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April 18, 2024 at 9:11 am in reply to: Recently broke up with my boyfriend, feeling guilty and sad #431843
anitaParticipantDear Eliza:
Isn’t it amazing, this thread is almost 10 years old, welcome to it, Eliza!
You shared that you’ve been “in an on and off… so turbulent, and very rarely stable” 2-year relationship with your ex-boyfriend because of anxiety, not because of anger and fighting.
(I am adding the boldface feature selectively to the following):”I have had really horrible anxiety the entire relationship… so nervous to hurt him… so scared that Iâve ruined his life and am the reason heâll never be happy… I seem to crave freedom… at times claustrophobic, even though I love hanging out with him… would have moments of intense panic… In the end I couldnât tell whether my gut was saying it wasnât a match or it was my anxiety…. Whatâs wrong with me? I really do love him…. will I ever have clarity over how I feel? Why canât I be content with him? and will I ever get over this!!!!”-
– clearly, The Problem is fear, persistent, ongoing fear, aka anxiety.
I relate to your anxiety just as you described it. I will summarize what it was about in my case: as a child, I was very hurt, a whole lot of hurt, and for a long, long time, all of my childhood, really. But as it happens, very hurt/ scared children instinctively repress their distressing emotions (hurt, fear), so that they can survive, because feeling too scared, too hurt, for too long literally destroys the body.
Fast forward, I am an adult, my hurt and fear still repressed (felt, but way less intensely than in early childhood). The moment I felt love/ empathy for a person, I saw myself in that person, more precisely, I project my child-self (the child that I was) into the other person, and imagined that he/ she was about to get hurt as badly as I was hurt (pre-repression). I was afraid to hurt the person, and I was afraid to witness the person hurting, so I wanted to be with the person and away, all at the same time, very anxious, uncomfortable.
The interesting thing is that what I was afraid of, as an adult, was to feel my own hurt at the pre-repression level, at the intensity back then.
Do you relate to any part of what I am saying?
anita
anitaParticipantDear Tommy:
I like your distinction between acting and reacting to a member (an OP). When I notice that as I reply to a member, I feel angry, I pause and switch from anger to => empathy. Better to not reply at all than reply when under the influence of anger.
“My intent was to make her look at herself and her situation. To have her pull herself out of this self-pity“- anger expressed at an OP, even if there is an intent to help the OP, will not pull the OP out of self pity. All the OP sees are words on a computer screen, words typed out by a person the OP doesn’t know and has no reason to trust (in most cases). So, your expressed anger at an OP is .. just anger, judgement coming out of the screen, hitting the hurting OP, and casing further pain. It is of no help, only harm.
I hope that you are careful about speaking in anger in real-life, so to Do No Harm.
bright zen way. org/ five ways to consider before speaking: “The Buddha taught there were five things to consider before speaking. Is what youâre about to say: 1. Factual and true, 2. Helpful, or beneficial, 3. Spoken with kindness and good-will.., 4. Endearing.. spoken gently…Â 5. Timely…
“Basically, if it seems very unlikely our speech will be helpful or beneficial, no matter our intentions, the Buddha suggests we remain silent…
“Considering our own attitude while speaking is another useful approach to evaluating our speech. What are we thinking and feeling as we contemplate saying something? Do we have judgments in our mind about the person weâre speaking to â that theyâre stupid, weak, pathetic, inferior, deluded, stubborn, etc.? If so, chances are weâre feeling superior to them and our motivation to speak isnât sincerely about their best interests.
“If someone has hurt or offended us…. chances are our speech will be tinged with anger and a desire to hurt the person in return. Sometimes we can remind ourselves of the importance of speaking with good-will, and weâll be able to extend some warmth, patience, and benefit-of-the-doubt to those weâre speaking to or about…
“Even if weâre convinced we should speak, failing to consider how our words are going to make someone feel shows either self-centeredness or folly. After all, why are we speaking? Do we just want make a point that weâre right, or do we actually want to communicate something to others? If we actually want to communicate, then weâd better think about how our words are likely to be received.
“Of course, the Buddha makes it clear right speech may sometimes not be endearing. We can easily think of examples where this is the case â when we need to say ‘no,’ or set a boundary with someone, or we need to point out harmful behavior, or say something thatâs likely to make someone feel defensive or ashamed no matter how we put it. If weâre motivated by good-will, what we say is factual and true, and we think saying it will be beneficial, then we can say it. But…  we should have ‘a sense of the proper time for saying’ what we want to say. Maybe we should bite our tongue and speak to someone in private instead of blurting our message out at the dining room table..”.
I hope that you find the above helpful, Tommy. I do. Thank you for your best wishes and wishing you the best as well!
anita
anitaParticipantDear gresshoppe:
I am sending good vibes your way and thank you for the good vibes! We can talk about autophobia sometime, if you would like that. I experienced it since I was a child and only recently found out the term.
I hope to read how the conversation with him goes.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Tommy:
So good to read from you, I was afraid you will never post again.
“When a person is hysterical, what should a person do? Hold them by the hand and say everything will be alright?“- I’d never say “everything will be alright“, I can’t predict the future, and I am not optimistic.
You are welcome, and thank you for sending this message to me.
I respect your wish to not post again for as long as you wish to not post. I will miss you though, because I like you. You are a good, humble person. You inspire me, I want to be more like you.
You are welcome here anytime, Tommy. You are a force for good (as the saying goes), thank you for being.. you.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
I just wrote a poem for a friend. I like it (I hope she likes it), so in the spirit of liking it, I’ll write another to.. you guessed whom (if you did), I’ll write it to that person:
I guess you were right all along
I didn’t love you
I loved what I needed you to be, just for me
Not who you were.
I loved the idea of a mother
Not the person that you are, the person you have been
For how could I love or like a person who hated me
I loved the idea of a person (a mother) who liked me
You disliked me in so many ways, thoroughly, inside out
And in turn, I disliked myself, I disliked you, I disliked everyone-
– A great start in life
Not.
And now, as I tie loose ends in my heart and mind
I say to the idea of you: farewell idea.
Left is what’s always been there; that person who disliked me
I can’t change this reality, not retroactively, not in any other way
it just so happened to be this way.
Farewell.
anita
anitaParticipantDear 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
anitaParticipantDear 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
anitaParticipantDear Blueman: I will read and reply in about 6 hours from now.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued (trigger warning, as always):
I keep posting here because it is working for me, it gets me closer and closer to peace-of-mind. And if what I post here helps a single other person out there, that’s good enough for me, a worthy cause.
I am alone this evening, not yet dark, autophobia. I feel the scream from the inside, inaudible, yet intensely, quietly, terribly loud: Mother! Help me! Somebody help me!
This is not an intellectual exercise, here, it’s emotional: Help Me!
I feel the despair. I feel the what’s-the-point, no one is here for me, no one is there for me, no one to hold me and help me.
The Alone-ness.
How is it that no one hears me, no one hears my cries?
All alone, I am all alone, no one there for me?
Autophobia, this means.. I am going to die, all alone?
And no one knows, no one cares?
I hear a noise outside, a helicopter in the sky perhaps, The noise is gone now, It’s quiet again. Alone. A bit of darkness outside, alone inside… Here’s the helicopter sound again.. someone is out there, a human being. Who is that person in the sky..?
Those Formative Years of childhood, what they formed into me is a desperate alone-ness and loneliness, the there’s no one there for me.
Judging by the desperate cries of a coyote pup a few years ago, one who found himself (or herself) alone, separated and far away from the pack that one night, it’s a terrible feeling, death-about-to-happen any moment. For a highly social animal (a human, a coyote, a dog) separation/ alone-ness = death.
It’s darker now than when I started this post, not yet dark but really close to being dark, the closing of a day.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Blueman:
“I suffer from low self-esteem and a ton of insecurities“- this describes me when I was your age and many years after.
“I was unauthentic, trying excessively to be funny“- you didn’t believe that your true, authentic self was good enough for her, so you did your best to be someone else, someone worthy of her, someone funny.
You did it for her, because you cared for her.
“While being intimate once I said something to her that she didnât like, which I thought wouldâve been harmless“- you thought it’d be harmless. You didn’t have a harmful intent.
If you weren’t solely focused on your inadequacies, or imperfections, you would have noticed hers. No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. Every day.
“I feel disgusted by myself how I handled the whole situation in most underconfident, foolish and anxious manner“- to me, you sound/ reads like a good, loving young person.
anita
April 16, 2024 at 7:16 pm in reply to: Surrender, Accessing Shakti by clearing samskaras, eliminating false selves #431773anitaParticipantDear 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 donât 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, doesnât allow a moment of silence… cuts me off… doesnât 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: âThose 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
anitaParticipantContinued:
Rage. What a potent, powerful emotion and what great, colossal damage it produces on an individual and on a global scale, from a mother dropping a shaming verbal bomb on her daughter, to a nation threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on another/ on all of us. How important it is to exercise restraint, and how much more restraint is needed.
How crucial it is to replace rage with compassion, wherever, whenever possible, so to save ourselves and our world. Because we are all in it together, no matter how separated so many of us feel.
As I am approaching the end part of my individual life, and as the world approaches the real-and-present danger of significant collapse, I am tying loose ends of misunderstandings, resolving needless personal suffering. It boils down to: rage needs to be expressed in non-violent ways, and then, be tamed, contained.
anita
anitaParticipantDear 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 Iâve been consistent with work and have caught up financially, it has become so stressful. Iâm working in a call center. The pain I feel and sense here is extreme. People intentionally triggering people all day long like a zoo! Iâm sorry if I seem more angry than usual. But I have had it. Iâm 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 concernâ 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
anitaParticipantDear 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“-Â 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 Iâm 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… Itâs like this horrible feeling that the world is closing in around me and I wonât 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
anitaParticipantDear Blueman:
I hope that you will feel better soon.
“At one point I got obsessed with this person. I think I experienced Limerence… Once we dated my intense anxiety and negative thinking caught me up and destroyed our connection“- anxiety, negative thinking and obsession do destroy.
“Finally, it ended in 1.5 months. Ruined it all with my own hands My partner trusted in me yet I failed her… The guilt is so overwhelming… Everyone has been telling me I am being too hard on myself but am I?“- since the short, 1.5 month relationship ended, you’ve been obsessing about having failed your now ex-girlfriend, and you fee guilty about it.. obsessed with guilt.
I’d approach this particular obsession on two fronts:
(1) your childhood history of feeling responsible for failing someone.. one of your parents, perhaps?
(2) the short history with your girlfriend: in what ways, in actual terms, do you think you have failed or hurt her, in only 1.5 months?
anita
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