Elle/M,

Thank you so much! Your positive encouragement really helps, I felt much lighter after reading yours (and others) comments. My yoga teacher said to me that chronic tension is the perfect way to avoid ever looking at anything beneath the surface… working through problems with other people and finding/giving encouragement and support is a great release of tension and definitely helps me in seeing what is really beneath the surface. And this is where great change begins! So your words are really pretty life-changing 🙂
Best of luck on your trip and the planning for it! I hope you have a wonderful time.

Anita,
I would like to add that I spent a significant amount of time chewing over your responses and also taking into consideration some of the other things you’ve posted (I am new to this forum). I was, with no exaggeration, blown away that I had such thoughtful and wise comments coming my way after just taking a chance posting online! After reading through your posts for a while I feel almost like I’ve come to know you a little bit and I think it’s wonderful that you see your comments as a helpful tool for yourself at the same time as they are helping other people enormously.

Whether or not astrological signs hold any weight, I have always been a stereotypical perfectionist Virgo and I think my perfectionist nature is kind of funny because it produces both very healthy and very unhealthy behaviors. On one hand, I hold myself to an impossible standard, build a sense of self-esteem based on goals I’ve achieved, and develop compulsive behaviors naturally. On the other hand, my strong interest in wellness combined with my perfectionism lets me cultivate these healthy behaviors and make them regular practice (thinking subconsciously, perhaps, that enough healthy behaviors will make me ‘perfect’). Of course, these healthy behaviors (meditations, yoga, etc.) are having a positive effect totally unrelated to this unattainable concept of ‘perfection’! I’m not sure if that made any sense but it makes me think of the distinction between the inner self and the ego, which we’ve talked about up-thread a bit. The outer, public self may express some less desirable, unhealthy behaviors, but becomes more reflective of the true self as the conception of the true self strengthens. This has been on my mind since coincidentally after our conversation in this thread, I had a yoga class focusing on this relationship and its manifestation as the front of the body (public persona) and the back of the body (inner self) (according to Ayurveda).

I hope you find this interesting and not too difficult to read (this was a little stream-of-consciousness).

Anita-

Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. It certainly feels better to express these things and I meditated on what these issues may be today…
One thing is that I have an intense need for approval. I mentioned above that I often need the validation of others. I already know that this stems from persistent bullying and feelings of exclusion during childhood. I brought up these issues a few times with my ex, but would usually get very emotional and begin to shut down. Related to that, I also have a fear/avoidance of criticism, am extremely sensitive, and have an emotional/shut down response to arguments because of constant fighting between my parents before my father’s death at a young age. I don’t get into many relationships and developed a need for independence, but I don’t open up about these issues even to close friends. I feel frustrated with myself for my emotional/shut down responses to conflict and it intensifies my feelings of being alone, which is something I’ve felt since childhood. that despite a deep need to connect with others, I would never be able to adequately earn another person’s love, and I would have to accept that no one will accept or understand me for the person I truly am. My ex pushed me to be genuinely myself instead of filtering who I am around other people out of a need to be liked, but this is so difficult and feels even harder now. I also feel like that while I “know” I don’t have to earn love, in action I still made my ex’s life my own, made his problems my problems, and towards the end told myself my displays of love (buying gifts, lunches, surprises) would be enough to keep my relationship going. And my self esteem is rather tenuous because of this, so I avoid vulnerability to keep up the self esteem that I cultivate from my personal achievements. I feel good about myself so long as I have a path to go down and can come to feel confident in my ability to check those things off. I find myself doing this even in the midst of our breakup: finding ways to achieve ‘milestones’ of ‘recovery’. I want to be happy being on a path that can be completely internal, but I just end up feeling lost and further away from resolving these issues. I want to think that I want to live an authentic, true life but end up covering up my internal issues focusing on personal relationships/accomplishments/goals as my primary satisfaction in life because I don’t know where to begin… I only hope that the healthy behaviors and attitudes I try to cultivate can help with a natural shift toward accepting these internal issues, but I also wouldn’t know what to do with them so sometimes I feel like it’s not worth it to try and resolve my internal problems.

Thanks so much to all of you for your kind replies!

Inky – I know you are right. I will feel so much better once I take forward action.

Matty – I appreciate your response so much. You are so right. It is an identity issue. I will try this exercise and use that for reflections 🙂 It feels good to have just a few things that my ex and I didn’t share and I do want to have some more things that are just mine. And Elle, yoga practice makes me feel amazing and has me realizing that while we practiced together all the time, it had really become my own thing without me even realizing it until I was doing it alone. I know exactly what you are saying about the 3 PM start too, I also slip into zen mode and it’s just great 🙂

I already feel much better putting out my thoughts into writing! It’s very hard for me to bring myself to write/journal, and when I do it doesn’t feel honest, but all the words came out in this post and it feels so relieving. Luckily today is unseasonably warm and sunny where I am and it’s a good day to try to have a fresh perspective.

Thank you all xoxo

• This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by zenstrawberry.