Dear Girija:

You are very welcome.

“I think for far too long I’ve been a follower. Never made any decisions or choices for myself” – lead yourself to the right treatment for yourself and become a leader in your own life!

“We can choose what we do after sh** happens” – even better, we can choose to see it before we step into it (again) and walk around it.

There is a concept in mental health called internal locus of control vs external locus of control; the first is about being a leader in your own life, deciding (as much as possible) what is happening in your life, and the second is about being a follower, letting other people and external circumstances decide what is happening in your life.

anita

Dear Girija:

You are on the right track: in the process of abandoning the role of being a follower and becoming a leader in your own life. Don’t give up and every day build on what you learned the day before, so that you don’t start from scratch every day. Post again anytime you feel like and any time that you’d like my input.

anita

I hope you are well, Girija!

anita

I am fine, Girija, soon to be taken my walk. It’s a nice sunny day here, the sky is blue, the birds are singing, the neighbors’ dog is barking.

anita

Dear Girija:

Congratulations for occupying the first floor and spending most of your time there, being that you prefer it this way.

“Better to be alone than have people around you and still feel lonely” – this is a meaningful sentence to me. I think it happens when there is so much that we need that the people around us don’t give us (to be seen/ understood, for one) that we feel invisible in their presence.

Also, congratulations for being able to identify anxiety triggers and self-talk yourself into a faster recovery from the anxiety that was triggered.

And congratulations for realizing that you have been more invested in your mother and sister than they have been in you, and that, as you put it, “I can choose to still be happy even if the people around me aren’t” – this is a major realization and change of attitude!

Here is the best thing to read from you at this time, given that the title of your thread is “I want to be normal”: “I am normal by myself. And I can be around others… depends on how they are”- normal Girija, just what you wanted to be!

anita

Dear Girija:

“Who would I be in a vacuum?” – an Actor instead of a Reactor because without other people around you, there will be no one to react to.

But then, in a vacuum, if the voices of people who used to be around you are still replaying in your brain, you may be reacting to their voices.

“I am mostly a reaction to and a product of the people around me. I am who I think they want me to be” – because you view the people around you as superior to you, as knowing better than you… so you submit or surrender to what or whom they want you to be?

“I am not me. None of this feels like me” – I think that Girija needs to feel more and more like the Actor in her own life, the one who Initiates and Leads. Girija: the Leader in her Own Life!

anita

Dear Girija:

How about when you are angry, does it feel like you are putting a show when you are angry, really angry? I think that the reason you are not familiar with .. you,  is that you’ve been repressing your feelings for too long, sort of placing yourself outside of life, outside of what’s happening, so that what’s happening.. is not really happening to you. Am I making any sense to you?

* I will be back to the computer in about 10 hours fronm now.

anita

Dear Girija:

I want to reply further to you. “I don’t know what my real personality is.. When I am with others, I can’t figure out what my real personality should feel like”-

– Remember that you shared in your March- May 2019 thread, Advice for the Lost and Weary, in regard to your mother: “I once asked her how she felt when she held me for the first time, she said she does not remember much”?

It is a psychological fact that a child cannot see herself unless she sees herself in the mirror, and the mirror is her mother’s (caretaker’s) expressions. If the mother expresses affection, the child sees herself as worthy of that affection. If the mother expresses anger, the child sees herself as worthy of that anger. If the mother expresses nothing… the child sees Nothing.

In January 5, 2022, in the original post of this thread (I want to be normal), you wrote: “I need someone to hold me and say it’s ok and reset my brain so that I become normal” – it is as if the baby your mother held wants to be seen and remembered, and that would reset your brain so that you could see yourself as Something!

I am skipping randomly to February 14, 2022: “I know nothing. I don’t even know what makes me happy. I just want to be loved and find that love… I am feeling stupid, living the same day over and over again” – to be loved would mean someone seeing you, remembering you and expressing it to you, so that you can finally see yourself.

When you finally see yourself, you will be able to get unstuck from living the same day over and over again.

In the context of this post, this thread, I will try to do just that, to SEE you more than I have so far, much more (this is my goal, don’t know how it will turn out, I do know that seeing you more must not mean further intellectual analysis of you and of your life):

I am skipping to April 9, 2022, for no other reason than that it was exactly two months ago. You were describing the beginning part of your work day: “I wake up and still feeling groggy. Brush my teeth and check my work messages”, okay, this is enough for me: you brush your teeth in front of a mirror, right? But you don’t look at your image in the mirror, or if you look, you don’t like the image that you see (from what I remember you sharing), so… wait:

Girija, look at the image in the mirror, your image, your face, your eyes, your chin, your cheekbones, and imagine that I am standing behind you, or besides you (your choice), and I say to you, with a smile on my face (I have brown/ hazel eyes, olive skin, slender, 5’5”, about the age of your mother, if that may help you visualize), I say (my voice is quite deep, not a high pitch), I say: Girija, I SEE you. I will always remember you. I see you, and I like you, I am glad that you are in my life, thank you!

Isn’t it most interesting, Girija, that I started this post talking about a MIRROR and it so happened that I skipped to a post which was about you brushing your teeth, which would mean, most likely, facing a MIRROR (perhaps the only post ever that has to do with you facing a mirror)?

anita