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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 selfĀ 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 youāre about to say: 1. Factual and true, 2. Helpful, or beneficial, 3. Spoken with kindness and good-will.., 4. Endearing.. spoken gently…Ā 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 weāre speaking to ā that theyāre stupid, weak, pathetic, inferior, deluded, stubborn, etc.? If so, chances are weāre feeling superior to them and our motivation to speak isnāt 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 weāll be able to extend some warmth, patience, and benefit-of-the-doubt to those weāre speaking to or about…
“Even if weāre convinced we should speak, failing to consider howĀ 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 weāre right, or do we actually want to communicate something to others? If we actually want to communicate, then weād better think about how our words are likely to be received.
“Of course, the Buddha makes it clear right speech may sometimesĀ not be endearing. We can easily think of examples where this is the case ā when we need to say ‘no,’ or set a boundary with someone, or we need to point out harmful behavior, or say something thatās likely to make someone feel defensive or ashamed no matter how we put it. If weāre 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… Ā 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 SadSoul:
I am not a poet, have no reason to think I am good at it. Nonetheless, I will try to create a poem for you:
Sad Soul, Special Soul, is it a tear in your eye that I see?
Wasted time, wasted efforts, starting Alone, ending Alone, is this your story?
Is this my story?
Is this the story of all humanity?
Four questions above, I don’t get to ask anymore (so says the critic in my mind)
Sad Soul, Special Soul, see my soul see your soul
You are not alone; I am not alone
Son left unexpectedly, so sorry, Mother Sad Soul
Sad Soul’s Son, tell mom why, tell her just as it is.
If you can, please tell her.
She bought orange and poppy seed cake yesterday, tasted like casserole.
I bet she she’ll bake the best cake ever for you, mother’s love seeds in cake, if you come over for a talk
Separate truth from lies, Sad Soul’s Son; see your mother as she is, see your father, your friend as they are
See yourself
Tell mom what’s in your mind and heart, tell her, she’ll listen, she will not argue
She wants to know, she needs to know, Please talk to her. Tell her your truth.
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 SadSoul:
Thank you for your post on my thread, how precious!
“Feel free to quote, it makes it make sense, which my replies probably lack“- thank you, and it’s fine with me that you don’t quote, boldfaced or not.
“I am going to hush now. That was a lot of things Iāve never put into words before“- I noticed and I feel privileged to hear the voice/ the words of the non-hushed SadSoul.
“But people think you should heal and be over a thing in a nice set length of time, letās say a couple of months at most“-Ā when I posted yesterday in my own thread, about that person (my mother) yet again, I heard a shaming voice in my mind’s ear,Ā saying: you should be over her by now, you are a grown woman, how many years will you be stuck in what happened so long ago..?!!
This is why I started the post with “I keep posting here because it is working for me“, as an answer to the criticism I imagined, letting readers know that there is a positive value now, to posting about then.
“It would be so amazing if someone acknowledged my deep hurt… .. I had no one say itās okay, youāre allowed to be hurt and fall apart“-Ā I am taking a meditative moment here.. I acknowledge your deep hurt, SadSoul, deeply hurt SadSoul, deeply hurt. I feel some of it.. yes.
“I had lots of friends throughout life but they were around when they needed me for things. I loved being needed, it was something I craved… (feeling) special, needed, wanted, desired…Ā thinking I meant something special“- you are needed here, not for things, but for the Soul in Sad Soul. You are special here, Special Sad Soul.
“well, I wasnāt special to him…Ā he sneaked out and sent me a text message while I was at work… leaving the way he did, right after I insisted he starts paying his share of bills and things… When I realised I deserved to be more than working 46 hours a week to pay the bills, doing the housework and yard work, while he lived a high life with his money and his free time“-Ā I know how it feels to be used by a man, dehumanizing and enraging, and they get away with it.. for a while (eventually everyone gets sick and/ or dies).Ā I am sorry that this was your experience. The inhumane ways people treat each other.. It makes me want even more to be and become a better and better person.
“That was a lot of things Iāve never put into words before. I will have to digest them now. Alongside the orange and poppy seed cake I bought today that tastes like it was baked alongside a casserole. Itās awful!“- someone out there is eating a casserole that tastes like it was baked alongside a poppy seed cake…
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,Ā 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.Ā 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 didnāt like, which I thought wouldāve 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 donāt 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),Ā “so negative“, who “talks just so much, doesnāt allow a moment of silence… cuts me off… doesnāt 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-Ā a Ā why, as in what Vicktor Frankl wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning: āThose 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 Iāve been consistent with work and have caught up financially, it has become so stressful. Iām working in a call center. The pain I feel and sense here is extreme. People intentionally triggering people all day long like a zoo! Iām sorry if I seem more angry than usual. But I have had it. Iām 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 concernāĀ 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 SadSoul:
Lemon tea cake will do, chocolate and tea do not go together!
It just occurred to me to ask you: if you prefer that I don’t quote you and comment on each quote (my usual way of replying, as in the below), please let me know.
“Which brings me to my children who are so busy with their lives and events, I feel like Iām the mother texting hello and they donāt reply for weeks.Ā I try very hard to be happy theyāre so whole in themselves and their lives they donāt cling to me.Ā Because Iām alone and thereās nothing much filling my life“- you did a good job leading them to be whole in themselves. It’s a shame though that there is a hole in your life.
“Regarding the aloneness you were talking about it your topic. I used to be terrified of being alone, literally my heart pounded, sweating, shaking, utter fear, the whole night long when I first lived alone… That fear evolved into loneliness rather than fear, and a few other emotions in between, till these days Iām not afraid of being alone“-
– I just read through Wikipedia‘s very long entry on loneliness:Ā “an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation… a perceived lack of connection and intimacy… Long term loneliness can cause various types of maladaptive social cognition such as hypervigilance and social awkwardness… If a man loses a friend for whatever reason, this may increase his loneliness, resulting in him developing maladaptive cognition such as excessive neediness and suspicion of other friends. Hence leading to a further loss of connection… Long term social isolation can cause hypervigilance…Ā excessive cynicism and suspicion of other people, which in turn can be detrimental to interpersonal relationships. So, without intervention, chronic loneliness can be self-reinforcing… In both children and adults, loneliness often has a negative impact on learning and memory. Its disruption of sleep patterns can have a significant impact on the ability to function in everyday life”.
This explains a lot about my decades-long experience with loneliness. Does the above shine any light on your experience?
(As you probably know, the WHO declared loneliness to be “a global public health concern” a few months ago).
“Iām also a square peg in a round hole so I donāt make friends all that easily“- a square peg in a round hole: that was my.. decades long experience of chronic loneliness.
anita
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 