Dear Seaturtle:

“I was questioning my every move. Overthinking my own authenticity made me feel awkward. Wow this is a realization/ memory for me. I felt awkward in my body, and hyper aware of what I was doing, how I was standing or how to have conversation with certain people, how to be me“- ditto, this is MY experience, my past experience.

“This is interesting because as mentioned above, having a parent who shamed your authenticity led us to question what our authenticity was. Creating this desire to understand ourselves“- in all our communication, I never felt so similar to you, having so much in common.

I’ll respond to what I didn’t yet in the morning. I hope you are okay this evening/ night!

anita

(I was in a hurry and signed out twice by mistake)

Dear IMBACK:

I didn’t notice that you posted again when I submitted the above.

“I’m afraid that I will end up hurting her again and I think that I have convinced my brain that I don’t have feelings for her“- you are making a good point here about her getting hurt by you losing feelings for her (however temporarily), again and again, and telling her about it: this is not good for her emotional health…!

“Could it be that I have just lost feelings?”– yes, temporarily. No one, no person in the whole wide world, feels love for another person every minute, every hour, during all their waking hours. it’s normal to sometimes have no feelings for a person you love.

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

“Two years with N, feels like a lot of time and what was the point? One major point is this, recognizing my need to be seen by a significant other, before N I didn’t realize I wanted that, or what it even meant to me”- indeed, it’s a major point of learning from this 2-years experience.

“It makes me want to try to SEE somebody else.. maybe you?“- what do you see when you “look” at me via the computer screen?

“I wonder if everyone is complex or others are more simple, I suspect this is true but wouldn’t it be a superiority complex to claim that I am more complex than some others?“- the healthier I am, the less complex and simpler I become. N is complex, he Teflon-s his complexity, but it’s still there. You, Seaturtle, are courageously and intelligently looking into your complexity with an open/ opening third eye and an activated crown chakra.

“wow so when I feel unseen I lean more narcissistic on the spectrum“- yes!

“And dating N made me recognize I was overcompensating for something, and it was that I felt unseen. That’s a lot to take in. Why did it take him to trigger that?“- you shared that he was the first guy you fell in-love with, and he was your first long-term relationship.

“with N, if they stop giving me their energy of trying to see me… I must see myself, and this is where the narcissistic behaviors can enter. Slowly, my priority narrows down to only myself, and their feelings become less important“- very well said!

“we both clearly have a similar desire to be better every day“- yes, indeed.. we’re bot the bees’ knees!

“If there wasn’t better then I’d still rather be single than with him“- remember this realization next time you forget it.

“I feel empathy for him… I feel guilty that I couldn’t be the love he needed in his life“- I am relieved that you are this much removed from the alarming areas of the NPD spectrum! I hope that this guilt is not great, and that it will shrink over time and be no more.

“I hope to find someone who sees all the love that I am directing towards them, and that I can see their love as well… there’s some compatibility of some sort that enters the equation“- compatibility in the context of two fellow being human casually interacting in the world is different from the compatibility required in the context of a close friendship and/ or a romantic relationship.

“one day I wanna hear more about what it was like to do what you are doing. I thank you, because I need this, someone who cares to see me as much as they can. And you are that person right now (heart emoji, and leaf emoji because this feels very natural)“- it makes my day reading this!!! (a huge snow flakes emoji… it is snowing here right now, and the snowflakes are huge!)

“‘complex.’ I am thinking about this word right now, how did I get this way and is everyone on the planet on a spectrum from a simple to complex?“- like I wrote above, before reading this part, the mentally healthier I become, the less complex I am, and yes, complexity/ Simplicity has to be on a spectrum too.

“You know what, at least a silver lining of being ‘unseen’ is that I am familiar enough with the feeling that I just don’t expect people to see me“- that’s a good thing, to not expect it, and be delighted when it happens!

“Edit: I feel more seen by you than N, to an extreme degree“- this is a compliment as huge as the snow flakes falling right now, thank you for saying this!

I will read and reply further later.

anita

Dear IMBACK:

What you are experiencing, I believe, is a mix of fear and love. When you love something, you want that something (or someone) in your life; when you are afraid of something, you want it out of your life. Your girlfriend is someone you love (and want in your life), and she, same person, represents something you fear (and want out of your life).

The love part: “We just hit it off from the start. We had our first kiss and I was over the moon for this girl. We started messaging each other and we fell In love… We were together almost every day, and we wrote messages to each ALL THE TIME… every time we talked or wrote to each other I became happy…”

The fear part: “A month ago..  I started questioning everything. I was not sure if she was THE ONE or what I was feeling… I could also feel that it got too much and that we needed space so the both of us could do something outside of the relationship… I started questioning my feelings for her…”.

The problem: “I was not happy outside of the relationship. I had lost my friends and I barely talked to my parents anymore… . I was very lonely, and still am. I have still almost no friends“, “She was and is my only source of happiness. Nothing else makes me happy“-

– a human being is a highly social animal (particularly teenagers, and you are 18), and like other social animals (wolves, dogs, etc.), if a social animal is alone for too long, it get anxious and depressed. A social animal is not meant to be alone. You live with your parents, I imagine, so you are not physically alone, and you go to school and parties, so again, you are not physically alone, but you are emotionally alone (aka lonely), and you have been emotionally alone for too long, lacking close, intimate connections with others.

When you spend time with your girlfriend you feel so.. good, happy, it’s like being on top of the world, isn’t it? It is an emotional high made possible by chemicals secreted in the brain (neurotransmitters) and other chemicals secreted into your blood (hormones).

After and in-between the times you spend with her, when you are back to being emotionally alone, it is too much of a shock to the system: it is like falling from the top of a mountain (being with her) to a deep valley underneath (being alone again). And so, your brain (thinking and overthinking) is looking for a solution to this scary emotional falling down experience, and the solution it comes up with is to not go to the top of the mountain anymore (to not  love her anymore, to not be in a relationship with her anymore). If you don’t go up the mountain, you will not fall, so the logic (behind the fear) goes.

“Yes thank you very much. I have one last thing. Could it maybe be that I just need space? We’ve been physically together almost everyday the last 7 month and we message each other all day, everyday“- You are welcome. The Problem is not that you spend too much time with her; it is that Fall I talked about above: the going back to the Low of loneliness after experiencing the High of spending time with her.

“when I think of her all the time, I get the thoughts of breaking up, but the less I think of her, the more I want to be together. I don’t know if this could mean something I just got the thought.“- yes, it means something: you will need to think of her less, but how can you make it happen (to think less of her)? I think that the answer is quality psychotherapy/ counseling where you form a close connection to a caring, capable therapist, thoroughly express your emotions and learn to regulate them, to lower the intensity of your distressing emotions (aka emotion regulation).

anita

Dear Lynn:

Reads like, at this time,  you are not confused at all (“So Confused”, the title of your thread)

“He has always said he was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to make me happy in his world because of his job“- I imagine that he would feel less concerned with a woman who is okay/ happy in her world; that would relieve his concern.

“He is an over thinker and needs to play out every scenario in his head a million times before he commits to something. I feel he is introverted around women“- reads like he is an anxious person. Anxious people are often attracted to people who are even keeled, consistent; not erratic, volatile, etc. Giving him space and showing him that you are okay and calm in his absence (as well as in his presence), is your best bet, seems to me, for a romantic relationship with him.

anita

Dear Kshiti:

You are very welcome! I don’t have a particular emotion regulation workbook in mind. I just googled and this book seems, by its title, promising. It’s called “The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook“.  It includes not only emotion regulations exercises but also mindfulness and interpersonal effectiveness exercises.

“I have tried to align myself with my true values and goals, and would like to have your advice over how to develop these patterns along with that of purpose“-  are you looking for advice on how to actualize (to put into practice) your true values and goals? If so, would you like to share about your true values and goals?

anita

Dear Anonymous:

I don’t know if you are reading this, being that you deleted your account a few minutes after you submitted your original post. I suppose it’s anxiety that’s behind deleting your account, and that it’s relationship anxiety (and anxious-ambivalent attachment style) that’s behind your distress in regard to your girlfriend. If you are reading this and would like to return to your thread (via a new account), please do.

anita