Dear noname:

You are welcome and please do  post anytime. It is a pleasure and it is valuable for me to communicate with you.

I am glad you live separately from family members and that you are doing well as a new therapist- I am excited for you!

“do I keep reaching out for connection?”- I don’t think you can help yourself in this regard. I mean, you crave connection with a woman. In the past you decided to not date, but you found yourself on dating sites anyway. It is a strong need, a craving, emotional and sexual for you.

Do reach out for connection with a woman, but do so sensibly. In other words, turn the light on before you reach out to a woman, and keep the light on so that you can see what is happening. Don’t rush.

Gather information about the woman before you get emotionally/ sexually invested. Get to know her as a friend. Then put all the information together and figure if you want to pursue a romantic/ sexual relationship with her.

Summarized: do reach out but in a different, sensible and cautious way.

*You are welcome to share with me information you do gather about any particular woman, and I will give you my input.

anita

Dear noname:

I will read your first sentence or two, quote and comment on those, then read the next sentence or two and do the same. Therefore each comment is not based on the sentences yet to be read. This is an effective way for me to learn and I think it is an opportunity for you to learn as well:

“to ‘turn the light on’ .. I thought that’s what I did this most recent time”- when you agreed to have her go on a date with another person and then come to your place after she told you that she is interested in you and only you, the light was not on.

“I’m noticing ignoring my gut feeling about people has always backfired on me”- in this case you ignored logic, not a gut feeling.

“This girl was not malicious in any way”- it doesn’t take Malicious to hurt another person badly. Neglectful and Impulsive will do the job just fine, that is, hurting another badly.

“she didn’t know herself well which I’ve found can also be harmful in relationships when one person is out of touch with themselves”- too complex, simply: she contradicted herself in a major way: I want only you– I am going for a date with someone else.

Notice you were out of touch with part of you, Logic, so this contradiction didn’t adequately register in your brain.

“nothing makes me more uncomfortable than trying to form intimate attachments”- here you didn’t try to form an intimate attachment, it was already formed within the two weeks of dating her. And the attachment was intense, too intense to allow comfort.

“I was trying my best to maintain composure”- the attachment was intense and overwhelming, you lost your calm and control of yourself (composure). When we are overwhelmed with intense emotion, our logic is immobilized and we are unable to make logical choices that will serve us well. Instead we become impulsive.

“I’m just alarmed at how morbid I became after being let down by this girl”- your attachment was intense, morbid.

“I fear the impulsivity in myself when overwhelmed with emotions”- you said it yourself right here.

“Normally no one would ever hear me cry or see my pain”- reminds me of the riddle: if a tree falls down in a forest and no one is there to witness it, does it make a sound? As the social animals that we are, when we cry or express pain otherwise, we need to be seen and heard by another human. If we cry alone again and again, and there is no  one there to see us or here us, are we really in pain…?

“I need guidance to feeling connected”- cry in front of someone empathetic, your therapist perhaps. You may have done so already, but do it again in a different kind of way, with more awareness of the other person being there for you.

“Some of my most peaceful moments have come when alone in the woods”- next time you are dating a woman, bring those moments in the woods back to mind. In other words, using a professional term, apply emotional regulation skills, so to keep calm enough, and not be overwhelmed with emotion.

“I struggle with frequent burnout”- can be the burn of overwhelm. If you learn to calm that overwhelm, you will maintain motivation and energy at work and outside of work.

anita

Dear noname:

You are welcome.

“Can you elaborate on ‘too intense to allow comfort?.. Are you suggesting basically I was moving too fast? I’ve never had a close, comfortable attachment to anyone”-

– these are two different things: your emotional experience and your behavior. Moving too fast is the second thing, the behavior. And I did suggest to you in the past, repeatedly, to move slower, get to know the woman as a friend before getting emotionally and sexually involved. The first thing is something else (connected to the second, but different), and that is your very emotional experience, what you feel.

There is an element of panic involved, a rushing that takes you with it like a strong windstorm, overwhelming you and you collapse, logic incapacitated, depressed, hopeless.

The key to your healing is in slowing down that rush, dispersing that panic.

This dynamic, the panic and rushing, that has nothing to do  with thinking and understanding. It is an automatic habit of the brain, it functions this way. So does mine. It becomes this way when a child is scared and alone for too long.

The fear is supposed to motivate an animal to do what it takes to survive a perceived danger. When a child is alone for too long with fear, the child learns to fear the fear itself, that is, the child’s emotions are perceived as the threat, the danger. Meaning, the child no longer fears the original danger (a parent’s anger, a parent’s threat to commit suicide and whatnot). The child fears his own emotions. And so, the child numbs them best he can, not by choice. Nature does that.

Fast forward, you are now a man, you meet this woman, you get excited-problem! The excitement itself is a problem. Excited emotions are perceived as a threat, danger!

anita

Dear noname:

I think it is a bad idea to contact her. On the other hand, I think it is a good idea if you get into a regular mindfulness practice so to slow down that “rush and a panic”. A slow yoga practice, better maybe tai chi (very slow motion martial art practice) will help slow down that mental windstorm that rains on your parade of life and is indeed exhausting!

anita

Dear noname:

“The hopelessness has always been there to try to keep me safe from continuing to reach out and take risks”- no, I think the hopelessness set because as the child that you were you did reach out to your parents repeatedly but you weren’t loved. You loved them but in practice, they didn’t love you back.

The hopelessness is not something that was formed to protect you, it was a result of your love not being reciprocated by the people you loved so desperately- your parents.

There is nothing more devastating for a child than to love and to not be loved in return, day after day, night after night, year after year.

Fast forward, the man that you are is still experiencing the same, to love and to not be loved in return.

For a different life experience: to love and to be loved in return, you have to really see where love does not exist for you. That way you will be able to look elsewhere, where love is yet to be had for you, to love and to be loved in return.

anita

Dear noname:

“about loving and not being reciprocated.. I just don’t know what to look for apparently”-

– you mean you don’t know how reciprocated love looks like, how to spot love from a woman?

If so, when you interact with a woman you are interested in, or considering being interested in her, make a small move and give her the space to make her move. You smile to her, see if she smiles back. You tell her she looks nice, see if she tells you something nice about the way you look, or that she appreciates what you just said. Hold her hand, see if she holds your hand back. Call her, see if she calls you next, and so forth. One move on your part, pause, wait for hers. No move coming from her= no interest on her part.

Happy Thanksgiving, by the way!

anita

Dear noname:

There were no new posts this morning so I went back and re-read/ studies your previous threads, starting March 2017. This is before you posted your recent post. I will continue my study, but I do have a question regarding this sentence I cam across:

“I can feel the rush similar to a drug when I authentically connect with someone, and that feeling gives me confidence and lasts for days depending on how vulnerable the experience was”.

You mentioned confidence three times in your recent post. Back to the quote from Sept 2017 above, I wonder if you are looking for that rush more than a real-life relationship with a woman, “a rush similar to a drug” that gives you that feel-good confidence feeling. What do you think?

anita

Dear noname:

“I’m attached to this idea that if I find the right woman all my pain will be resolved and I’ll be healed”- thing is, reads like you already found the right woman when you were about 17, your girlfriend of five years: “She used to tell me she loved me at first I didn’t believe it, but soon I was able to feel it.. the first year we were together was probably the happiest I’d ever been in my life, I loved having someone who cared how I was doing every single day, and I loved caring for her too. The best part about being in love was that I knew I had someone in my corner, who no matter how much I messed up always saw the good in me… It also gave me something to look forward to when things weren’t going so well. There was nothing like that phone call right before bed to clear my mind and put things in perspective”.

There was no other relationship resembling that, or as long as that one, not even close. And yet, during those five years you smoked weed every day. You wrote about those five years: “I used to smoke so much weed, and cut myself, it was like a hug from the inside out”- so you see, her hugs didn’t do it for you.

“I’m attached to this idea that if I find the right woman all my pain will be resolved and I’ll be healed”, you wrote today. Isn’t that five year relationship proof that it ain’t so?

anita