Dear Gaia:

“putting up some boundaries while not ghosting her totally”-

you are 21, living in her home. If I understand correctly you are not a student, nor do you have a job? What are your circumstances and plans (studies, work, living independently)?

anita

Dear Gaia:

So you plan to live away from your parents’ home this year, 2019, sharing an apartments, or living in a dormitory situation near university away from your parents- will that be the first time in your life, living away from your home-of-origin?

What boundaries did you already try to place with your mother, what succeeded and what failed?

(Will be away from the computer for a couple of hours).

anita

Dear Gaia:

I will be away from the computer for a couple of hours. In case you don’t want to share what I asked you because you are afraid I will analyze what you share, find the negative and dark in it (like your mother does) and therefore spoil your only fun-refuge experience for you-

-worry not. I will not point to single negative about your fantasy world. The purpose is for you to be seen and heard, to be knowns and understood, to be acknowledged for who you are.

anita

Dear Gaia:

It is interesting that a huge portion of your fantasy is your crush watching you being or acting “kind of cool/badass/funny”.

I too had a very rich fantasy  life, lying on a bed or sofa with the radio playing songs, fantasizing. One of my fantasies was being on stage dancing to the music and a huge crowd watching me, clapping hands, admiring me. Plus millions of people all over the world were watching the event on TV, watching me dance.

Oh how lonely I was in real life, not seen by anyone. Definitely not by my mother. I watched my mother (paid attention to her) all the time, she didn’t watch me. Children/ teenagers in school, they didn’t pay attention to me either, dismissing me, as if I was invisible, or too inferior or weird, or abnormal (I had tics in addition to OCD compulsions that made me feel abnormal)  to be acknowledged.

How intensely I needed to be seen (to be watched, to be observed and acknowledged). In my fantasy world, the whole world was seeing me- that was a definite high, an elation, very pleasant feeling!

The fantasy went on and on and on as the songs on the radio changed. I didn’t want to stop fantasizing. I suppose I had  to stop when my mother came back from work (she worked very hard cleaning other people’s homes and offices).

I also dreamed of romance a lot, a whole lot. I carried the romance fantasy with me morning to night, music or no music, taking breaks from it only when I had to pay attention to something else.

I am glad I fantasized so much because it did bring me a lot of pleasure.

anita

Dear Gaia:

No, I don’t believe in past lives. I considered it once because I used to fantasize about being in a certain historic time and place of which I read about a lot, so I thought maybe I used to be a person there and then. But later I figured- if something about me lived before and will live again, it is something that was born with me at the very beginning, but the circumstances of the place and time into which I was born, and which affected me and which are in the experiences I had after birth, those don’t pass on.

I am glad to read that you no longer try to suppress or reject any sides of yourself.

“I’m slowly learning to accept it all and accept myself just as I am”- this is healthy, excellent to read you state that.

Indeed, there is no spontaneity in “sooooo obsessive and methodical”. I too put my life on hold, thinking that I will start my life when I am prepared. It didn’t work for me, I was never prepared. The thought behind this failed strategy was that starting life can be smooth and fine if I am prepared. The way that did work for me is to start life every day no matter how rough and unprepared I feel:  think of the next step after taking the first instead of staying in place thinking of all the steps all at once (in that “sooooo obsessive and methodical” way).

I too felt I was at home in Fantasy. I felt calm and joy and curiosity and motivation and I felt capable because all was possible for me.

anita

Dear Gaia:

As I read your recent post I remember how Wrong I felt, how I viewed myself, as a child, being deeply and thoroughly wrong, inferior to others, defected. The OCD rituals (as well as the multiple tics) sure added to my feeling of being wrong, inferior, defected.

What happened then, in that magical thinking characteristic to the child that I was, I figured: I can be perfect, I must be perfect and I can be.. if  only I begin, from this minute on, to do everything perfectly. So I “started” my perfect life for the day, paying attention to every thing I did, to make it perfectly.

This brought about that feeling of being fake, playing in a movie and observing myself in that movie- not living my own life, but playing a part in a made-up life.

And soon enough I made a mistake and the full weight of the distress of being Wrong, inferior and so on, that weight crushed me once again… until I tried to do the only thing I thought will solve the problem, start again, from the beginning, be perfect.

This continued for me way beyond childhood. In my twenties, and thirties.

It never worked, but I didn’t know any other possible solution.

Fast forward, in therapy, later in life, and as I continued my now over eight years of what I refer to as my healing-and-learning process, I found out- to my great surprise (it took a long time and was gradual) that there was and is nothing wrong with me.

What a surprise. I didn’t know.

So now, when I am to  do something, I don’t automatically think: I will do this wrong. So I don’t try to “solve” this problem by doing it perfectly. Instead, I just do it.

anita