Dear Hannah:

I agree: “it is so difficult to let go of the beliefs our parents instill in us because they taught us when we were growing and you look to them to learn how to live and what to believe”- our core beliefs about what and who we are, these are formed during our childhood formative years. These core beliefs are words/ thoughts glued together with strong emotion, recorded in our brain. These get activated every day and greatly influence our choices every day,  in small ways and big ways.

Like you wrote, “these feelings (the glue I mentioned) keep cycling through my life.. these feelings manifest again and again”

One such strong feeling/ glue, is the shame you mentioned: “I do  feel ashamed all the time.. Whenever I speak to anyone… eat at work”. The core belief is: I am worthless and the glue that hold this thought in place is shame. This core belief leads to many thoughts during the day: “they are thinking negative things about me… I don’t deserve to go first”, and to choices based on these thoughts: “I’ll let people push in front of me”

I understand your attachment to your nephew, and that you will be meeting a baby second nephew soon. It will be better for you if you ended contact with anyone in your family whose sight, whose voice enforces this core belief, but I understand you are not likely to do so because of your love for your nephew and the one to come.

“It is as soon as I stat to care about someone that I am suddenly terrified of losing them”- as a human you need love so you are drawn to this or that man hoping to-love-and-be-loved. Soon enough the core belief is activated and fear takes over. You can’t prevent the activation nor the fear. Your best bet is to control your behavior, this is the only area you have some power over. And this is the start of healing, choosing your behavior thoughtfully, with awareness,  instead of automatically reacting to the fear.

I understand why you stopped counseling. A counselor has to go very slowly with an anxious client, so that the client doesn’t get overwhelmed with fear. You wanted to keep the level of functioning you did have (“getting out of bed and going to work”), you didn’t want to lose that.

I share the same core belief as you have and my behavior in the past was severely affected, made very poor choices and  lived a dysfunctional life as a result. The process of change has been extremely slow and gradual. It started with therapy but following more than two years of therapy, this core belief was unchanged. It took years after, ongoing healing. Suddenly it appeared, (although it wasn’t sudden), I found myself looking at another person, talking to another and not feeling less than at the same time!

Like magic. Again, it took forever, but I was still surprised to feel differently, to not feel the shame that was my constant companion. There is no way that I can describe the process in one post, can’t be done. But I would like to share more and more with you, if you want. Let us keep communicating and we will both learn from each other.

anita

Dear Hannah,

Thank you for your condolences.

First I want to say that I read your post to Anita, and what you said about the comments from your mother and sister and how they still color the way you look at yourself really resonated with me–I have the same problem (I’m still worried about my “pointy chin”).  Part of why I feel that I don’t know who I am is that my “authentic self” was so unacceptable to me that I created an “ideal persona” (to which I didn’t fit), and when I realized that it no longer served me, I couldn’t seem to find who I really was in there.  Or maybe it was the unacceptability of who I was (to family and, later, to classmates until it felt like the whole world reacted negatively to me).  Andy was the first and most consistent in accepting me, but I had things that I couldn’t open up even to him about.  Some were because of the shame I feel and some were because he was very vulnerable and couldn’t accept some things in himself–I guess maybe there are some things about all of us that we can’t face.  I’m trying now, though, to at least face these things and come to accept them in myself.

Thanks, Lee

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by LeeP.

Dear Hannah:

The real gods in our lives are our parents, isn’t that amazing? When your mother told you what she told you about your body, it was not just a person saying those things, it was the most important person in your young life saying those things. We do imagine our parents are all-knowing, all-powerful when we are children. Like gods.

I understand your confusion about which of your feelings reveal reality and which don’t, which are a result of sickness. This is the confusion I suffered from for decades!

It will take time but sooner than later, if you persist, maybe with some help, you will be able to tell the difference. Let’s take this weekend situation that you mentioned, is your anxiety indicating that he lied  to you and is planning to meet the girl on Instagram, or he told you the truth and has no such plan?

I don’t know the answer to it yet. Let’s see… first thing to do is calm down that anxiety, soften it, weaken it. A long walk can accomplish that, a hot bath perhaps, both, maybe a good movie to watch. There is a guided meditation I remember in which you visualize your thoughts coming into the room through one window and exiting through another, it helps to separate yourself from those obsessive thoughts.

Accept that if indeed he lied to you and will see another girl, that you will survive it. No matter how painful, you will make it through alive. Then wait, occupying yourself with something productive, or that walk.

When you talk to him, you can ask him what work he is doing on the car, ask questions, what kind of car is he working on, did he work on it before, how is it to work with his father…  that way you get to learn about his interests, his skills, even his relationship with his father. If he hesitates for too long before telling you what car he will be working on, as if he is trying to come up with an answer, that will be a cause for concern.

It takes time and patience. Let me know what transpires this weekend regarding your boyfriend, will you?

Regarding poor choices that I made, my goodness, there were so many, most choices I made were poor and many were about not choosing at all, that is, letting others choose for me. I would say that letting others choose for me was my poorest choice of all. How it affected my life? It served the interest of those who chose for me at my expense.

I will soon be away from the computer for the next fifteen hours or so. I hope to read about your weekend soon.

anita

* Dear Lee: I am glad you are posting here and if you would like to start your own thread, I will be glad to communicate with you there. As far as asking a person questions, I didn’t mean to ask him questions the way a police officer would ask a suspect, or a prosecutor would ask a defendant, but to ask questions instead so to learn about him. When suspicion is there, it is there, but care needs to be placed on not asking questions in an accusatory way. Instead, focus is on the long term objective of learning who is the person we are in a relationship with, as well as developing the skill itself of asking-for-information.

anita