat and you were fatigued. These are old emotional/ physical memories that have come to the surface of your experience.

What to do now?

If you wait long enough, distract, persist in a exercise routine and especially if you meet a new woman, the experience you have now will move below the surface once again. You will feel better, the chest not tight, hunger will return. But sooner or later, the same yearning for connection you had as a child, a strong yearning because you were alone so often, not connected, this yearning will return to the surface. The only way to no longer feel this way, and no longer find yourself again, and again, in a similar situation is to heal from that extreme loneliness of your childhood.

It takes quality psychotherapy to do that. And a willingness to experience this pain in the context of reviewing your childhood. When this is done, over time, you free your present experience from your past experience a whole lot, being able to experience now something different from what you experienced then.

anita

Dear Josh:

You are welcome. When I mentioned psychotherapy I didn’t mean medication. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor prescribing medication, drugs, that is. Most psychotherapists are not medical doctors, so they don’t prescribe drugs.

Also, I wrote “quality psychotherapy” because there is plenty that is not quality, that is a waste of money and sometimes harmful. It takes the right psychotherapist to make the process of healing successful. It takes a competent, professional, hard working, dedicated, honest therapist to make a difference, and it takes a therapist who went through a good enough of healing in his or her personal life.

A quality psychotherapist is not  one who just sits there time after time, nodding, appearing like he is listening, maybe says something once in a while and then says: our time is up, at the end of 50 minutes or so. A quality therapist will get to know you in the first few sessions, then give you his evaluation of you and a plan, including objectives and ways to meet those objectives successfully. He will teach you skills along the way, give you homework from session to session, so the work is not strictly done in the 50 minutes only. My therapist gave me homework from session to session in the form of handouts to read and fill in, he sent me guided meditations to listen to (via email)- he emailed me homework assignment after the sessions via email, that is, he used time for which he was not  paid to do so and he based the homework assignment on the latest session we had, figuring out what it needs to be. Then the following session we went over the homework assignment. He also went over the 50 minutes or so, most of the time, he didn’t mind to go over when he didn’t have another appointment next.

It can be expensive, it may not be, a sliding scale is when the cost is determined according to your income. Some health insurance policies pay for part of psychotherapy (if your therapist evaluates you in the first few sessions, determining you suffer from a particular condition, that specified condition may be covered under your health insurance).

anita

Dear Josh:

Do I suggest psychotherapy? Absolutely but I can’t emphasize enough how not-all-therapists-are-created-equal, how important it is to choose a therapist well, to first know that just because a therapist is certified doesn’t mean he or she is good at it. Some hurt their clients. But with a good-enough therapist, if you persist, my goodness, the difference that it can make!

anita

Dear Josh:

I wish there was a connection between you and the woman on the second date. Regarding evaluating therapists beforehand, you can google therapists in your area and go to their websites. If you want you can copy and paste for me parts of what they present in their websites and I will be glad to give you my input.

Also, see on their websites if they offer a free first session. Following reading what you will copy and paste from a particular therapist’s website I will be able to help you with questions to the therapist on that first (hopefully) free session.

I hope you feel better soon, you’ve been having a difficult time lately. Post here anytime and I will be glad to reply to you.

anita

And by the way, my therapist is Jerry Wise from Jerry Wise Relationship Systems. He has a YouTube channel on which he has posted some 150 free videos, check those out and if you like him, you can make contact. Even if you don’t hire him, the videos are almost thousands of free therapy. All the best!

I understand Josh. I have been there and know how painful it is. I hope you will feel better soon and something healing for you will come out of this experience.