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May 9, 2024 at 10:55 am in reply to: Surrender, Accessing Shakti by clearing samskaras, eliminating false selves #432527
anitaParticipantDear 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
May 8, 2024 at 5:06 pm in reply to: growing up – becoming adul / procrastination – in connection to childhood trauma #432502anitaParticipantDear Robi:
You are very welcome and thank you for your appreciation and grace (genuine grace, not a mask!)
Yes, seems like teaching is not working for you any more than a headache is working for you. Maybe it will change one day: another kind of teaching, a diferent situation, but for now, it is what it is (a headache).
anita
anitaParticipantDear 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
May 8, 2024 at 10:48 am in reply to: Surrender, Accessing Shakti by clearing samskaras, eliminating false selves #432497anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“Kind of funny, my dad and I shared a mother, in a way. Although she had 7 boys, my dad being the oldest boy… I became my grandma’s little girl she always wanted. So although the same mom as my dad I am sure she treated me with more favor.“- your father was her 2nd child and first boy. Six boys and 21 years later, you were born, and, in practice, you became her long-awaited 2nd girl. I imagine she did indeed treat you, when you were growing up, differently than she treated her first boy, when he was growing up, a few decades earlier.
She treated all 8 children somewhat differently, and treated you perhaps most differently.
I didn’t know until you shared today that you spent so much time with your grandmother: how did she treat you?
anita
May 8, 2024 at 9:22 am in reply to: growing up – becoming adul / procrastination – in connection to childhood trauma #432485anitaParticipantDear 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
anitaParticipantDear Nichole:
“I was also enjoying the attention. It was exciting to be back in contact. It was a distraction from some of my own issues in my own life. It was my loneliness“- contact with friendly people is exciting, especially when one is lonely. It’s like this for all social mammals. Think of dogs, how excited they get when in contact with people and with other dogs (who they don’t consider to be a threat), wagging their tails and all.
“Anyhow, we have not spoke other than in short. I have set a boundary, silently, and he seems to be respecting it“- it’s very important that you set boundaries and that people respect your boundaries!
“Boundaries are hard to stick to, I find. I don’t know if throughout the years my mind has created a poor memory, but I set boundaries and goals and can easily move on to the next or just forget, lose interest in this important goal/boundary I set. I find it hard to stay consistent. And it’s disappointing“- focus on how well you are doing; on where you succeed, not on where you fail. We all fail every day: it’s the human condition. Best you can do, when you fail, is to make a mental note of how you can do better the next time you encounter a similar situation. Make a note of it (in your mind, or you can write it down), like a student would, for the purpose of learning, without self-condemnation. Students learn better when they are treated kindly. Treat yourself. Always.
“Last month my uncle and I spoke. During the conversation he let me know that he would like to gift me a down payment on a condo. I was stunned. I have never received such a monetary gift… I have a lot of work to do financially before I can afford this. This is a goal I must stick to.“- I can’t think of anyone more deserving of such a gift, how exciting! I hope the gift materializes. You’ve been wanting to buy a condo for years!
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
When the liar doesn’t value truth more than lie, than in the liar’s mind, there is no distinction between truth and lie, there is only this: what piece of information, true or false (doesn’t matter), will serve me now/ make me Win, now?
In which case, there is no way to reach a meeting-of-the-minds, there is either surrendering (going belly up), or .. arguing forevermore with a person, a beast whose concern for truth vs lie is non-existent.
No meeting-of-the-minds.
anita
May 7, 2024 at 11:06 am in reply to: growing up – becoming adul / procrastination – in connection to childhood trauma #432450anitaParticipantDear 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
anitaParticipantDear Dave:
You are welcome and thank you for the good wishes at the end of your post.
“I have now lived in a much smaller house (like tiny) for nearly 11 months… our 3 children are my joint responsibility and I have them 3/4 days a week… My new home has enough space etc. to work for me and the kids, but it is smaller than the family home”- oh, when you wrote “tiny” earlier, I thought that it meant that there wasn’t enough space for the kids.
“it just feels really unfair and costing me a fortune every month“- I’d say that this is something for you to discuss with your divorce attorney, if you have one, or to discuss with your ex, if you don’t have an attorney.
“I did start of with walking for longer distances… I don’t typically experience any issue with my knee“- good thing, just keep in mind that brisk walking is an option. good to read back from you, Dave, and I hope to read from you again!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Brian:
I re-read this morning every word you shared in your various threads since your very first post on Jan 9, 2022, almost 2 years and 4 months ago. I learned that (I am boldfacing your words):
It is very, very important to you, in the context of social interactions, to be genuine, not fake, not a fraud, not robotic and dishonest. You prefer to not interact with people at all than to interact with people who are fake, robotic and dishonest about how they really feel, and you don’t want to reciprocate such fakeness.
You feel/ have felt disconnected from the society where you live because people are praised for their so-called positive interactions, which, being fake, are not really positive: “I really would rather someone not talk to me at all than say a few meaningless phrases out of obligation… saying ‘It was great talking to you’, when you didn’t enjoy the conversation is what I’m referring to“.
“Trying to fit into the social structures of a society has been a challenge for me… A long time ago, I decided to live by my own rules… If I don’t think you’re funny, I wont laugh. If I didn’t enjoy the conversation, I might wish them a good day, but I wont say that it was great talking to them“. You will not answer certain questions that people ask you, and the questions you answer, you will not answer in the ways you believe people expect you to answer.
“My intention is to simply seek input and possible solutions… I don’t mind new perspectives… How do you give a good impression without appearing disingenuous?… I wish supernatural beings would communicate with me. That would be cool. I just don’t think it has happened… Spiritual beings are welcome to communicate with me. I don’t think they have yet.“-
– “Being spiritual means seeking a meaningful connection with something bigger than yourself, which can result in positive emotions and wiser action” (an online definition). I will add to this definition, “which can result in genuine positive emotions”.
It’s almost like you gave up on having genuine connections with people, so you hope to connect with supernatural beings, or spiritual beings instead.
You are welcome to continue to be genuine here, in your thread, and I wish you to be genuine in-real-life, every day. Strange how I forgot, that for a long time, I was very troubled by the same thing, fakeness vs genuineness. When I caught myself smiling not because I felt like smiling, I stopped the smile. I hated being fake-nice to people, and I made sure that my face showed anger when I felt angry. Coming to think about it, as I am typing to you.. growing up (growing in is more accurate), I wasn’t allowed my own emotions, I was severely judged for my emotions, as in being a bad person for .. genuinely feeling this way, or that way. So, I turned my genuine emotions inward, pushing them down.
My mother was super nice to people most of the time, super-ingenuously nice, that is, when in their company, flattering them, complimenting them, feeding them with the most expensive foods… and then she’d complain about them behind their backs, saying that they take advantage of her and hurt her feelings. When I suggested to her to stop being so nice to them, she said she couldn’t. When I offered to be not-nice to them myself, to speak up for her, she ragefully threatened to kill me.
And so, I was made to be quiet during hours and hours (through the years) of watching her sort of go belly up with fake, exaggerated niceness to people who, she claimed, were bad people. It was a torture for me. I remember how difficult, how uncomfortable it was to hold all my anger inside, without expressing it. I was angry at the people who she claimed were taking advantage of her, and I was angry at my mother for being so nice to them and never allowing me to do what was right and just: to make the supposed bad people go away, instead of being so nice to them.
Thank you, Brian, for making it possible for me to understand what I shared right above better than I ever did.
“How do you give a good impression without appearing disingenuous?“- maybe a lot of people are stuck (like my mother was, like I was.. and sometimes, still am) in ingenuity, and not liking it at all. If you model being genuine- in a friendly way though- it will encourage some other people to be genuine too.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
It’s naive/ not true to believe that hurt people don’t lie, that abused people don’t proceed to abuse others, that abuse doesn’t breed abuse. You see a hurt person and you want to help that person, only that they have been already helping themselves to you. To really help another person.. you have to stop them from helping themselves to you, taking advantage of you, lying..
For me to be honest with myself and with others, I have to detect deceit by others and keep myself honest with all.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
That person lied to me, repeatedly. A child is not born with the ability to handle being lied to by anyone, let alone by one own’s mother. I was lied to. The Truth twisted in so many ways, all for the purpose of her winning a argument (an argument that I didn’t participate in). The thing about people who lie regularly, is that they don’t experience a conflict about it. In their minds, it’s not a problem, no cognitive dissonance. No guilt. They are beyond it, too troubled to bother with truth vs lie. They are Angry and that’s it. No value to guide their anger toward an ethical expression of some kind. Angry= all hell breaks loose.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
There really is such a thing as Objective Truth = The Truth. Such as gravity. People who jump off a cliff will fall down and get hurt regardless of their beliefs about gravity, or their beliefs about their ability to resist gravity.
Not committing to any objective truth is living in fantasy, or it may be a matter of deceiving others.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued:
The search for truth- what a refreshing endeavor, a refreshing motivation: to understand that which is true, however terrible it may be. Truth is my personal salvation, my rescue from confusion, suffering, shame, guilt and despair. Seeing Truth is my hope, it’s what I live for.
anita
May 5, 2024 at 9:23 am in reply to: Lonely Confused Depressed and reaching the end of my rope #432357anitaParticipantDear Nate:
I didn’t spend much time on your short original post yesterday and I want to try and do a better job responding this Sunday morning:
“No matter what I do I can’t find anybody who loves me or wants to love me and I have no idea what makes me so unlovable… I can’t figure out what makes me such an unlovable s*** who isn’t worthy of a partner or sex. Is it my body? is it my face? Everybody says it’s not your fault, but it doesn’t make sense because if I get ghosted by 12 women it’s not their fault???“-
– Traditionally, when it comes to dating, men initiate: they are the ones doing the asking, and women respond with a Yes or a No. This means that most men, if they take on the asking, get lots of No-s before they get a Yes, while women don’t get No-s because they are not the one doing the asking.
– You say that you were ghosted by 12 women. If you never met these women in real-life and they all ghosted you online (in a dating website perhaps), then being ghosted online is, unfortunately, a very common experience, it’s.. business as usual. How a person comes across online may be a problem: if one expresses an attitude of hostility or extensive self-pity, that is likely to turn people off.
– If you met these 12 women in real-life, on a date or a few dates, and then they ghosted you; again, how you come across to women may be a problem. If you come across in ways that women find unattractive, there are ways for you to change the way you come across. For example, let’s say that on a date, you say little and you don’t ask the woman any questions. The result: she may think that you are bored with her, and that you have no interest in getting to know her better. If so, even though you feel lonely, you come across as someone who is not social. In this example, you can learn to make small talk, and to ask questions so that the woman feels that you not bored with her, and that you are interested in getting to know her.
You ended your original post with: “I don’t know what to do and I’m in desperate need of someone to talk to“- please talk here, talk to me..?
anita
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