Dear Gaia:

Because I was in that habit for decades, the habit of zoning out, spacing out, my mind disappearing into fantasy or “to nowhere in particular”, and I pretty much broke this habit recently, in the last few years, I will be glad to share with you how I did it. Maybe you can do it too.

First, what I mean by this decades old habit: I remember that I crossed a street(I was in my twenties) and I noticed that a bus, or some other big vehicle, drove fast right ahead of me, I guess I could have been killed. I didn’t notice the bus or any other traffic. I don’t think that I checked before crossing the street (I figure that if I checked, I would have seen the bus). I was spaced out, somewhere else, and when the bus flew by right ahead of me, feeling so close and loud, I didn’t feel fear. Instead, I was puzzled, still not there, on the street- still somewhere else.

In my teens, I had a movie in my mind in the morning, the setting, the characters, the plot. For the rest of the day I was in that movie, it was playing in my head.

I heard people say that I am spaced out early on in life, teens, if not before: “your head is in the clouds!”

Sometimes I was walking in the neighborhood where I grew up, and I forgot how to get back home, couldn’t recognize where I was.

A few years ago, in my home now, it was hot indoors, summer time, day after day, and yet it didn’t occur to me that I  could open a window. It just didn’t cross my mind.

I was relaxed in fantasy, lying down, doing nothing. But doing practical things, like washing dishes and other physical work was very uncomfortable, very stressful. So I avoided doing anything except lying on the bed, fantasizing to music. In my adulthood, I fantasized less and less, but still doing practical, physical work was distressing and doing nothing was relaxing.

Again and again, things happened to me. I didn’t make anything happen. I found myself in situations. I used to think to myself like a leaf being carried by the wind, or a ship in a stormy sea, the waves taking  me wherever they did.

–I will stop here. Let me know what of what I shared you can relate to and what you cannot relate to, and we’ll take it from there.

anita

Dear Gaia:

I agree,  my experience was more serious than yours. I figure then, that if I significantly improved my more serious condition, so can you!

Here is how you do it: Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a huge movement in modern psychotherapy. There is a lot of literature about it, online and in bookstores and in libraries. There are even magazines with this title, Mindfulness. It is about is going about your day focusing on your body and on the here-and-now. It is like taking the elevator down from the over-thinking brain( which often gets lost), and taking that elevator down to the body.

The brain over-thinks and we get lost. But the body doesn’t think, so if we focus on it, we find ourselves, no longer lost. There are exercises on how to develop mindfulness.

Are you familiar with the term? If not, I suggest you read about it some and get back to me after you do.

anita

Dear Gaia:

Don’t worry about making sense or not, and no need to sugar-coat what you feel or think. Personally, I  prefer that you do not sugar coat what you think and feel.

I feel bad about you feeling so bad. Because I know too well, how it feels to feel bad, for so long. I know how it feels to suffer, as you do. As I imagined just now, a non-suffering Gaia- it made me smile, it felt good. How I wish this was the case, soon enough, that you will no longer suffer.

A few days ago, after I wrote to you the last post, it occurred to me to ask you something. Thing is I don’t want to trouble you by asking this, so answer if you can. You wrote that your mother was/ is overbearing, dramatic and so forth. But what did/ does she actually say to you?

If you can, will you type a paragraph or two of what she says, paraphrased if you don’t remember her words exactly, typing away in the first person: “I…” as if you are her, saying what she said/ says to you.

I am asking this today, even though you feel badly, is because there is something I am missing, and if I find out what it is, maybe I will be able to help you a bit.

anita

Dear Gaia:

I will refer to just the first example you gave, for now. I will retell it in my words, and you can let me know if I understood correctly, and if  I didn’t, correct me, please.

You and her were in a car, she was driving, you were quite relaxed, feeling comfortable, so you didn’t overthink what you said to her, you spontaneously asked her: am I different from others my own age? You were wondering that and you asked her, maybe she could give you an answer. A question asked innocently, it spontaneously occurred to you and you expressed into words, the thoughts that occurred to you.

Her response was something like this: why are you asking? Am I a bad mother, is that what you are saying, maybe I work too much, maybe I don’t spend enough time with you… oh my god!!! What have I done??? Maybe I created a crazy, troubled daughter because I didn’t do a good job as a mother, oh!!! What is wrong with my daughter? Tell me, tell me, tell me (!) What is wrong with you???

And she kept interrogating you for a long, long time.

So a thought occurred to you, you made the .. mistake of putting it into words for your mother, and the result- a disaster.

What you learned from this disaster is that

1) A thought can be dangerous (maybe I am different from others)

2) Saying a thought out loud can be dangerous.

3) Something is very, very wrong with me.

And maybe, 4) Something is wrong with my mother.

Did I understand correctly?

anita

Dear Gaia:

I know that I need more time to think about this. I need what I call a fresh-brain to think more, a fresh brain is a morning brain, and Tuesday morning is in about 17 hours from now.

I think that the cringing feeling you mentioned before, and the bad feeling otherwise, appearing as if from nowhere, for no particular reason, is the same feelings, the same cringiness that you experienced throughout your childhood, with your mother, in those instances like the ride in the car with her.

It is nothing abnormal or unusual: our brain operates this way, its the nature of our brain that when we experience something very unpleasant as children, and we experience it again and again through the years of our childhood–

— we keep re-experiencing it as adults, the same emotional experience.

The fact that I am typing this to you right now and that you will be reading it a few moments from now, is not going to change this operation of the brain, you will still be re-experiencing that same cringiness and other unpleasant emotions. The only difference that can be made today is a bit more understanding. If you understand better how your (and anyone’s) brain works, part of the unpleasantness of it all can be gone. Do you know what I mean?

(I will still be on and off the computer today, and you are welcome to add anything you want to add. But the majority of my thinking and responding to you will be tomorrow morning, my time).

anita

Dear Gaia, post #2:

There was nothing wrong with the girl that you were. Sitting in the car with your mother that day, you asked her a question, out of the blue, spontaneously, a question that probably all teenagers have in their mind from time to time: am I different from other people?

What older child/ teenager doesn’t ask this question? I doubt there is a single one. I am emphasizing here the fact that probably every teenager asks this question. It is not out of the ordinary to ask this question. Instead, it is very ordinary to ask this question.

The way your mother responded to your ordinary question was as if your question was very wrong, abnormal, extreme, and unusual. Your brain registered “her tragic, grave and emotionally charged” tone of voice and facial expressions, her “internally dark.. heavy” thoughts she expressed to you for hours that day, all based on one ordinary question.

Now, let’s rewind a bit: you asked a question: am I different from others. This question is a thought. What your mother taught you that day was that a thought can be tragic, grave, emotionally charged,  that is, powerful, scary, internally dark and very heavy.

This is the lesson that she taught you that day (the short paragraph right above), but not only on that particular day, but before and after, on  many occasions, different times, different situations.

The result: you are currently afraid of your own thoughts. Too many thoughts that spontaneously occur in your brain can cause that same devastation that you experienced with her.

Just like the question you asked her was normal but she taught you that it was very wrong and abnormal—> many of your ordinary thoughts feel to you as if they were abnormal. The result is that you feel “like something is wrong with me” and “Why can’t I be normal“.

And because you believe that your ordinary thoughts are extreme,  your feelings are truly extreme, “My extreme feelings kill me”.

Sometimes you feel okay, but too  soon, a thought pops up in your brain (as ordinarily happens to everyone) and you are back to feeling “that there’s something really wrong or weird about myself… I feel and think something’s off”. As a result, you panic and get angry.

“I can utterly enraged, shamed and revengeful over nothing”- correct: nothing really happens a whole lot of the time, except for thoughts.

You experience ordinary thoughts, “even if it’s small talk or things like that”, as overwhelming, intense, uncomfortable, “very very strong”.

And then, your intense suffering over your ordinary thoughts bring about angry, revengeful thoughts, thoughts that are ordinary for people who are angry, and you think these thoughts are further proof that you are indeed abnormal.

The first sentence of this thread is: “I feel like I can never find peace or happiness in my life. And I highly suspect my mind and feelings play a big part of this”- very insightful. But you can find peace and happiness when you form a new relationship with your thoughts. When you perceive your thoughts as they truly are: not powerful, not dangerous, not catastrophic.

As is, you live in an “internally dark or f*** up” mental world. Your thoughts are like monsters who torture you. But they are not monsters, you only see them that way. When you see your thoughts as… just thoughts, powerless mental events, you will no longer live with monsters. Then there will be some peace and quiet in that internal world of yours.

For a child, her mother is her mirror. You had ordinary thoughts but your mirror showed you abnormal, powerful, dangerous thoughts. That summer night when you got home late and she was “Crying like something tragic and serious happened”, what really happened in reality was that you came home late. What the mirror showed you was that something tragic happened. Same with your thoughts. What really happens when you think is .. nothing. But your mirror showed you that something tragic happens when you think.

A new relationship with your thoughts– how about this being your new year resolution. Your hope for that peaceful, light hearted life is in this resolution. It will not be easy, but in the context of this thread, I  will help you best I can, if you want it.

anita

Dear Gaia:

You wrote that you are “keeping in touch with some dudes lately”, that you are “not really even into these dudes”, “people that are just meh” to you. You “then kiss them and wish they were someone else”, but because you “look enthusiastic and passionate while kissing” them, they think that you are those things, enthusiastic and passionate, but truth is you are “just pretending they were someone else”.

“Why would I do that… I don’t know…I am really drawn by some people .. always want their physical affection.. while everyone else physical touch is just repulsive to me for no reason”-

– but there is a reason, you just don’t know it yet. What I figure is the following: there was a person in your life that you loved very, very much, you still do. It is your mother. You loved her deeply as a child and for years. Sometime along the way, she behaved in certain ways that repulsed you. You used that word in one of your posts, to describe how you feel when she tries to have a conversation with you. So, there is this person you love so much and you are repulsed by her, same person. This creates a conflict. I am very familiar with this conflict because what I just wrote to you in this paragraph is true in my life as well.

What this kind of conflict does is it makes you be “drawn by some people” and repulsed by them, at the same time. It is a replay of the same dynamic that you had in your younger days with your mother. (You may not remember now how much you loved her early on, but you did love her very much). This particular conflict brings about behaviors that puzzle us, make us feel we are some freaks of nature, but if we understand the conflict and how it originated, we can see that we are not freaks of nature after all.

Let me know if this is making sense to you.

anita