My extreme feelings kill me

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This topic has 409 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 4 years ago by Anonymous.

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March 3, 2020 at 6:46 am #341096

Anonymous
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Dear Gaia:

Thank you for explaining this to me and for stating what you did in your most recent post. I feel much better (I felt.. using your word in the past, sh**** before). What a difference a single letter typo can make.

Back to your analogies: an Ivy, Gaia the Ivy Plant, climbing/ growing randomly, without supportive surfaces to grow by, to lean on. This is you growing up alone. Your use of this analogy clearly shows that you grew up alone in your home, without support and without anyone to lean on. So Gaia the Ivy Plant “twist and wind around something else.. to keep growing and live”.

Remember what I wrote to you four days ago, referring to you writing that you “reached a wall, a closed off road”- similar to the ivy plant reaching a closed off surface, nowhere to keep growing, randomly. What I wrote to you was that Fantasy is one way to go around a wall and Reality is another way, seeing reality as it is. See, Gaia, really see the reality that you grew up alone in your home, even though there were other people there, you were alone. You had no support and no one to lean on.

You may ask yourself (?) why am I repeating this, why am I rubbing it in, am I trying to make you feel bad? No is my answer. Please pay attention: when I faced my reality, in an emotional way, my mental health improved a whole lot. So I want your mental health to improve a whole lot as well. This is why I am repeating this and suggesting it.

There is a difference between saying: I grew up alone and feeling it. When you feel it and believe it, you look differently at the people in your home and you end your loyalty to the people who were not there for you. When you end such loyalty, you will be able to see yourself in a different way. You will look at yourself and to your surprise, you will see someone you didn’t see before.

Please don’t read the above just once and forget about it. It is very Big, if you get it, once you get it, and getting it is a gradual process, where you get it more one day, and then more a week after, and so forth.

In your post after, you wrote that “what my ivy needs is something happening, experiences. People. Jobs. Skills. Break ups…” Yes, you need new experiences, but I know that you have this cringing, repeating thought that you have been wasting your youth, that it is terrible that you didn’t yet have a relationship with a man, and so forth. I want to tell you the following in this regard: true to me and I’ve seen it in others: new experiences, living-life, does not change people. So let’s say you do travel and so forth, after the High of the experience, you will return to the cringe and regret, and you will think that you need more experience because there is so much that was wasted. But it will never be enough, and eventually, let’s say you are rich and you travel the world and have affairs and whatnot, eventually, you get up one day and say to yourself: why am I doing this.. I feel nothing. (I imagine that’s what Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain figured, that their life full of travels, and fame, full of action, was not worth living another day).

The reason you feel so badly about wasting your youth is not because you haven’t traveled and experienced relationships with men and so forth. The reason is not what didn’t happen. The reason is what did happen. And what happened, going back to the ivy, is that you grew up alone, without support, without guidance, with no one to lean on.

Accept this reality on the emotional level, bit by bit, over time and you will be so much better for it.

Regarding the “hours and days of surfing the internet”, and speaking to me being “one of the few internet activities actually helpful or useful”- I suggest that you stop the unhelpful and un-useful internet activities and do only the useful and helpful internet activities. You value your time this way, and your time should be valued.

And to your newborn baby analogy, another good analogy- being a newborn at 21- don’t hate that 21 year old newborn. She grew randomly because she was alone. A child needs support/ a parent to lean on in order to grow up. It is not an option: a child can not grow up without emotional support (or with too much negative emotional input).

Put it in yet more words: a child whose mother is hysterical, negatively overly dramatic, crazy… grows randomly. The child doesn’t grow up, but here and there and to the sides, twisting here and there.

Not your fault, Gaia. See the fault where it Really is, and you will be able to feel compassion for yourself. Self compassion is a necessary ingredient in mental health.

anita

March 3, 2020 at 6:54 am #341100

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

I typed away the above spontaneously, without editing (my thinking developed while I was typing), so I don’t want to interrupt that. I will add it here then: I am making a distinction between a child growing randomly and a child growing up. To grow randomly is to mature physically but remain sick emotionally/ mentally. A child can grow up in a supportive home and become a healthy adult. A 21 year old newborn (one growing randomly in an unsupportive home with a crazy mother) can still grow up, that is, heal, become more and more healthy.

anita

March 3, 2020 at 10:14 am #341146

Gaia
Participant

Dear Anita

I’m still I’m the process to make sense out of my story and myself, the self who never had a change to be, because that’s how I feel sometimes, nothing at all. And I always consider your words and experiences so learning how to know things on a emotional level is very important to me.

By the way with the ivy analogy, the tangible thing to lean on isn’t necessarily only emotional support but again “what makes you you”. I’m sorry if I sound too abstract and existential sometimes, I guess many of my turmoils wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t so abstract and existential in my thinking patterns but it’s just how I am.

How I feel basically is that I had a change to become a person and didn’t happen.

I decided to go and type soon journal entries that I had already since a long time, especially in the time when my thinking pattern was at its most incomprehensive, to make myself better known to you.

March 3, 2020 at 10:33 am #341148

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

“By the way with the ivy analogy, the tangible thing to lean on isn’t necessarily only emotional support but.. “- I noticed you doing this before: I give you good input, and you point to something and proceed in a different direction, not staying in that one place I illuminated.(This is not criticism, so don’t be alarmed, I did it myself in the past, looking away from what would be painful to look at). I pointed to you not having anyone to lean on in your home where you grew randomly. But you ignore it and point to something else. Because you don’t want to look at what I said, not wanting to look at it emotionally, to feel it, that is.

Therefore, even though what you pointed to reads interesting to me, I don’t want to go there because I want you to go back to what I pointed to: how it felt being a child/ your whole life growing randomly because you were alone, no support, no one to lean on.

Interesting, the last words you wrote: “to make myself better known to you”- if you looked (if you were able to look) where I am pointing, how you felt then (and still feel) randomly growing, alone etc., it is you who will get to know you better!

I am looking forward to read from your journal entries and otherwise.

anita

March 3, 2020 at 11:04 am #341160
Gaia
Participant
Dear Anita

I know it may sound like I just ignore where you point to but something I truly care about is to feel free to express how I think/feel about my life events and personal feelings about people and situations because I know them better than anyone else and wish that me expressing it or the nature of what may sadden me wouldn’t be taken by you as me being blind about “the true things that matter” .

I mean, I do like you to point where I may be blind or not objective enough, yeah, but I also wish that I could say my own about my parents and other events without just passing like I’m defending them cause I’m blind or delusional

I’m not 100% sure about the loyalty thing because at the end of the day, my mother tries to reach out many times for me to express myself and stuff, it’s me who reject it strongly. So I can’t just say she 100% neglects me because based on the daily straightforward experience from which I write what I write here, she doesn’tt. You know my life based on what I say, so I wish you could also trust me to say things as they are as much as you wish I could trust you in giving trustworthy advices.

how can we find a balancing point for both of our perspectives?
- This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Gaia.
March 3, 2020 at 11:15 am #341168

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

I love your attitude, so very pleased that you don’t withdraw when you don’t like something about my input to you and instead you are asking for “a balancing point for both of our perspectives”- I am so pleased that I am almost thrilled (and I mean it!)

Here is the balancing point that I am therefore suggesting: I will continue to tell you what I believe to be true, ask you about what I don’t know, and you will do the same. Plus, when you bring something up that I believe is a distraction from what I wrote to you, I will tell you so, but if I have input about about what I believe to be a distraction, I will offer you that input.

Is that acceptable to you?

Regarding what I refer to as a distraction in your post before last: “the ivy analogy, the tangible thing to lean on isn’t necessarily emotional support but again, ‘what makes you you'”- well, I don’t have input on it because I don’t know what you mean by it. Would you like to clarify it?

anita

March 4, 2020 at 6:57 am #341344
Gaia
Participant
Basically your suggestion is about honesty and straightforwardness, I like it!

Back to the ivy analogy, I think that you turn into a certain way because life shapes you in a certain direction, with certain people and events, + inner traits. Sometimes I feel like life has forgotten that I exist and that I need happiness, challenges and newness to keep growing. Instead I feel stuck in a limbo of stagnation and negativity since forever. I feel like I have clothes that don’t fit me in and I need life to give me a valid excuse to throw them away but it doesn’t.
- This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Gaia.
- This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Gaia.
March 4, 2020 at 8:26 am #341374

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

Back to the Ivy Analogy: I am reading it in a different way this morning. “a climbing plant.. growing ‘randomly’, without stable supports or surfaces to lean on it naturally needs.. it needs to lean, twist and wind around something else.. to keep growing and live.. I am that climbing ivy who gets bigger and longer but around my ground there’s nothing to lean on, I just keep growing ‘randomly’.. my ivy needs ..something happening. Departures. Responsibilities. What makes you, you… the tangible thing to lean on.. (is) what makes you, you.. you turn into a certain way because life shapes you in a certain direction.. with certain people and events+ inner traits. Sometimes I feel like life has forgotten that I exist and that I need happiness, challenges and newness to keep growing. Instead I feel stuck in a limbo of stagnation and negativity since forever. I feel like I have clothes that don’t fit me in and I need life to give me a valid excuse to throw them away, but it doesn’t.”

Yesterday I saw the “stable supports of surfaces to lean on” as emotional support in childhood that you didn’t get, growing randomly alone with the hysterics of a melodramatic mother. But what you meant (and I missed it because I was too attached to my understanding) is that the stable supports of surfaces to lean on are new events and new people in life so that it will be possible for you to grow with purpose, or with meaning, with passion, perhaps. (I got it now, did I, Gaia?)

Assuming I got it this morning, here is my understanding at this point based on the quote above: to grow purposefully, with the feeling of being alive, you need challenges outside of you, in your life, new people and new events to react to, new people and events to give you new growths paths, above, under, in between, to the right of, the left of, and as you grow or move in new paths, there is an element of discovery and adventure, a truly living life-experience, as opposed to the “stuck in limbo of stagnation and negativity since forever” life-experience.

“I feel like life has forgotten that I exist”- you feel that life is outside of you, and you are stuck in non-life, is my understanding. “I need life to give me a valid excuse to..”- as if life is outside of you and you are angry at it, at Life, for not showing you the way in, so that you too can live.

I will stop here before I go on, because I don’t want to build on the above and then find out that you don’t agree with the foundation of what I continue to build. So, did I understand correctly by this point, or is there anything at all that I misunderstood?

anita

March 4, 2020 at 8:56 am #341386

Gaia
Participant

Dear Anita

You got it right so far.

March 4, 2020 at 12:49 pm #341418

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

I see it this way: there are new people in your life and there are new events in your life, but the old suffering in your brain is so intense, that there is no newness in you to meet the new people and new events.

Lots of suffering and lots of bitterness- you are like an old, bitter woman- not in a state of mind that makes purposeful, passionate growing possible.

The Ivy twists and turns as it responds to its own internal suffering, too busy to notice newness on the outside; to full to take-in newness from the outside.

Am I still getting it right?

anita

March 4, 2020 at 1:33 pm #341424

Gaia
Participant

I don’t know if there really is newness in my life. Definitely some things have changed since high school, I don’t want to imply that it all is the same as ever but still it’s not enough.

Let’s take my crushes as example, if you consistently think about them for years without nothing happens isn’t that already a sign that nothing else stimulating enough is happening? As you once said “have empathy for yourself that you feel so lonely that you need to stalk your crush”

March 4, 2020 at 1:50 pm #341436

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

Taking in what you wrote in your recent post I will correct my post to you right above yours:

There are new people in your life and there are new events in your life, and a lot of possible new people and possible new events, but the old suffering in your brain is so intense, that there is no newness in you to make new things happen.

Lots of suffering and lots of bitterness- you are like an old, bitter woman- not in a state of mind that makes purposeful, passionate growing possible.

The Ivy twists and turns as it responds to its own internal suffering, too busy to notice newness on the outside; to full to take-in newness from the outside, too tired, too bitter to make new things happen.

Am I getting it now?

anita

March 5, 2020 at 12:49 am #341572

Gaia
Participant

I guess it has some truth in it that I play a part in “not taking newness” in. I have difficulty in establishing relationships, or sometimes even be interested in going out. The stagnation is definitely internal too, and I do relate to the “too tired and bitter” (basically, internally exhausted) to make new things happen

March 5, 2020 at 6:09 am #341592

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Gaia:

If my last post to you has “some truth in it”, then what is the part that is not true?

anita

March 5, 2020 at 7:25 am #341618
Gaia
Participant
I guess you’re more accurate in saying there are “possible new events and people” than in straightly saying that there are “new events and people”. So even if a chance to make more meaningful friendships and lifestyles could be around the corner, there’s some level of exhaustion/emotional mental burning in me to catch them. You know, I stumbled across the term “soul loss” in psycho-spirituality many and many times and I resonate with it. I’ve lost myself a long time ago and now it’s kinda dead (myself)
- This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Gaia.
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