Hi Katie, your post was so captivating!  Thank you for your words of wisdom yet again!

and I can’t tell you just how closely this resonated with me when you said this: “and sometimes I have this sense of serenity but then in my interactions I feel like I can come off high strung, nervous, intense….I will give it some thought but then let it go. The fact that YOU know you have a sense of self, purity, beauty and love and that is where you are operating from is the most important thing I believe.”  I sometimes feel when alone, usually, that I have this air about me that is beautiful, deep, intellectual, cultured, etc… all beautiful, wonderful qualities. Then I socialize with others and I can hear myself in my words, see how my awkward body language comes off, and it all betrays my previous feelings of beauty and elegance. I come off as awkward, weird, oddball, bad at small talk. I feel so different sometimes between how I act alone, listening to beautiful music, relaxing, being at peace with myself, allowing myself to indulge in brushing my hair gently, smiling at myself in the mirror, giving myself a foot rub, folding the bedsheets gently and slowly, taking time to clean the kitchen so I can look at it and be proud of my work, and I feel good, I feel like I have accomplished stuff and beautified my space, my sanctuary. However, in social settings, I feel chaotic, rushed, uneasy, generally just waiting to get out of wherever I am. This is not always the case, but sometimes it’s like, I can’t wait to get out of here and be home, or I can’t wait to get out of here and take a drive up north and be in the wilderness and enjoy quiet. I need to focus more on being present, I realize that. It is so hard. I think a lot of us spend copious amounts of time in the past and future and it is disturbing just how much time that adds up to. I feel like in our society it really pushes for “TGIF” and rushing through the entire week and then getting depressed all over again on Sunday because the daunting thought of Monday bleeds into Sunday and “ruins” it. It’s such a toxic mindset. Unfortunately, since I am a part of our society, I have been subjected to this way of thinking for so long, that it has pervaded my way of thinking, and I get that we do have ultimate control of our thoughts, at all times. I really like what you said “I love these points you made: “I do really think there’s truth in the practice of noticing your thoughts, and almost visualizing them floating by but choosing not to identify with them. Just recognizing they’re there, almost in an amused and interested sort of way and then watching them float off…this way we can acknowledge a thought (without shoving it down only for it to return later) without putting too much feeling into it.”  I too have read this in various books and online before, and it seems like it would be so great to be able to become a master of our thoughts, our minds. So that we can shift focus on what truly matters and what is just a bunch of harmful noise, useless deterrents.

I also like what you said “I read your other thread and know you’re an only child…me too! I do think sometimes that might make us feel a little more awkward in social interactions…just from the solitude we had as kids. I’ll also say that sometimes I do feel like an oddball because I don’t have that kind of (sibling) relationship that a lot of people have.”  I feel a sense of weirdness somehow that I am an only child. We can’t help it that we are, but it still injects this looming feeling of missing out or something. Feeling lonely, especially now that getting older means that I will not have any nieces, nephews, sisters and brothers and their in-laws to spend time with. I always had to rely on my childhood neighborhood friends if I wanted people to hang out with. In school, I always was fortunate to have a good group of friends. However, if I had a bad day at school and I needed to go home and vent/decompress/cry, I had to do so alone, always, and since it wasn’t “cool” to do this in front of parents, it was done alone. I can’t help but feel like this played an important yet potentially damaging role in my life. It was the only way I knew how to cope. Crying into a pillow or staring at the wall trying to find an imaginary solution to feel better. It was really horrible. Of course, I had stuff that I could do to pass my time, and of course, go out and drive somewhere, work, nature walks, etc. But still, in those quiet, never ending hours of time spent by myself wondering if anyone cared or if I would spend forever feeling like this, I feel like that definitely shaped me into the person I am today. But we’re here now & everything must happen for a reason. I have air in my lungs, I have everything I need to live a beautiful, comfortable life. I always have. It is just realizing a change of attitude needs to take place, not a change of opportunities. There are always opportunities to be had, I just need to be in a different mindset to notice them, and seize the moment to act on it.  I paraphrased that idea from “Love Does” by Bob Goff. He is such a cool guy. (Youtube) Also, I read: “Change happens when we see how what we have been doing no longer makes sense.” I think I procured this quote off another lovely article here on TB. It holds such truth to me. It is so wise. Finally, my other favorite quote I read here in my travels is: “No one gets to the end of his or her life and thinks, “I wish I stayed angry longer.”  I think if I had to say, this particular quote has helped me the most recently. Like, is this really something worth getting annoyed/mad over? Bringing it up in a hurtful way? Is this truly important? Am I the problem in this situation? Am I the one that needs to take a step back in this particular instance?

No, I have not read Brene Brown’s books yet but now that you brought my attention to them I will check them out! What makes them such great reads for you, in your opinion?

Thanks for reading my novel Katie!!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by K.

Hi Katie, thank you for replying! I really like how you said this: “It’s not a feeling of anxiety, just a realization that a lot of people I’m around on a daily basis I don’t have much in common with so it can be kind of disappointing.” I feel misplaced sometimes. I realize I contribute to societal nonsense sometimes by giving social media my attention and willingly being okay with myself knowing that I am wasting my own time, when I could be utilizing it in much more wholesome, helpful ways for myself. However, I also enjoy the deeper, “old soul” things in life, too.. These subjects are hard to work into every day conversation sometimes. However, it totally can be done, and it is interesting because a surprising amount of people can talk about such subjects if I open up about them first. But I kind of wish and need others to open up about fascinating, unique subjects first, to refresh my idea that there is grounded wisdom still in our society. That we actually care about meaningful stuff besides a caramel chai macchiato whatever or when we are getting our nail tips touched up.. Or when we are taking the car in for repairs. These various examples do have their place, a certain validity, but do not possess any real depth to life or feeling passionately, deeply, meaningfully. I hope that makes sense. I don’t always expect interactions like this. I just would prefer it sometimes. I think there is good energy to be gained from such a deep exchange. To me, it holds so much more depth than small talk, gossip, etc. I sometimes wonder how people can laugh so easily at stuff that I hardly consider funny at all. But I hurt myself in a way by faking a laugh just to fit in I guess. It isn’t that funny to me, and it makes me feel sad. I realize I painted a bit of a bleak picture here, which is not my intention. I just wish people craved more depth, more happiness, more vivacity and the willingness to truly be generous, kind, loving, and gentle. Instead we gossip, interrupt, only want to talk and not truly listen, and rush around like our lives depend on it.. because we are so caught up in the whirlwind of nonsense that we really do think our lives depend on it. Such a dumb rat race that doesn’t need to be that way. We as a society need a lot of help reframing what it looks like to really live deeply and meaningfully, and to do stuff that actually brings us actual happiness. But first, we need to figure out what actually brings us true happiness. Do a lot of us truly know what that looks like? Probably not. Over the years, I have certainly lost that ability- sometimes I really kind of feel at a loss regarding what I really, truly need to feel happy. I think all this stuff brims over and causes such a conflict within me and a distaste of interacting with others sometimes. I just don’t want to engage in such petty things or feel the need to contribute to such nonsense and use valuable energy trying to do so. Maybe it’s my soul’s way of telling me that I don’t have to, that ultimately I always have my permission to do what I need to and want to, and to honor myself and preserve my energy and sanity. Thanks for listening Katie!!

Dear Mark,

Thank you for replying to me. I like how you worded the following:

“You also ask what are some of things that make me truly happy with that feeling of “Wow.” I am still working to allow that in me. I perceive or judge myself by having a damped down sense of excitement and joy. My emotional range is not as wide as I would like. I don’t get really angry or really happy. When I feel pain, I now want to really feel it and sit with it to notice and be with it, to fully get into it. I do so partly because I want to feel the opposite as well, i.e. to really feel happiness and joy for unless I feel deeply with either emotion then I cannot really feel well.

I pay attention when I cry. I like when I cry for I believe that taps what is important and deep for me. I cry when I talk about my children. I pay attention when I laugh as well.

Insofar as activities that bring me that “Wow” feeling, I love dancing to live music with wild abandon with others who are enjoying themselves as well. I know that whatever I do, it is the company I keep that makes the activity fun and enjoyable. I can do something really great but without someone to share the experience with, it does not shine as bright for me.”

That insight you provided talking about deep emotions was really interesting to me. It reminded me of yin and yang and its principle of light and dark, opposites, and how to truly appreciate something, you need to be aware and intimate with its polar opposite.. otherwise you cannot have a true, deep appreciation as there is nothing starkly opposite to compare it to, and it is not unique.

I too feel the same about how I prefer to share experiences and make memories with others. I wish I could more deeply enjoy traveling and truly enjoying food,nature walks, etc.. on my own, but I usually get stuck in the mindset that the experience will always be made better, more enriched, if it were to be shared with someone else (significant other).

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by K.

Dear Anita,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such a detailed breakdown of each of those points. It is refreshing to receive wisdom from a fresh pair of eyes and ears from someone who is wise, patient, kind, willing to listen intently. Can you provide me with advice to move past these childhood hurts? I will be seeing a psychiatrist in a few months. But I do believe TB is a truly great place to also receive very useful and applicable wisdom, and I thank you for all the wisdom you have provided me thus far. It really shifted my perspective into different angles than I had previously looked to delve into regarding my past. I didn’t realize it was so bad, even though of course we sometimes forget how much hurt and sadness we’ve endured in life.

Thanks Anita. Yes, I switched my username to “K” for personal preference. I look forward to hearing from you then!

Dear Anita:

I was generally grounded otherwise, yes. I was a happy child for the most part unless I was grounded or hitting a low point for some other reason or another. I remember one of the many times when I was young I talked back to my parents (so common, I know)..but I was obviously grounded for that. It was clearly stated because my mom would always announce (not my dad) that I was grounded and she would say something to this effect: “Go to your room, we don’t want to see you for the rest of the day. Go and think about what you’ve done, no going out to play with friends, etc.” This grounding would usually last about a week. It was depressing honestly. I was lonely. I didn’t have/wasn’t allowed to have a tv in my room, no video games, no pets, no siblings. I felt so alone. This was also in the 90s when we didn’t have cell phones either. I usually had a great imagination and toys to play with, but it still left me with some damagingly lonely times that I had to process alone.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by K.

Peggy, thank you for getting back to me as well! I like how you said that your way to feel a sense of deepened belonging would be to repeat over and over to myself that “I belong on Earth.” We can’t really argue with that!  Thank you for citing examples of connecting to nature to further reinforce this. Nature can be so powerful through its simple, quiet complexities that carry on whether we take time to notice them or not. Animals and trees do not need our attention to carry on in their daily lives, they just do it and that is perfectly understandable. However, when we as individuals, realize that we are not the center of everything (in a selfish way), we open our eyes to new beauty all around us. Sometimes even in the simplest of realms (observing a bead of dew, a blade of grass, a ripple in the water) we can find the most delicate and unspoken elegance.

I’m not sure how my family played into how I came to view my strained relationship with food. I am an only child, and my parents never judged me or gave me a hard time about my food preferences. If anything, they wanted me to be happy and realized how sensitive I was. I remember I have always eaten weird.. I remember when I was little my mom would make me a whole box of Mrs. T’s perogies or two packages of ramen noodles. I was not a morbidly obese child or young adult, but I was chubby at times. I would also get made fun of for my weight in school from time to time. Because of that, I would scale back my eating habits and I got into the vicious cycle of weighing myself every morning before I ate or drank anything. Then it got so bad in middle school where I was counting the number of pasta pieces (twisty pasta, seashell-shaped pasta) that I would allow myself on my plate. Then I became fixated on just eating vegetables and cutting out sweets. It doesn’t sound that severe in words here, but in person it was misery and depriving myself constantly so that on the outside I could look thinner. I don’t know what I was trying to prove. I always hear that people starve themselves for outside approval and maybe a little bit for self-approval. I feel like with me, it is more about self-approval. Luckily, I never really cared too much about what others thought of me to the point where it disrupted to overall quality of my life. I think I am usually trying to feel comfort within my own body, to look in the mirror and feel better about how I look, for my own self and self-approval. To feel that I am in control, in a good way, of the direction of myself, my life, my self-control.  I do enjoy cooking from time to time, Peggy. What do you enjoy cooking? What are things in your life that you truly get enjoyment out of engaging in? Being in nature, as you mentioned, and what about nature do you really enjoy the most, would you say?

Thank you for saying this: “Depression is the opposite of expression.  It comes from anger and/or grief that has not been expressed.  Loss of friends, family members, old relationships even the loss of a childhood counts as grief.  Releasing all your pent up emotions through tears is not necessarily a bad thing.” I have recently gone off my latest anti-depression medication. For years I have gone on & off anti-depressants (mostly NOT being on them), because I always felt that they never really worked well, and the handful of brands I have been prescribed don’t help me. So sometimes I wonder if I am not really depressed; that I just need to sit with my emotions consistently, gently, and continue to unpack past hurts, difficulties, and pent-up emotions that have left knots in my psyche that need to be untangled and analyzed on some level. I feel like we all experience so many things in our lives, that we may think we have forgotten a lot of what we have experienced, but I think our brains are more powerful than we realize, even though science supports how massive the capacity of our brains really is. I think our brains probably have stored away literally every face we have ever seen, every dream we have dreamt, every experience we have lived through and how each of them made us feel. I think the challenge in this lies in our ego or somewhere, where we need to actively try to recall these past memories, even though we think we may have long forgotten them, and to analyze what happened, how we felt, and how we can move past these memories to try and stop repeating these patterns indefinitely in our present lives (usually negative in nature). As of recently, I have given more than half a mind to reaching out to make an appointment with a psychologist/psychiatrist. However, sometimes I really do have my reservations about seeing a professional like this, because I know to their credit, they have gone through a ton of schooling and such to receive their prestigious title(s). But to me, sometimes that is just what it is.. a title, and that they receive lots of money to sit there and listen to you and provide you with feedback. It is their job to not get personally invested in your life, as it is also against the law as well. So I just feel like talking to a well-paid stranger who doesn’t and can’t care about you is not my idea of seeking the comfort and help that I need. I also fear that since I am an only child that I will grow old alone. I have my fiancé. He is truly wonderful. I am 30. I am not sure if I want children or not. I don’t think I have the “mom gene” in me. I have no friends. I think all of that paired with my strained food relationship has continually left me feeling like a shell of myself, a dried out prune version of the vivacious, beautiful soul I know is deep within me. I just need to learn how to better harness that divine power within me, within all of us, and to learn that I can access this eternal, unending power at any time. In a way, it is comforting to know that each of us all holds such beautiful wisdom, power, and love.