Dear lexy99:

I remembered you posted before and that you were NOT happy then. It conflicted in my mind with your report here that you enjoyed your previous place of employment, so I went to your history and read some of your previous writings. I did not find the place where you wrote about your happy time at the other place. Maybe I missed it. I am thinking, it may be also possible that you are nostalgic right now, that is that you have look at the past with pink glasses, see it as if it was better than it actually was. In your current place of work, you are experiencing such distress that you look back viewing what was as if it was good, comforted by the notion that there IS a safer, better place to go back to.

Here is your first post on this website, 10 months and three weeks ago: “Im not sure if this is the right place. Im 24 and still living at home with my parents. We get on great but I feel like my life is hold on at the moment. I have a job ive been in 7 months that I dont enjoy and I dont feel like its what Im meant to be doing. I go straight home at the end of each day, back to my parents house, barely any social life…I feel like when i move out and get my own place my life can finally start as I’ll have freedom and be able to do things the way i want, make new friends… and get up the courage to ‘just do it’ but the main thing im scared about is a new job…Im terrified…How can i get over these fears and have the courage to just go out and live my life? Until i do i feel like im frozen and jus going through the motions of everyday, not living.”

It seems to me that the solution to your problem right now, the long term solution, the solution that will stick, so you un-stuck yourself from the same-old-same-old conflict, dissatisfaction and suffering, is in dealing with the real issue, not the particular details of the current conflict, but with what fuels it:

Your fear.

When did it start? Do you remember as far back as you can, when you were a child: what were you afraid of? Or look into yourself now, what scares you so? Fear is not unusual, of course, it is a great force in everyone’s life, some more than others, but it is in looking into your personal fear that you will find understanding and the self knowledge you need so to have the knowledge you need in particular circumstances.

Without that self knowledge you are likely to be forever stuck in not-knowing-what-to-do every time there is a challenge in your life. Back to my question: tell me, if you choose to, tell me about the fear, and you can go as far back as you want and tell me about it.

anita

Dear lexy99:

I think that your answer is right here in what you wrote above: “I know that challenges are something that are going to happen whether you like it or not but you dont have to go looking for them?”

I hope you go back to your old place of work then. I think you answered your own question. Listen to your emotions when making a decision. Many people think the solution is in purely logical thinking, like your father’s thinking: purely logical- demoting oneslf at work: wrong, promoting: right. But this is purely logical. We, humans, are not purely logical, not even close. We are very much emotional creatures. This is why emotions have to be taken into serious consideration.

You feel fearful and disressed in the new work place. You felt way less distressed and more comfortale in the old- go back to the old. You have to tailor your decisions to who you are, to your personal emotional experience of life, not to anyone else’s. You are the one having to live with your decisons, make your decision so that you can live with them comfortably.

What makes sense in the arena of pure logic is not what makes sense in real life. Real human life is never pure logic, not even close.

anita