fbpx
Menu

Peter

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 766 through 780 (of 931 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • in reply to: Trying To Find Meaning #139341
    Peter
    Participant

    Whats love got to do with it? Everything yet love does not mean a relationship is meant to last.

    Have you seen the movie La La Land? sometimes relationships are not meant for that ending we might have imagined. Fate Destiny…  and or does Life  demand that we grow of which relationships are a tool, and that sometimes the lessons we need to learn will only be looked for through the pain of a relationship ending.  I do not understand why this is so, why we can’t learn our lessons when life is as we imagined, but for most people we are like a young bird that needs to be pushed out of the nest.

    I found the following book helpful when I asked similar questions to those you are asking yourself.

    ‘How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving’ by David Richo

     

    in reply to: How to Love and Let Go? #132647
    Peter
    Participant

    “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

    I wish I had words that might save you from having to go through this painful experience… You must trust your intuition.

    I had a similar experience, only I was the one who had the problem with committing and my girlfriend new that for her own growth she had to let go and move forward. She was right. It was the right thing to do. And it Hurt like nothing I experienced before. We knew… she knew that the breakup had to be a full break, no contact. Again she was right. You must trust your intuition.

    in reply to: Let go or love forever? #132641
    Peter
    Participant

    “Real love sometimes means saying goodbye.” Bryant McGill,

    Love doesn’t require you to continue a relationship.
    You may love someone very much, but you may not be compatible with them. Or they may drive you crazy with their continued disregard for your feelings. You can still love them, but that doesn’t mean you have to be with them. Love doesn’t mean that you have to stay, and stay and stay. You can leave the relationship and love them anyway.

    Relationships are the crucible in which we discover ourselves. As such we create and play out scenarios that need healing with in relationships especially those in which we feel safe in. When we stop feeling safe within a relationship yet continue to seek out healing the relationship could become one of codependency. In codependency instead of healing and growing we become stuck in our pain, a kind of ground hog day but one we never find our way out of.

    It is a perplexing paradox, however it is often the painful end of a painful relationship the pushes those involve to heal and grow.

    We long for the La la Land happy ever after ending. Yet the movie of the same title showed that sometimes a relationship is only fated for a moment in time and not ever after.

    in reply to: How to accept happiness…. #132565
    Peter
    Participant

    I should have this all figured out by now but I don’t. How do I accept happiness and feel worthy of it?

    I have yet to meet anyone who has “all this figured out”

    How do I accept happiness and feel worthy of it?
    We must work for that which no work is required

    That might sound like a contradiction but it isn’t. In order to get to a place in which you feel worthy of love will require work, for example work on self acceptance and loving yourself. The irony being that once the work is completed you will realize that you were/are worthy all along, love and happiness was their all along. In the mean time you might as well enjoy that happiness that is present to you in the moment.

    I’m currently reading a book Called the untethered soul the journey beyond yourself. By Michael a. Singer.
    Can you imagine what your life might look like untethered? Untethered by the negative inner voice, that evil “step mother”, freeing you to live the life already waiting for you?

    in reply to: Lessons from La La Land #131173
    Peter
    Participant

    I also thought the movie had a lot to say about the reality of relationship and the role that love plays.

    I found that as an observer to what on the surface was an old-time Hollywood musical, that I wanted the Hollywood la la land ending. I wanted Mia and Sebastian to have it all. I wanted their experience of love not only to inspire and push them in their becoming but to also mean they could be happy ever after, together. But that was not to be. And as you mentioned would have been a mistake for Mia and Sebastian. Timing as the movie so cleverly revealed is everything.

    Love it seems, on its highest plane, seems to demand that we become and that relationships are often the crucible in which this is realized. (Even at time the cost of the relationship we might have imagined and hoped/worked for)

    After a breakup, I found myself asking the Question “what’s Love got to do with it”? (It being a committed life long relationship). My answer surprised me. Everything and Nothing. Without love relationship is not possible yet even where there is love (even when soul mates) it does not mean that a objective relationship is possible. There are times that we come into each other lives to push each other forward and sometimes fatefully it is the pain of the breakup that is required to wake us up and put us back on our path.

    It was recently suggested to me that we are our own soul mates. That in the finding and becoming our authentic self we discover our soul. On the surface as we watch Mia and Sebastian we might have said they were soul mates and in a way they were, but not perhaps as we imagine. Together in that time and space, call it fate, destiny, or perhaps a window of opportunity that was noticed, through the eyes of the other they saw their own souls and became.

    I saw the movies La La Land and Collateral Beauty in the same week and to my way of thinking they tell the same story of Love – Love bitter sweet.

    in reply to: Caring for the inner child within us all! #129271
    Peter
    Participant

    I liked your post as its something I think we need to be reminded us.
    Anita is right there are unhealthy “dreams’ or hopes/fantasy that should not be held onto however I don’t think that is what you meant.

    When I think of the inner child I think of eyes made for wonder… eyes still open to wonder.

    You reminded me of something I read a few years ago and I think was in need of remembering.

    “If you have a place in your life where your eyes can still gape, your knees quiver, and your mind boggle, you are open for wonder. and, open to wonder, you are ready for life’s surprises, even the greatest of all; that it can be all right when everything is wrong.

    Keep the door open to wonder and even the ordinary people around you will take on and odd dimension of mystery. Every person you know will be a potential eye-opener. You may meet people you do not like, but you will never again meet a person you can take for granted.
    Wonder kills stereotypes. All the people clustered around you – people bound to you by routine loyalty, others floating at the fringes of your inner circle – they are all awesome folk, each one hiding a mystery far to deep for the likes of us to have all figured out.

    If we could get tuned to see the wonder in other people, we may also be ready for the mystery of our own selves. there is more to us then meets the eye. Do not let the wonder-killers of the world destroy your sense of wonder at the mystery and marvel of your very soul.

    With wonder you may be able , when the dark sky falls upon you, when life is skewed, your situation off center, you may just be able to see what others cannot see, at a level below any they guess existed. in spite of everything, you may be able to know that your are all right.

    Blessed are the wonder-full, for they shell see G_d, and they alone shall know themselves. LB Smedes

    Thanks

    in reply to: Trauma and emotional release techniques? #129073
    Peter
    Participant

    Thank you for posting. I relate to your story

    Something I noted when reading your post

    I’ve been seeing a therapist but don’t feel like she or anyone gets the depth of the abuse I’ve endured and what it’s doing to me.

    I had the same experience. In hindsight for some reason I wanted my therapist to acknowledge my hurt, which he did in a way, just not in a way I subconsciously wanted. I think I wanted an excuse and justification for feeling the way I did, I wanted to blame and be righteous in my anger. His concern was not about what my X did or taking about her but on me and how I might move forward and perhaps in time use the experience to grow. And He was right. Focusing on my X and trying to understand her was not going to help me.

    I know it’s just my ego… And when fear and anger and shame and hate overwhelm me I just swallow it back down because I don’t know what else to do.

    I feel that the statement ‘just my ego’ can become misunderstood and even get in the way of dealing with our experiences.
    It takes a strong sense of ego to be able to let go of the ego. That might sound like a contradiction but I don’t think it is.

    For me it’s a difference of identifying ones identity with the ego (which is what we want to let go of) and viewing the ego as the observer and part of the self through which we experience being conscious.

    I am not my ego, my ego is a part of me. I am not my ego but in relationship with my I
    I am not my fear, my sense of self is experiencing fear in this moment, I am not my joy, my sense of self is experiencing joy in the moment and grateful. I am not my failures, my sense of self is experiencing disappointment at not succeeding in the way I imagined…

    When fear, anger, shame and hate overwhelm you the ego observer notices without identification judgments.
    You might swallow the experience but instead of feeling helpless notice that as well, you might yell and notice that. Your ego not the cause and so effect of the issue in the moment but as conscious observer.

    The experiences you had were real and your responses valid in the movement. They may not always have been helpful but still valid. The act of allowing the ego – your sense of I – to observe (without labeling the self) I believe opens the door to learning better ways in dealing with the memories and learning from the experience.

    There is a time for all things and it may not be time to hear the following so forgive me if it upsets you (I know I didn’t want to hear it at the time, I was in a time of hurt and didn’t want to think about growth) – in a few years when you look back on the experience you will discover that the experience pushed you into a greater awareness of your relationship with your authentic self, others, and even things like your concept of love and relationship.

    Though time does not heal, time can transform and ‘soften’ our memories and yes time can also harden memories and doing so embed the past in the present. Reading between the lines of your post I suspect the former will be the case.

    in reply to: Looking for Healthy Love #128675
    Peter
    Participant

    You may find the following book helpful
    When Love Meets Fear: How to Become Defense-less and Resource-full – David Richo

    Early fear was felt cellularly and was indeed real. Defensive postures were necessary, but defenses generalize cellularly in adulthood and do not expire. It takes conscious work to undo them. Ironically, as long as we keep using defenses, we actually maintain the original force of the fear. – David Richo

    Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present – David Richo

    “The heart itself cannot break, for its very nature is soft and open. What breaks open when we see things as they are is the protective shell of ego identity we have built around ourselves in order to avoid feeling pain. When the heart breaks out of this shell, we feel quite raw and vulnerable. Yet that is also the beginning of feeling real compassion for ourselves and others. —John Welwood Ordinary Magic

    I would also recommend – When the Past is in the Present also by David Richo

    My observation is that the past is always in the Present even when we let go of it. I know that might sound odd… but if you think about it maybe not….

    in reply to: Valentine's text husband tells me its over #128099
    Peter
    Participant

    At the end of a relationship it is likely you will question such concepts as happiness, love… if only to make sense of your experiences. You will be torn between acceptance and bitterness.

    I know as part of the process it will feel as if your whole experience with this man was a lie.
    But that is not likely true. It is possible to continue to love and miss someone even when a relationship as we hoped it would be, ends.

    Allowing ones happiness is become dependent on another can put a great deal of strain on a relationship. The idea/ thinking of making oneself happy or finding happiness can get in the way of experiencing joy. Happiness is something we experience in the moment when we notice it. I think if you examine those moments where you were surprised by joy and experienced happiness that you did not create it, they just were. It is only in highlight when we look for explanation, cause and effect, that we say oh such and such was what made me happy. And then we try to repeat the experience expecting the same result, but this time almost always surprised not by joy but by disappointment…

    Where to start?
    Allow yourself to be ok with feeling lost, there is a time for all things.

    Why It’s Okay to Feel Lost (And How to Find Your Way Again)


    And maybe you discover that it’s not that your lost but in a time of wandering, and wandering opening the door to discovering your path and joy. “To live like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding.”

    All that is gold does not glitter,
    Not all those who wander are lost;
    The old that is strong does not wither,
    Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
    From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
    A light from the shadows shall spring;
    Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
    The crownless again shall be king
    J. R. R. Tolkien

    in reply to: Obsessive Thoughts About Weight #128047
    Peter
    Participant

    Same.
    For me my body does not function very well if I’m even 10 pounds overweight and I let it get to 40 pounds!
    My thinking of my wight and food as I tried to lose it became obsessive.

    To lose the weight I had to learn how to make the obsession work for me.

    I did this by being real honest about what I was eating and why, writing down everything I ate though out the day as well as my feelings about it. Once i wrote it it down I could stop thinking about it.

    By being honest I could easily see the reasons behind the wight gain and make better choices and avoid the labeling myself for those times where my choices were not the best.

    Like natachamonic I stopped trying not to think about food and instead just notice, without self judgment, when I did. the ego not as judge but as observer

    in reply to: Valentine's text husband tells me its over #128043
    Peter
    Participant

    Why did he tell you that “he loves me more then anything and misses me like crazy and how he thinks of me every min” right before he said the above?

    It is surprising how little the role of the ‘idea of Love’ plays in a discussion to end a relationships or not.
    Two people can authentically love each other and still have the relationship end.

    Without love a relationship is sure to fail but even where there is love a relationship is not assured, in fact love my require that it end.

    I know that doesn’t help. Its one of the paradoxes of love I struggle with most… and as the song goes… What’s love got to do with it…

    My conclusion, on one plain everything and on another level nothing, and both coexist at the same time, in the same moment, as everything is Love…

    in reply to: Dealing with an introverted boyfriend as an extrovert #127771
    Peter
    Participant

    You have made me realize that it’s very important to try and understand why introverts act the way that they do.

    In my opinion that is indeed a key step in what some call – Learning the ‘love language’ of our partner.
    (and of course your partner needs to understand your tenancy to be a extrovert)

    in reply to: (UK) I'm panicking about the life ahead of me #127763
    Peter
    Participant

    I’m panicking about the life ahead of me

    Living in the imagined future of what if and fear… I know it well.
    Some cognitive advice – try paying attention to when you cross the line from planning for your future to living in the future of what if ‘the sky is falling’.

    From my own experience, in hind sight, all my worries I had as a student were pointless.
    Even if you manage to do everything right and make all the right decisions it will not mean you end up were you expected to be. In fact I suspect you won’t, and will be glad of it.

    Make the best choices you can with the information you have – when you learn better, do better. What more can you ask of yourself or anyone?
    Remember most of the fear you will experience in life will be based false evidence appearing real.
    The purpose of fear is to get your attention, once it has your attention, take appropriate actions and let it go. don’t let it take you into the future and out of the present

    in reply to: Dealing with an introverted boyfriend as an extrovert #127685
    Peter
    Participant

    It is not unusual for Introverts and extroverts to be attracted to each other. The difference ways in experiencing the world complement each other and lead to individual growth and so can be a gift. – There is a time for all things.

    Both introverts and extroverts are challenged to reframe their view of their partner from judgment and resentment for not being more like they would like them to be, to gratitude for the value that they do bring into their lives. As this process evolves, appreciation replaces criticism and acceptance replaces judgment. It does take work and it does take time, but as countless couples know from their experience, the payoffs more than justify the effort.

    I found the following books helpful in understanding this idea of the introvert and extrovert. I think you will discover that each of us contain both attributes which manifest in different areas of life.

    Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
    The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking by Julie Norem

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201509/5-crucial-tips-introvert-extrovert-couples
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201612/how-date-introvert

    in reply to: The Biggest Fear in My Life ~ Loneliness #127573
    Peter
    Participant

    I think myself as selfish but I am willing to sacrifice anything for people who can pass my “test”

    I’ve never been found of the idea of “the test”. Perhaps due to my own experience of a girlfriend to which everything became a test. Being human it was inevitable that I failed but not until l my sense of self was totally confused.

    Perhaps taking yourself out of your current way of thinking could be helpful. Why not erase the chock board and start over.

    Perhaps start by taking some time to reconnect to your own understanding of love, relationship… when you use those words what are you really saying?

    Very much recommend
    How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving – by David Richo as a guide

Viewing 15 posts - 766 through 780 (of 931 total)