Dear Seaturtle (a purple heart emoji or two):

I am so tired, exceptionally exhausted and it’s early afternoon, sunny outside and I want to sleep, only I rarely sleep during the day. I read some of your post, not focused enough, but I don’t need to be very focused to detect you being a good person..!!! And yes, the voice in our minds is similar.

And better not underestimate the persistence of the habits of the mind. The voice, by now, is a mental habit. It takes Noticing the voice speaking to us, Pausing and Addressing the situation objectively, then correcting the distorted thoughts delivered by the Voice. I’ll write more Sat morning. Have a good rest of the day, lovely Seaturtle!

anita

Dear Nate:

You are 21, friendly, likeable, and you don’t have a problem with making friends with girls and getting their numbers, (“I’ve made friends with so many girls this semester and gotten so many numbers… I have plenty of friends and people really seem to like me“).

You are a single guy, and you like your space, freedom and independence as a single guy: no girlfriend to invade your space, no girlfriend to interrupt you doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, how and with whom (“I’m really always in my own space doing what I want, when I want, how I want, with who I want, and I like it like that“).

Many of the girls you meet have no purpose, or if they have a purpose, their “purpose is loving somebody“. They are girls who need a boyfriend and who will follow their boyfriend. But what you want is a girlfriend who is not a follower, but a leader; a girlfriend who has a different purpose than loving someone, and who is focused on that purpose, not on you. You.. need a girlfriend who will not need you at all (“I want… a leader. I want a girl who… absolutely doesn’t need me… and passionate about her purpose“).

Having a girlfriend who will need you, a girlfriend who will rely on you would be too much pressure for you (“I can’t handle that pressure“),  the idea of it freaks you out (“someone who relies on me too much or seems like they’ll rely on me too much doesn’t sit well with me and freaks me out“).

You remember little of your childhood, much of it spent alone with your grandmother who “needed help because well she was old“.

It seems to me that, as a child, your parents were absent a lot (perhaps working, perhaps they were not married and busy otherwise), and you spent a lot of time with your grandmother who wasn’t able to give you much attention and companionship. And so, you were on your own a lot, playing alone, entertaining yourself, doing what you wanted to do, when and how you wanted it (“I’ve always kind of been on my own devices and independent I don’t even know how to have someone else“)… as long as you behaved well, and you behaved well, so you required little attention and supervision by your older grandmother and absent parents.

You ended your 4th post with: “I have a habit of just ignoring girls who like me because of how picky I get, but if they like me early or easily, suddenly I just don’t like them back anymore… I barely can meet girls who check off my list. I just wish somebody would love and validate me, instead of it being the other way around, but then when that happens, I get defensive because I don’t trust it, or just plain uninterested in it like some sociopath.“-

– I think that as a child, being left alone a lot (if this is what happened), you got used to solitude and found comfort in it. You got habituated to solitude. Fast forward, a bit too much togetherness feels very uncomfortable, it freaks you out.

And so, solitude is your preference. But you are not anti-social, you still need people, and a girlfriend, but in limited ways, such that will not interrupt your solitude too much. This is why you want a super-independent girlfriend, one who will be passionately focused on a purpose other than love, other than you.. so that she’ll leave you alone a lot, alone in your comfortable solitude.

anita

Dear Seaturtle:

* I am adding this comment following a few hours of putting this post together, so to let you know that parts of it may be distressing to read. Please read when calm, take breaks, and as always: remember that you can read only a part of it, or no part at all. My goal in this post is: Win-Win, Win for you, Win for me. Here it is:

The more I understand you, the more I understand myself.

Original post, April 12, 2024: “Hello, I have been reading from Michael Singer… Michael Singer calls these blockages ‘Samskaras’ which come from the Buddhist concept of clinging… Clinging happens when we resist or hold on… a blockage inside of us…  I would really like to discover more ways to uncover and release these samskaras… I want to live from a place of surrender, by accepting things the way they are and acknowledging the outside world cannot fix my inside world“-

-A few quotes from Michael Singer that I like: “When a problem is disturbing you, don’t ask, ‘What should I do about it?’ Ask, ‘What part of me is being disturbed by this?'”, “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it.”, “True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection.”.

What I get from these 3 quotes is that, in my case, the part of me that is disturbed by my mother’s shaming, judgmental and accusatory voice (a voice regenerated and expanded by my brain), is the part of me that believes that what her voice is telling me- is objectively true. The part of me that is disturbed by some of the experiences in my current, daily life, is the part that allows her voice to interpret these experiences for me.

* My voice, through the years, having believed her voice, and having interpreted earlier life experiences through her voice, has added a lot more content to her voice, making it much more verbose and comprehensive.

My true personal growth is about realizing that I don’t have to live under the oppression and misinterpretation of her voice (and what I added to it); that I don’t have to either submit to her voice, or to keep fighting it (trying to protect myself from it). Instead, it’s about transcending it, meaning, to no longer Fight it, Flight it (run away), or Freeze.

To transcend it, I need to no longer believe in it, to no longer have faith in it.

I started my first reply to you in this thread, with: “Dear Seaturtle: I would like it if this thread will not be only a conversation between you and I, but a place where more members will participate in, members with more knowledge of Buddhism.“. In your reply (your 2nd post), you quoted me and added:  “-I would love nothing more!“. I now assume that you meant that indeed, you would love getting more people to participate in your thread.

But that’s not what I heard when I first read it (and for some time later). What I heard was you saying to me something like this: anita, you suck, I have no regard for you and what you want to say to me, you are of no importance;  this is why I would love valuable, important people to reply to me.

I interpreted your 5-word sentence through her voice, carrying her message (italicized).

Let’s look at the voice within you (Oct 11, 2023): “My dad would accuse me of planning my showers around avoiding talking to him… If my boyfriend is showering by the time I come over I think, ‘wait why couldn’t he plan his shower so he would be out when I got here, he must not care very much about our time together.‘ I know it’s ridiculous right? all these are ways my mind just was exhausted living with him and I needed to get away from, well now I am realizing I needed to get away from myself“- your father’s voice kept being regenerated (and expanded on, I assume) by your brain while you were living with your boyfriend at the time. It is my understanding now, that what exhausted you so much back then, was fighting the voice, or running away from it, keeping your brain-body in state of ongoing, distressing motion (Fight, Flight, Freeze), no rest. Coming to think about it, no-rest is in the title of your first thread: “Please help me, my mind hasn’t rested in 8 months” (July 29, 2023).

You believed your father’s voice when he accused you of not caring about him, of being selfish, unloving (being a bad daughter), when you didn’t plan to shower before he arrived home, and when you didn’t otherwise make yourself perfectly available and attentive to him when he was home. Believing his accusations caused you lots of distress. Fast forward, living with a boyfriend, your father’s voice was interpreting your life situations for you.

Maybe, having taken in (internalizing) your father’s accusations, you proceeded to project them into your boyfriend. So, when projecting those, you were temporarily free of them, free of the distress that accompany believing that you are selfish and uncaring, a bad person, that is. And this became a kind of an addiction, an addiction that exhausted you. Maybe.

Fast forward to April 30, 2024 (this thread): “I notice in my adult life now, I often ask how I could be better.. I told my employer once to let me know if I was doing anything that bothered them so that I could fix it… I seek validation from my roommate about my behavior… living with my father and I was constantly called selfish or ungrateful. I don’t want my actions to hurt other people or offend them, but I also want to live in alignment with my true self. Is our true self selfish? How do I think of others and care for them, without comprising my true self?“- right here, it reads like you have a core belief (a belief formed early in life) that you are a bad person who hurts other people, who needs validation that you are not hurting people, a core belief that your father instilled in you by constantly calling you selfish and ungrateful: two adjectives that amount to being a bad daughter=> a bad person.

So, your dilemma, or conflict, expressed in the quote right above is: “I don’t want my actions to hurt other people“, that is, I don’t want to be bad, “but I also want to live in alignment with my true self. Is our true self selfish?“, but my authentic self is allegedly bad, so how can I be okay being my authentically bad self?

May 8, 2024: “The other angle was religion, my mom spoke a lot of keeping my heart pure, no lies, and treating my siblings with kindness. I remember before sleeping at night I would say ‘tomorrow I will be perfect.‘”- tomorrow, I will be a good daughter; tomorrow, I will be a good sister.. tomorrow, I will be a good person.

“This weekend at his Palm Springs house I was VERY hypervigilant, like I was living at his home as a teenager. I picked up every crumb and replaced anything I used in larger amounts. I told my friends to be careful and we left the place spotless“- at 25,  still trying to get your father to say that you are a good daughter, a good person.

“But this is the mind trick: When I emailed him ‘thank you’ and told him about the food I replaced and anything we used, he responded –’... You were probably overly considerate of utilizing some of the goods in the house. I suppose we could have had a conversation about that, because I would have wanted you to feel more freedom to help yourself on basically everything…‘…  I felt gaslit when I read this email, because if I would have left anything out of order, I know he would have said things. But he is acting as if I am the hypervigilant one and he has never asked such a thing of me“- he is changing the rules on you: all those years, his rule was that to become a good daughter, you’d need to be perfectly hypervigilant in his house. And now.. you are supposed to earn the title good daughter by NOT being hypervigilant.. enraging, is it?

Thing is, neither is the way to earn the title good person from him. During a critical time in your earlier life, when core beliefs are formed, he projected some other person or persons into you- inaccurately, and so, his legacy in your life has been the formation of a false core belief, which is that you are a bad person.

(I am guessing that behind his email is that you being so careful to replace the food in his frig, etc., made him appear- in  his mind- like a stingy person, a scrooge who does not allow his own daughter to eat his food, so he reacted to that image of himself).

My mother’s legacy in my life has been the message- turned core belief- that I am a bad person, bad and inferior to others. We humans (and sea turtles, lol) have this need to believe that we are good people. Some people cross a line of no-return and permanently block this need (antisocial personalities), but you and I are far from crossing that line. We still want to believe that we are good people, and we want others to believe it too.

Let’s believe it about ourselves and about each other..?

anita

Dear Brian:

Thank you for expressing some appreciation for me, I appreciate it!

Focusing on the intent behind people’s words is a excellent idea that I should practice more myself. Indeed people say and do things out of habit. We are habitual creatures by nature.

Coming to think about it, connecting this to the title of your thread, it is divine, perhaps, to break bad, useless habits and replace them with personally-chosen good, useful habits.

anita

Dear Robi:

“My girlfriend recently said to me – ‘You are reliving an old postcard’“- I never read/ heard this saying, reliving an old postcard. I am positively impressed by your girlfriend!

“Now.. I woke up this morning with these thoughts. Pretty interesting thoughts I’ve had for some time now“- I am looking forward to reading your thoughts submitted 5 hours ago, all the way from Spain, at 12:18 pm local time:

“1) The mask I created a long time ago… to fool others I’m not shy, afraid and anxious. I was operating from a place of  very low self esteem. I had very low self worth…”-

– very insightful, Robbi, and your ability to understand it all so accurately tells me that you currently possess enough self-worth to be able to understand it all so accurately.

“Some of the old coping mechanisms (sitting in front of the computer playing games, watching all kinds of stuff ) have been replaced by smoking weed, going out partying, getting drunk and socialising…. operating still from the level of my mask. I was again, too scared to be myself fully… The mask started dissolving quite a while ago and speeded up the moment I met my girlfriend“- this is what crossed my mind before reading this part: that your attachment to your girlfriend is and has been a positive, healing attachment, hence the increased self-esteem and dissolving of the mask.

“I met my girlfriend and moved to Poland in 2021. There I gradually found a different version of myself – a more accepting self. I finally understood I’m okay the way I am and I don’t need to impress anyone“- here it is, right here: an increased self-esteem.

“Of course at times there were battles between ‘the old and the new’,  battles I still have now“- Of course, as always, mental-emotional healing/ improvement is a back and forth process where overall, and over time, you make significant progress.

“I know I’ve changed a lot – I feel like I woke up, I found my wounds, uncovered them, addressed them as much as I was able, confronted my family about the traumas I still carry with me today… “- your significant healing/ improvement is evident in the accuracy of your chosen words. This is all a pleasure for me to read!

“NOW. I feel like Alicante has been feeding the mask. Now I feel like it doesn’t quite feed who I am today… I feel lonely, away from my girlfriend, away from my family, not having friends and not really enjoying my postcard“- I am visualizing the Alicante postcard and I see.. there in that corner, a young man wearing a polo shirt and a mask. Is that you, Robi, underneath that mask?

“2) Missing, Feeling but disconnecting after a while.  I’ve experienced this for the last 2 and a half years since I met my girlfriend. I would feel close to her when we are together…  right before her or me leaving I would feel very sad… For a few days, I would miss her, I would feel connected to her.  A few days would pass and I would start disconnecting from her. I wouldn’t even feel like I wanted to talk to her and often my first impulse would be to ignore her messages – I would be almost annoyed by her contacting me. At times I would think of other women too.. although I’ve never tried anything and never really wanted to. When we meet again, it takes me a little time to ‘adjust’. I would be a little distant at first, maybe for a few hours or a day.. but then slowly I would get back into my ‘caring and loving mode’…. What do you think about this? I don’t know what to make of it. First thing that comes to my mind would be maybe something connected to my mother? Maybe something connected to abandonment?… Why do I disconnect like this? Am I protecting myself from getting hurt? Am I trying to protect myself from missing someone?”-

-you disconnect like this so to reduce your anxiety (separation anxiety, to be exact). It is an instinctual choice made by your brain-body, an automatic choice, a dissociation choice. It is natural and understandable: when away from your girlfriend, you are anxious about the possibility that you’ll never see her again, that the physical separation from her is permanent. This anxiety alarms your brain for a few days, and your brain shakes the anxiety off of it, so to speak, by dissociating, by not caring anymore.

The not caring not loving calm mode is much preferrable (and understandably so) to the caring loving anxious mode.

Once you dissociates and adopt the not caring not loving calm mode, you don’t want to talk to her and to take her messages because you (understandably) do not want your calm disturbed. At times, you think of other women, while you feel disconnected from your girlfriend, because .. you don’t feel connected to her. Again, it’s understandable.

When you understand the logic of all this, how instinctual it is (a choice made by the species you are born as: a social mammal, a human), and not a matter of your individual personal choice, you can see that it all happens because you love her.

“My mother used to take me to kindergarten every morning…”–

health line/ separation anxiety in adults vs children: “Symptoms of anxiety disorder in children and adults are similar. For children, separation anxiety is often associated with extreme fear or anxiety about being away from parents or caregivers. That can make a child less willing to participate in events or social experiences, like spending the night at a friend’s house or going to summer sleepaway camp. For adults, the anxiety is around being away from children or spouses”

anita

Dear Robi:

“With no exception, every time I’m heading there ( before the classes) I get a slight headache – which gets worse during my classes. This doesn’t happen when I work in the bar – although I’m basically in the sun for 8 hours running jumping around like Rocky Balboa“- teaching causes you anxiety which causes the headaches, I figure. Working the bar suits you much better.

“My girlfriend would like me to go back to Warsaw.. although she prefers not to say anything – she always encourages me to do as I feel“- a wonderful girlfriend!

“She’s running her own business there and lately it started getting better and better so leaving her business there and coming here doesn’t seem like the right thing to do“- I agree.

“These last days I’ve been applying for all kinds of jobs in Warsaw…  Let’s see if there will be any offers – then maybe I can weigh things and see what makes more sense“- yes, see what makes more sense depending on what work becomes available for you. If you find a good job that you can do in Warsaw, living close to, or with your girlfriend.. that reads logical and sensible to me.

“Very often after 3 or even 2 hours of teaching I get so tired that I just don’t have the resources. Whenever I have those headaches I feel like my body is telling me something“- your body doesn’t like teaching!

“Anyways, gotta go now – put my polo shirt on and look like a teacher“- I am visualizing Robi in a polo shirt and a headache.. I hope not. Rest well after the teaching!

anita