Dear Sunset:

The form and rhyming of your poem make it easy and pleasant to read, not for the content, but for the form and clarity.

I agree with you that you can’t help but feel what you feel. We don’t choose our feelings. Our feelings are based on connections made in our brains through no choice of our own, connections made during meaningful experiences with others, beginning with our parents.

You wrote: “It must be me, or is it you?” Both, as two adults the two of you are responsible for what happened to the relationship.

Pain from childhood, pain from injury in childhood, keeps vibrating in us through adulthood unless we heal. What we resist persists. So as your love for a parent was rejected, that hurt keeps vibrating through the relationship you had with your ex boyfriend and now that it is over, that old pain and the new pain are combined.

Did you try psychotherapy? Is good psychotherapy a possibility so to address the old and new pain? To gain insight and skills and start a healing process?

anita

Hey Sunset,
I wanted to tell you that you are not alone in this. I’m going through very much the same. Knowing that we’re not alone is usually helpful.
But let me tell you something. It is a long process. You’ll have to grieve and suffer for a while. I also suffer of anxiety and it was also trouble in my relationship. I also blame myself all the time.

But give yourself sometime to grieve and suffer. Allow it. Watch and observe what you feel. Accept them. It does feel like the end of the world – still does to me. But just now I feel that I’m actually open to healing myself, that I’m coming to terms with myself. Forgive myself has been a long process, but I’m getting there. Don’t give up. If you ever feel like talking about it, sharing your emotions, I’m here. I understand every word, everything you are feeling. Let’s keep our heads up and be positive and soon we will be out of this.

Dear Sunset:

In the heat of the moment, we say and do things we regret. I am very familiar with that. And it took (my first good) therapy for me to learn how to behave differently in-the-heat-of-the-moment. Good therapy is about insight and skills. Over time you can learn the skills of paying attention for that approaching heat-of-the-moment, identify it, and use skills to soothe yourself, positively distract yourself, meditate/ be mindful, communicate a certain way, taking responsibility for your feelings as you communicate and so much more. Skills so to not be reactive to anxiety and distress.

As far as your childhood and insight, you wrote you had a good upbringing. It may very well be so. It is also true that no one is more invested in seeing one’s childhood in the best possible light than children all the way to adulthood.

Please do post again, anytime.

anita

Sometimes Sunset it is a lack of communication or not being able to get a hold of the one we leave by phone or in person, to talk about how much we love on another. I feel that it’s not giving up, that it’s just hurt and one or both people needs time to heal their heart from the event during that time. Check back with her now, I’m sure she’s completely healed and way over the past issue. Nobody is to blame in this scenario, as it’s been longer with for awhile and long gone in the past, that all that matters is that both of you love each other and want to make a life together. Holding and cuddling each other the rest of your lives, being supportive, compassionate, loving, calm and understanding of each other is all it really takes.

A quick phone call and I’m sure you two can come together to have a happy and healthy future, filled with love together.

I wish you the best.

M.