Dear Blueman:

The best way to help you out of this mess, is for a qualified, skillful, and empathetic psychotherapist to guide you through the process. If this is a possibility for you, please consider it.

Here is what worked for me, how I got out of this kind of mess (a process that started when I attended quality therapy 2011-2013, and continues to this very day): first part is called emotion regulation, it’s about learning effective ways to lower the intensity of your distressing emotions and practicing these ways every day.

Are you aware of emotion regulation, and/ or of Mindfulness techniques, skills and practices?

anita

Dear Blueman:

“Then you must understand how much self-blame and beating up I am doing“- yes, I believe I do understand and I know how it feels. Self-blame and beating myself up was almost a constant in my life. Sometimes I’d get a break, but not often, not for long (my longest breaks were when I was daydreaming, as in playing movies in my mind, pleasant love-story movies where I was.. everything I was not in real-life).

It is only recently that I don’t feel the self-blame and beating myself up.. what a difference! I remember how it felt, it literally felt like some kind of a whip hitting me hard, a brain whip, if you will. It felt intensely painful.

I remember long ago, I was a teenager or maybe early 20s, I said to myself: if I could have one day free of this Guilt (this is how I called it), then my life would be worthwhile. Fast forward, Finally, the brain whip is gone. I can still hardly believe it!

I didn’t know how life can be, or feel, without the self-whipping. Nowadays, when I think of a mistake I just made, I remind myself that I don’t need to suffer for it, I can correct the mistake, or make a mental note on how to do better in the future, without the suffering (the whipping). I understand that the suffering itself is of no positive value and I am able to.. not suffer for my mistakes and faults. At the same time, I am improving myself, becoming a better and better person.

It is interesting how ineffective that self-abuse has been all these years, it’s done the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do (in the mind of the self-abuser, that is): it kept me from becoming a better person.

Also, self- whipping when done regularly, is a mental- emotional habit. Like any habit, it’s difficult (but possible) to change.

Back to your post: “The break up has had so much toll on me… It feels like all the Self-improvement I had done since coming to college has been ruined and gone down the drain. Like I am back to square one with my social anxiety and introverted nature and especially my self-esteem“- amazingly, this too is what I experienced so many times, over and over again. I’d type out what I called Rules 4 Life, as in guidelines of how to behave from now on, then start a New Life, a new page.. only to mess up, again, and again.. and again. The frustration was huge.

“She is on a pedestal to me“- it’d be a good day when she is off the pedestal, and you can look anyone in the eye and say: I am not less than you, I am not inferior to you.. We are equals!

“I have just 3 friends now and my girlfriend has left me“- at your age, in college, I had zero friends and no boyfriend or ex-boyfriend. You are a step ahead of me at your age (lol, if I may be funny, or try to be..?)

“Everything in future years (3rd and 4th) seems very bleak and lonely, I feel like my alone sad childhood self again“- isn’t it interesting, how we expect to re-experience childhood misery in the future (and we often do)?

But I don’t want that for you, and you don’t have to. It is very possible for you to experience something different. But it takes time and the right kind of work. If you’d like me to, I’ll try to help you best I can, based on my experience.

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

“I want to be a good friend, I want that to be a part of who seaturtle is… I need to learn when I need to let go of someone/something, but recently I gave up someone (you know who). And now I think I don’t want to do it again unless it is so so necessary”–

– I didn’t suggest that you let go of and give up on P. My point is, restated, that if you want a positive, relaxing birthday weekend in Palm Springs, then having a person who is, (your words),  “so negative“, who “talks just so much, doesn’t allow a moment of silence… cuts me off… doesn’t listen when I talk…just waits to talk“, is not congruent with having a positive, relaxing weekend, not for you, and not for your roommate- friend.

It is your birthday weekend to spend as you choose. Maybe having P will turn out to be a surprising delight. I don’t know.

I read your recent posts about your boredom and restlessness, and what occurred to me is that you need the most- seems to me-  a  why, as in what Vicktor Frankl wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’“, a why, a meaning, a “dedication to a cause greater than oneself”.

Your grandmother Oma was born in 1942 in a bunker in Germany. Viktor Frankl, born in Austria, was 37 when your grandmother was born. Based on his experience in Auschwitz as a psychiatrist, he wrote Man’s Search for Meaning and founded logotherapy which is based on the premise that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find a meaning in life.

anita

Dear Nichole:

Good to read this most interesting update, including that your father is doing better and is no longer on life support. I wish him continuing recovery!

About your time in Arizona, you wrote: “I am proud to say that I survived and thrived during the experience…. I stayed at my brothers home for financial reasons. It just made more sense. We ended up having a good time catching up in between supporting my father… I also lost a lot of anger I used to have for him… here I was loving him. The relationship is not perfect but being reunited in some is peaceful. He apologized and admitted a few things… I like the peace and forgiveness that has come over me in regards to family. I feel like it is a part of me I was trying to deny for so long. And for good reason because I needed to“- May the peace and forgiveness that you feel last and last.

“”As I adapt back into Florida time and work this week I am just trying to get back into gear with my own schedule and goals again.“- and may you focus on your life away and independently of your family.

A walk on memory lane- exactly 2 years ago, on April 16, 2022, you posted: “A lot has changed since we last spoke. Although I’ve been consistent with work and have caught up financially, it has become so stressful. I’m working in a call center. The pain I feel and sense here is extreme. People intentionally triggering people all day long like a zoo! I’m sorry if I seem more angry than usual. But I have had it. I’m overwhelmed… I do not know what it was that calmed me. But I imagined it all last night and I imagine anyone holding me most nights… I miss someone to go to dinner with. I miss someone to go to the beach with. And so yes, I have extended myself to groups and even tried to date but it’s so hard to make new connections when I still have so much trauma built up and I feel like I keep adding more by trying to do everything alone“-

– Less than an hour ago, I submitted a post about Loneliness. Loneliness was declared “a global public health concern”  by the World Health Organization a few months ago. The more socially/ emotionally connected we are to other people, in positively supportive ways, the healthier we are, physically and mentally!

anita

Dear Bell:

What I sense reading your recent 2nd post, and re-reading the first is the excessive fear of being alone, aka autophobia.

“I will die without him“- fear of being alone/ without him, a fear as intense as the fear of death.

“I do believe that I have both avoidant and anxious attachment styles from having an absent father in many ways“- part of you (the anxious attachment part) is so afraid to be left alone in the future, anticipating how terrible it will be. Another part (the avoidant attachment part) is trying to put an end to the anxious anticipation of being left alone in the future.. by bringing the feared future to the present, making the breakup happen already, so you are not afraid anymore that it will happen.

“I’ve seen a psychologist once since we ‘broke up’ it did help me feel a whole lot better“-  I think that you felt so much better during and sometime after that one session with the psychologist, not only because of what she said, but because with her, you did not feel alone. You felt that you were being listened to, being attended to, being someone’s priority, as in someone cares about you…?

“I have another psychologist appointment coming up and many more to come after that one, but the time between appointments feels so long and I feel very alone“- I feel very alone, key words. During the session above you felt a whole lot better because you were not alone. But in between appointments.. you feel very alone.

“my psychologist told me that… I am trying to run away from my relationship because of a fear of being left alone“- there it is, fear of being left alone (I wrote the above before this part registered in my mind).

“The anxiety and o bad thoughts are still constant. I have been refraining from bringing these up with him and only mentioning it here and there because I do not want to worry him and upset him anymore… The pushing him away and pulling him in has been really hard for him and I hate that I’m doing this to him“- it’s kind/ loving of you to care about not worrying and upsetting him!

“I found during the time we were apart that I had this constant fear that I was nobody’s first choice anymore and I felt so alone and absolutely devastated… It’s like this horrible feeling that the world is closing in around me and I won’t ever feel happy again“- this is how autophobia feels like. This has been my experience, as I too suffer from autophobia (I didn’t know of the term until a few days ago, and I wrote about it in my own thread since).

I am guessing that growing up, you too (like me) were left terribly alone, maybe physically, maybe emotionally, being ignored, being no one’s priority?

anita