Dear Felix,

You said “I am trying. I am taking care of myself and trying  to get to a place where I can be happy again. But the tide is just so strong and powerful, sometimes it pulls me back so hard that I don’t know if I can make it out.”  And I was reading through these posts, and before I got to that, I was remembering how, one time in the past, I was in a yoga class, doing my practice and crying alternatively internally and externally.  I had pinned all my romantic hopes on a guy who led me on and yet somehow I became energetically attached to him and even though he never gave himself to me there was a sense of great loss.  A friend of mine had also recently died of a pancreas transplant.  I could go on, it doesn’t compare to what happened to me recently, but what I realized in that yoga class was useful: I was trying to get a happy feeling from the yoga, and the disappointment on top of all the depression and loss was intensifying the sad feelings.  At some point, I thought, don’t aim at happy (just like Anita suggests), but rather, aim at neutral.  Neutral includes being aware of and holding your feeling in your consciousness, but stop trying to solve everything and let go, observe what you are going through without problem-solving.  This is like meditation.

My yoga practice was not that young at that time and I was aware of a difference between being centered in myself and calm and able to think and make decisions from that calm and centered place.  Notice I am not saying from that happy place, but from a centered place.  When we are depressed and we struggle with the turbulence around us we exhaust ourselves like we are drowning, and just as you instinctively realize as shown by your fear, it is dangerous, because we can’t spare the energy and we are not healing.  To need the energy to come from outside of you is to not be centered.

I know how awful this is to hear.  I lost my husband and my mom within a month of each other and have been left with my teenage daughter alone.  My support system is thin to weak, not quite nonexistent but nothing like what I see on TV on Friends and Parenting.  My oldest sister had died two years before the deaths in my household, without my support because I was angry with her and she didn’t tell me she had cancer.  By the time I found out, it was Stage IV and I went west to see her and saw her and she died very soon.  My other sister and my brother are problematic, we are all adult survivors of alcoholism, abandonment, and our own addictions, and I keep them at a distance from my daughter for good reason.

So, I’m on here looking for support because history repeated itself with me this week and I lost my job.  I am competent and a good worker but at this job it was a matter of who didn’t like me.  I used to have a complex about being shy and unsocial and not having friends and not being invited, and I solved that by being pretty and partying to have friends.  It worked to some degree.  Now I have a complex about being rejected repeatedly by employers in my non-native, culturally different state.  I have called two of my friends that I tend to lean on but one is not responding.  The other is, but doesn’t reach back out and I get worried about pestering her.

So, here I am, with a fabulous daughter who I need to provide for, love, and lead, feeling inadequate, unloved, and fearful because I am getting older and oh yes they let me go when I was sick, I’m on antibiotics.  I am 52 now.  Even my daughter rejected me at a developmentally appropriate state but it was right when we needed each other when her father my husband died.

So as you can see, somehow I must keep calm and carry on with a relapsing sister, lost husband who loved me and we took care of each other, and not freak my daughter out by needing too much chicken soup from her, and I need to be self-reliant and I need to be my own best friend.

When I crave functional support and affirmation of my lovability from my sucky family (not daughter or inlaws, my birth family, who’s left), well, that’s just predictably disappointing.  And what it does is, that craving and the disappointment, it pulls me off-center and squanders my energy.  Now, being let go this week when I am sick, I went back to the doctor for the third time and got a second course of antibiotics.  The doctor’s office was closed over the holidays, which was when I was sick, so by the time I saw my doctor I had been to the urgent care twice and seen two other people, so three people, lots of missed work and lost money.

Point is, I can relate.  I want you to understand who is saying this to you, what I am going through, to evaluate how useful it might be for you.  And what I am saying is, give yourself a big fat giant break and notice what is necessary for survival and do that and only that and let go of everything that is not necessary for awhile and try to get to neutral.  The perspective you need is not the set of facts of your life, but the perspective provided by being centered and making yourself 100% available to yourself, or as close as you can get.  Its ok to accept that so and so does not love you the way you want them to.  You can’t fix it.  Better is to turtle up and protect your energy for the healing time and neutrality can give.  You can’t be available to joy and the ability to generate love when you are struggling, just like thrashing is no good in an undertow.  Relax and do only what is necessary to get yourself where you can breathe, get centered, and be still (neutral) for awhile.

Felix,

You said:

I have an amazing job right now, I love my dog to pieces, my family and my soon to be ex are all being somewhat supportive.

That is a good place to start.  I recommend a gratitude journal.  This is a good way to be focused on what is good going on in your life.   Plus having a regular journal is good for being able to process stuff without having it go around and around in your head making you crazy.

You crave emotional support especially from your family?  That is tough.  I do know that I need to love myself in order to attract the love (and support) from others.  In the meantime, you might want to find an outside support group such as a Men’s Support group or even a 12 Step group.  Having a meditation practice helps being OK with yourself.  I went on a meditation retreat and it was powerful.  I got to sit with myself in silence with others for stretches at a time. I was with myself AND I was with others in support.

Mark

Mark