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What is wrong with me?

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  • #280591
    Ana
    Participant

    Hi everyone. I´m new to the forum since things got completely out of hand again and I hope for some advice that might finally help a bit on my long way to healing.

    There´s something wrong with me. I am 28 years old and I have huge problems with jealousy and control, anger and sadness. I´ve been in a relationship for 1 and a half years. I feel like I´m slowly going to destroy this relationship just as I did with my last two relationships (that lasted for 2 and one year respectively).

    It´s always been the same pattern: I can´t trust my boyfriends, I always feel like today is the day they “wake up” and realize I´m not the one for them and leave me. So I am very cautious and suspicious every day, need reassurance that they still love me and interpret little things as signs for the decreasing love.

    My current boyfriend loves me to bits, has endured tons of scenes in which I behaved like a crazy idiot and still tells me he will stay with me because he knows I don´t do it on purpose.

    And that´s right. I just want to have a good day, be happy, forget my worries and love this life. But I can´t seem to do this longer than a few hours.

    I cry almost every day, I worry about things like “what if I ever happen to meet one of his ex girlfriends, I couldn´t deal with it. I should end it now before this relationship gets more serious” and so on.

    It has become difficult to control my emotions. I get so angry whenever I am jealous, I used to just cry, but now I slam doors and could just hurt myself out of anger, shame, I don´t know.

    So what is going on is – I´ve been living together with my boyfriend (33) for 1 year now, but right now there´s not a single day when I´m not jealous (also of TV scenes, so I threw a major fit because he watched Game of Thrones), feel extremely sad for no reason, cry my eyes out instead of enjoying the sun, am easily irritated and have unsteady feelings about the relationship.

    I feel absolutely dependent on him and how he sees me, so whenever I am weird I feel like everything has turned to black.

    A few hours later, when we are alright again, everything is good, we laugh a lot with each other, have fun, but then soon again it happens again.

    One trigger and I´m gone.

    I´ve read so much about self-growth, done journalling, tried to practice self-love, emotional control, have seen a therapist, am going to yoga classes, but nothing really gets to the root of the problem.  It always come back like a nasty nightmare and I hate it.

    When I´m at work, life is good, I function, I don´t even think about the problems, my self-confidence is up and life is good. As soon as it´s the weekend, I know what happens all over again. After a few hours, I´m in a downwardspiral.

    Do you guys have any idea what could help me?

    Thanks for reading, sorry it´s so long 🙁

    Ana

     

    #280639
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    You wrote: “I’ve read so much about self growth, done journaling.. but nothing really gets to the root of the problem”-

    -This is what I see as the root of your problem at this point: you are re-experiencing what you experienced as a child; having been rejected, disapproved of, unloved by a parent. You keep re-living it, re-living the hurt, the sadness, the anger and the fear, waiting for the final blow, the expected complete and final rejection, being left all alone.

    You keep re-living this experience in the context of relationships, not in the context of working. At work your “self confidence is up and life is good”. It is the context of a romantic relationship where your experience as a child in the relationship with a parent gets activated, seeks your attention, craving your attention, wanting to be resolved.

    What do you think?

    anita

    #280643
    Ana
    Participant

    Dear anita,

    thank you so much for your answer!

    This is absolutely true. It feels like a buried pain inside of myself that bursts out as soon as there is a slight insecurity, or hurt.

    I´ve had loving parents, but I always felt like I had no privacy at all. My mom was quite overprotective and I felt so often guilty whenever I wanted to do anything different than my dad, even just stating an opinion was a problem. So I kept quiet and lived as they wanted me to (not going out at night, not telling them about boyfriends etc.).

    I haven´t been happy in a long time as I also feel guilty being happy. My boyfriend always tries to make me go out and do things, and I love it as much as I hate it. When we´re on vacation I feel guilty after a short time for enjoying the sun and doing nothing while I know my dad is at home working 24/7 as always.

    I´ve got an older sister as well who is always in a bad mood, always complaining about everything. She always got all of the attention at home and I feel drained out after having spent time with her. Which – of course- makes me feel guilty again, as she´s my sister and , as she says, she doesn´t have any friends beside me.

    It was hard growing up because I didn´t do the things the others did, so I didn´t have many friends. I used to feel like an alien in school.

    So, yes, I don´t really believe that anyone could love me as I am, as I learnt to please the people around me, because I knew that I had to in order to be loved.

    I tried talking to my inner child some times, I started crying immediately and tried to calm myself as a child, but it seemed to open wounds instead of healing them.

    Any ideas on how to go on from here?

    Ana

    #280647
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    To try and answer your question I need more information: can you tell me about your guilt regarding your “dad is at home working 24/7 as always”, what is it about?

    “I felt so often guilty whenever I wanted to do anything different than my dad, even just stating an opinion was a problem”- can you explain this sentence for me, what is the nature or your guilt, who communicated to you that you are guilty regarding your father?

    anita

    #280649
    Inky
    Participant

    Hi Ana,

    One day you may wake up and find your worst fears confirmed: That your boyfriend will leave you. Even though he loves you to bits, sometimes it takes just one thing for the hot water in a relationship to become suddenly boiling.

    So before your frog jumps out from the heat, may I suggest NOT living with him.

    This way you get the privacy you need now and needed as a child. You get to work out your uncomfortable feelings without a witness or victim. And HE gets to see you for only a few hours at a time when you are fresh and good (a few hours is your limit).

    Good Luck!

    Inky

    #280651
    Ana
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    to explain it a bit further: My dad works all day from 5/6 am until around 10 pm. He always used to say that lazy people are awful (of course in a nicer way but that was the content behind it).

    When we were on holidays he worked in a different way: Our holidays growing up consisted of rebuilding a house in another place of my country, he used to get up at 6 am and then start working around the house. He said things like “Of course you can sleep in, but your mom won´t help me so I´ll do have to do it all by myself then and that would be very hard”. My sister and I woke up because of the noise and just couldn´t go on sleeping knowing he would want us to help.

    I didn´t feel like I had a choice. He always said “If you don´t want to help then I´ll do it alone” but then he´d get irritated and sad working alone. As if I had let him down.

    So noone really said to me “You are guilty if..”, it just always felt that way. Like I let him down if I don´t do what he wants. I was so angry when I was still living with my parents, because I felt like my needs were not respected at all, my dad did as he wanted to and would then be sad if we didn´t want the same things.

    About the opinion thing – my dad has strong opinions on many things and is in my eyes a very intelligent man. So I looked up to him as a child but later in my teenage years I started to question the things he sad. He´d then get very angry and look at me as if I had done something very wrong. I felt awful knowing he was mad at me so I pretended for a long time to always being of his opinion. Then I´d get to see his sparkling eyes and him happy.

     

     

    #280659
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    I will be back to read and reply to you when I am back to the computer if about a couple of hours from now.

    anita

    #280675
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    There is nothing a child wants more than to see her parent happy, but to make your father happy you had to not do what makes you happy and instead do what he wanted you to do, work on his chosen projects. When you enjoyed yourself he felt sad, when you did what he wanted you to do, that which you didn’t want to do, he was happy and you would “see his sparkling eyes and him happy”.

    So you learned that you being happy makes your father sad, and because a good girl does not make her father sad, you learned that … it is wrong for you to be happy.

    This is why years later, even though you naturally “want to have a good day, be happy, forget my worries and love this life”, you “can’t seem to do this longer than a few hours”- it feels wrong to be happy.

    You wrote: “My boyfriend always tries to make me go out and do things, and I love it as much as I hate it”- you want to be happy, but you feel it is wrong for you to be happy, that you are a bad person if you are doing what you enjoy. In the back of your mind, you see your father looking at you sad.

    “When we’re on vacation I feel guilty after a short time for enjoying the sun and doing nothing while I know my dad is at home working 24/7 as always”.

    You and I have a lot in common, for decades I felt guilty for feeling joy and in my mind’s eye I saw my mother being sad. I felt that I didn’t have a right to feel happy, didn’t have a right to forget that she is sad, that she had to be happy before I was allowed to be happy and attend to my own life.

    You asked: “Any ideas on how to go on from here?”- yes I do. It will take you changing your core belief, formed early in childhood, that you don’t have a right to feel happy.

    Question: you did your best to make your father happy, I have no doubt. All the times you didn’t do what you wanted to do and instead did what he wanted you to do, all the times you expressed the opinions he approved of, all that you did, did you succeed in making him a happy man?

    I will be back to the computer in about fourteen hours. I hope you post before I return and will reply further to you.

    anita

    #280753
    Ana
    Participant

    dear anita

    thank you so much for your kind replies. It helps a lot.

    The things you said sound familiar.  I know the answer to the question

    “All the times you didn’t do what you wanted to do and instead did what he wanted you to do, all the times you expressed the opinions he approved of, all that you did, did you succeed in making him a happy man?”

    should be no, but I don´t really think so. I think that me being who he wanted me to be, doing what he wanted me to do,  indeed made and still makes him happy. I can see he´s proud of me whenever I say things he likes or thinks about in the same way. If I´m not the perfect daughter he gets in a bad mood and is easily irritated.

    Whenever I am how he wants his daughter to be, his whole world is perfect and he´s happy.

    Do you know what I mean?

    #280773
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    I think I understand your answer to my question: “did you succeed in making him a happy man?”-

    Your answer: “I can see he’s proud of me whenever I say things he likes… If I’m not the perfect daughter he gets in a bad mood and is easily irritated”.

    I am paraphrasing your answer:

    I succeed in  making him happy temporarily. Soon enough he returns to being his usual self, which is being in a bad mood and being easily irritated.

    Is my paraphrasing, my restating of your answer true to reality?

    anita

     

    #280775
    Ana
    Participant

    Dear Anita.

    you´re right. Your paraphrasing is true. I only succeed in making him happy temporarily. But if I were the perfect daughter all the time, he´d be happy all the time, isn´t that true as well?

     

    #280785
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    No it is not. Think of this: the perfect cake, perfectly baked, perfect ingredients, one’s very favorite. One slice makes a person happy, so does the second, and the third. At one point a person feels uncomfortable, bloated and as he continues to eat the perfect cake, eventually he will vomit, feeling very sick.

    Another example, the perfect drug, a narcotic, a person takes it and feels very, very happy. So he takes more and then more, a few days later, some  more, and for some reason it no longer works, and he keeps taking it not because it makes him happy, but so  to not feel the sickness of withdrawal.

    To continue to enjoy the perfect cake, what people do is they eat a couple of slices, then take a break, a day later perhaps, have another slice. People who want to enjoy the happy affect of a narcotic will take it once then have a break, then take it again a week later, so they don’t build a tolerance.

    Back to your father: if you were the perfect daughter (which would be impossible because you are not a baked product, or an extracted chemical, but a living and breathing organism), he would have developed a tolerance or would get sick and wouldn’t be temporarily happy anymore.

    The reason he has been able to feel happy at times, temporarily is because in between the events of you pleasing him, he is miserable. The emotional ups for him are possible because of the emotional down in between the ups.

    In other words, no, you didn’t, don’t and can’t make him happy, you can only pick him  up at times from his down, like a drug would, or a cake. And for that, you are paying a huge price in your experience of life.

    anita

    #280791
    Ana
    Participant

    Those are some interesting pictures. I immediately thought – so what can I do to make him constantly happy? But that´s the wrong consequence, isn´t it. I always felt sorry for him, he lost his parents at a young age and it´s like me and my sister are all he ever wanted and got, so I don´t want to ruin the most important thing in his life by not being perfect.

    I know I´m going round in circles with this one, but I can´t stop wanting to be perfect for him. I don´t want him to be sad. Do you know what I mean? Even if it´s just at times when I can make him happy, at least then he´s happy with his life and me.

    #280805
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Ana:

    You love your father so much that you have been willing to sacrifice yourself for his momentary happiness, a moment of pleasure here and there. Wouldn’t it be nice if he loved you too?

    I mean, if he wanted to see you  happy?

    anita

    #280811
    Ana
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

     

    thank you!!! That´s the point I always forgot to think about. This really helped. It feels better now to think about all of this, he should be happy when I´m happy. If he´s not, then he doesn´t love me as much as I thought. So I am allowed to be happy, because that would make him happy as well, if he loves me.

    Thank you so much for all of your help. This conversation has changed so much for me in a very positive way.

    I hope to be able to be more kind to myself, remind myself that I deserve to be happy and deserve to be loved. Maybe that will also help with my jealousy issues I´m dealing with.

    Thank you, anita!!

    Lots of love, Ana

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)

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