Dear Anita,

“When you don’t reply to me for an couple of weeks, I think that you don’t have a desire to talk to me, or you have the desire to not talk to me. At times I felt a bit hurt, a bit angry.”

I appreciate your honesty. I am sorry you have felt that way. Those certainly aren’t my reasons, I think about you often as I would a close friend. I think the struggle is it is a long distance friendship. If we met in person I am sure we would talk for a few hours, back and forth, the same amount we get across in several days here. I don’t have anyone else I talk to virtually like this or for that matter have a need to open my computer more than once a week. Last summer when we spoke daily, I was on my computer daily for work. I suspected you feeling a certain way and just wanted to avoid any built up feelings because I would like to stay friends! You are important to me.

“When you say “silent and cold”, you mean silently hurt and angry?”

I would say silently hurt for sure, I wouldn’t say “angry” it was more like disappointment and frustration that he didn’t have more care for my feelings. Because he knew it bothered me when he answered the phone while we were spending planned time together, but he preferred answering the phone to my feelings. That was an issue in general was him repeating things after I had already told him they hurt my feelings, like answering the phone, being late or smoking with our roommate as I fell asleep alone.

“– wait, these are your words or mine (all of it, with warmth substituting the feeling of being ALIVE (my words).. ?”

I was using your words to help me express mine 🙂 the layout of what you said and content had alot of similarities to me so I thought it would be a helpful exercise for me. I bolded the words that I changed for my experience.

“you are mentally healthier following the breakup, congrats!!!”

Thank you 🙂

Did you celebrate the fourth of July yesterday? if so what did you do?

Seaturtle

Hello Anita,

I miss the time where we frequently talked, I feel bad that my schedule, since then has made my responses less frequent. Does this make you feel badly? When I am not on the site for a couple weeks, does it make you feel like I am selfish, using you, or cold?

Also I apologize for my horribly grammatical phone message here a couple weeks ago. I won’t use my phone again because my autocorrect changed some words and it is just a small typing platform, but you did great with it!

To your post June 12th

“Let me ask you first: did you behave coldly and selfishly with him- Sometimes? Often? Rarely? Never?”

Not never. I was cold when I felt cold. There were rare occasions where he would do something, and I would then be so bothered (like picking up the phone mid conversation). And after he did it, I found myself feeling cold, infact I disliked the feeling so much I almost wanted to just pretend not being cold, but as you know, I display my authentic feelings and in those moments I went silent and cold, while being kind and straight forward. I am glad you asked me this question so I could reflect, him calling me cold sometimes is accurate.

June 13th you wrote:

“…my true self was loving and trusting and felt ALIVE, but then, it was terribly abused by my mother, twisted into knots and generally emptied of the feeling of being ALIVE”

It is helpful for me to hear about your experiences as it helps me express mine. For me ‘my true self was warm, but then was terribly abused, twisted into knots and generally emptied of the feeling of warmth. Leading to me feeling cold. My dad was also paranoid and emotionally detached from me, angry at me.. And I also feel it created and angry, judgemental and misguided loyalty. Everyone hurt him so I hated everyone including myself. All with the purpose of his acceptance, “togetherness.”

“The danger he saw was that ‘through this false self, the infant builds up a false set of relationships, and by means of introjections even attains a show of being real’, while, in fact, merely concealing a barren emptiness behind an independent-seeming façade”. “

After reading about false selves being created by needy parents who deprive their child’s spontaneity, I am tracing back to times I remember feeling my spontaneity was shut down, and times my parents were needy. I am trying to put together how/ which experiences I went through created this “barren emptiness.” It honestly feels like I have only been out of this “show of being real,” since I was 20 years old. I certainly had people and moments I was real with, but through my childhood I remember very clearly feeling like my real self was too awkward to be, so I just behaved like what I thought would blend in, or be accepted. When I started dating in fact, at about 20, I promised myself to be my real self. But I was out of practice. There are parts of my real self that I have not been comfortable to be around certain people. In the past few years I have challenged myself to really be myself, but it is delicate and if rejected too much I put it back on the shelf.. I felt the majority of my real self was rejected and judged by N. It is making me wonder if he only appeared to accept me in the beginning, then when he got tired it started to show that he didn’t anymore.. why would this happen? There is no question I did my best to show him me, and did not receive that from him. I honestly don’t think I ever saw his truest self, either him hiding it or not even knowing it himself..  It is out of the relationship, the past 6 months that I have been able to be my real self, I am not afraid to be rejected by new people and find it so exciting to find people who are real with me. That attitude has lead me to new relationships with new people and even some family members. If you’d like to ignore the note I made connecting this to my relationship with N I would completely understand, I almost deleted it wondering if it was only redundant and shouldn’t let myself be so curious about him the relationship still.

Seaturtle

Oh my gosh Anita! I have not yet read the messages, but I saw emojis on your post and I was so excited!

Seaturtle

Helcat,

I forgot to respond to your question “I don’t know if you felt like you were thinking about the relationship when you didn’t want to?”

The answer is yes. I have also felt myself talking about it here and with others when I haven’t truly wanted to. But I recently heard something from a book that stuck with me, the author said he asks himself ‘would you rather know what your mind has to say or have the opportunity to experience an absence of the personal mind.’ From it I created a sort of mantra I have been repeating to myself when thoughts of the relationships come or an urge to speak it comes, I say in my mind ‘I would rather experience a quiet mind than go down all these mind trails and visions of “what if this, what if that.” ‘ In the book the author pointed out that what our personal mind is yapping about is statistically insignificant because it is based on so many “what ifs.”

Seaturtle

Dear Anita,

“I miss our chakras talks, our meetings of crown chakras.”

I miss these too! I just finished re-listening to the book “Living from a place of Surrender,” it helps me to come back to a witness-conscious mind rather than be consumed by thoughts –> feelings. I always hear new things when I listen to it. Yesterday I heard, when you feel alone, the solution is not another person. You feel this way because your heart chakra is blocked and cannot receive the proper amount of energy (chi) to feel whole. I feel like I am on a constant journey, doing my best, to relax and release these blockages. The book said these blockages are uncomfortable to let go, because they were stored with pain and discomfort.

Something N said to me, that was very uncomfortable for me to hear, was that he had seen me strong earlier in our relationship and never saw her again. My discomfort makes me feel like there is a false belief blocking one of my chakras, a false self that is weak/tired.  He speaks in extremes and only of surface level events (as opposed to deeper reasons why, or how). For this reason I don’t take what he says at face value, but he revealed to me a tip of an iceberg and it allowed me to go deeper. The time he spoke of I was very strong (just like my true self is). I was not afraid, I had a deep sense of comfort as we went through something very scary, but from deep within me a courage surfaced that protected us both. He even said I was stronger than him through that trial. I began to wonder where that version of me went. I want to be her always. At the time I remember having a sense of trust that things would work out in a way that we could handle. I knew we were both doing the best we possibly could. I felt like N relied on my blind faith and allowed it to make him hopeful as well. His belief in me, fueled me even more. I want a partner who believes in me always, not just when he truly has nowhere else to turn. It made me realize I wasn’t relied on in our relationship. I was not given vulnerability and he did not have confidence in my faith on a day to day. By faith I mean my ability to make good decisions from a centered place and my confidence that my best was enough and the right things would find there way to me in the right time. There were many big decisions like buying a house a getting a roommate (in Seattle before we even moved here) that he did not ask for my advice on. He welcomed work partners, people I told him my intuition didn’t like.. he didn’t take my gut seriously. Both his roommates were untrustworthy people and he didn’t trust my initial analysis.

Another thing I learned from our recent talk was that he just doesn’t truly respect women. He literally said that women have it easier in life, are handed things that men aren’t. Kept telling me all I wanted was some man with money, “only girls can just do nothing and go travel and have stuff.” “You never brought any logic to our relationship.” In the beginning of our relationship he mentioned not liking his mom. I didn’t know this was a red flag at the time but now I do, it’s not just his mom he doesn’t like. It is as if he wanted me masculine like him. When I was so consumed with wonder about if he even saw me, asking him what made me special. My fears were right, he did not like what made me, me.

My true self is intuitive, sensitive, fearless and feminine. I don’t mean feminine as the gender, but as the essence of me soul. I am not logos I am pathos. I am not power/control oriented, I am a learner and a teacher. I am not type A, I don’t enjoy competitive energy, I prefer team building. I feel like both my father and N, showed me a reflection of myself that was my weakest self. They show me my false selves.. I never want to be what they see. If I stare at their reflection of me for too long, it is as if I start to identify with the false self in front of me, becoming tired, weak, and unwise.

“This was/ is my true self: trusting, loving and beautiful.”

I agree you are certainly these things!

” My false selves: (1) the angry self, angry at all the people my mother was angry with (everyone, sooner or later), (2) the suspicious, distrusting self, suspicious and distrusting of.. everyone, sooner or later, (3) the unintelligent, inattentive self = a reaction-self: a reaction to significant/ severe abuse, (4) the helpless, hopeless self, again: a reaction to abuse, (5) the ugly self, the self that wronged others… (6) the inferior self, inferior to my peers/ people, (7) the superior self, the other side of the same (# 6) coin. ”

I feel like this is a very powerful paragraph that I am sure took a lot of strength to think about and write. I identify with parts of them as well.

” Thank you for being part of this self-freeing process.”

And may this process keep happening for us both!

Seaturtle

Dear Anita!

I miss you!

“– When I submitted to you my May 14 post, I was excited: I thought/ hoped that my input will motivate you to seek quality psychotherapy (financed by your very rich father. Personally, I can’t see a better use for a very small portion of his money). Having read your post today, 15 days later, I can see that my intended help only made you feel worse.”

– I am currently very interested in CBT, I know I have some generational trauma that my parents passed down to me in times of low consciousness. Instead of ignore them and let life happen to me I want to use life to become aware of my shadows and overcome them. Currently, and recently I have been made aware of these shadows, aka false selves, and they are overwhelming when stacked together. I feel like CBT will help me but I am struggling to find a therapist. I am afraid someone will lead me astray and in my vulnerability I will be so impressionable..

“I am sorry, Seaturtle, that my May 14 post made you feel worse. I feel sad that it did, really sad.”

– I really appreciate this (heart emoji). I know your intentions were not to make me feel badly, and I appreciate you being honest about your thoughts. Like you said humans are so complex so I know that someone else’s diagnosis of me can only be so accurate because you are not directly in my shoes. I see how you came to your conclusion I just felt at such a low energy that I didn’t have it in me to fuel my defensiveness, or too think too much about it, at the time.

“May the teacher’s 3rd eye remain open and pull you out and away from your sad/ depressed energy and toward your intuition.”

– I have found a lot of healing energy inside the entire organization. It is called Brain and Body yoga, and the teachings and exercises/movements have really helped me uncover some joy inside of me that I lost. There is so much laughter there and everyone seems to be very in tuned with their child like spirits, and I miss that about myself. I lost that little girl for a while because, as you know, I had to quiet her to stay in that relationship.

“May the chapter of “Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships” come to an end.”

– This is my overall journey. However I have hit a major checkpoint within the last week. I have heard and seen N in the last week, he gave my things back, although much thrown away. I witnessed myself again let my ego take over and try to explain myself to the closed third eye. Although I felt my heart was very sad that night when I got home, something was happening inside of me. Instead of ignore my heart, I did what I had just learned from a book and tried to instead appreciate the low frequency harmony/music, my heart was playing. I heard it as a violin. When I would be tempted to go to my mind and make up images and stories to make myself feel better I would eventually pull myself back to my heart and just let myself hear it. It was very sad and hard for me to sleep but then the next day I spent nearly the whole day at the Brain and Body yoga center, they asked me to help them with videos for their new website and I was so honored they wanted me on their page! It will be up in a couple months and I will let you know where 😉 Being there completely raised my vibrations and last night, for the first time I realized that I would never go back to N. Something that may seem like I should have realized earlier but I really still had a small sliver of hope I didn’t know how to release. Last night I deleted our photo album, and then I had a great sleep and woke up better than I went to sleep. I felt so proud of myself, I woke up in a high state! I felt this overwhelming trust for my sleeping self haha. Today I am throwing away memorabilia from our relationship, things that sliver of me was saving just in case I wanted the memories later on. I feel a sense of closure, I finally know I never have to see him again, not for my things and certainly never to try and explain myself to him ever again. A book is closing, a stick is breaking and I feel free.

I hope this is not a fleeting sensation, I hope I am strong enough not to give attention to the things he said about me. I have always had this overwhelming feeling to be better, and sometimes that feeds in to caring what others think of me because I wonder, maybe they see something in me that I don’t. My teacher at Brain and Body is helping me to overcome this but I have not fully grasped this concept yet.

Dear Helcat,

Thank you for the support 🙂

Seaturtle

More on the Denial stage, I think I went through that stage before the relationship actually ended.

Seaturtle