Hey 👋 Confused:

I can’t imagine anyone experiencing as much dissociation as I have for so long..

Glad I am not dissociated anything 🙂 close to that extent anymore.

I was wondering 🤔 will it help you to connect to some positive emotions, maybe to a hint of a positive emotion, if you write ✍️ a poem or draw or express yourself through any kind of art?

I remember while depressed I attended an art class and at another time an acting class- those two made a huge difference for me at the time.

Decades have passed and I still remember those positive feeling surges as if it was yesterday.

About giving people too much power 🔋 over you, emotionally- that sucks, doesn’t it?

No matter how wonderful you think she is, and she may very well be wonderful, but.. well, what I am trying to say is that I hope that you no longer allow anyone, in your own mind, to make or break you emotionally. Take your Powe back.

✌️🤍✨️ Anita

Hey Confused:

I wasn’t good at arts, used to get poor grades in school at arts, just above “fail”.

Didn’t matter when it came to expressing the suppressed, there was freedom in it, no one’s business to grade me on expressing.

“Gonna be my own self that breaks me”, meaning?

Yes, I felt that I could- and did express things at first. I was in my early 20s when I did. I drew/ painted 🎨 a hand ✋️ coming out of my head/ brain 🧠 as in reaching out for help. “HELP!!!” kind of thing. Expressing just that meant a lot for me, expressing that I needed help, that is. It was a step toward mental health.

Only I didn’t receive the help I needed and I couldn’t do it on my own, without help.

“It was me that caused all this”- guilt, isn’t it. Did you feel guilty of supposedly causing your mother to get violent against you?

Do you remember?

🤍 Anita

Hey Confused:

When you say that’s kinda how you feel, you mean old guilt in regard to your late mother’s behavior? You felt guilty growing up or later in regard to her?

And in regard to art 🎨, what if anything turned you off 🤔 to it?

🤍 Anita

Well, Confused, what I mean is that the guilt in regard to your mother naturally followed you over the years and applied to the woman we’re talking about, no?

I can’t think of a more powerful relationship in a boy’s life, and in the life of a boy turned man than the relationship with the mother.

What do you think 🤔

🤍 Anita

Oh, yes, Confused. I do understand it feeling weird because of.. the sexual element with the LD girl/ a romantic relationship.

But this is not unique to you. So many, many, many men who had troubled relationships with their mothers are affected heavily in context of romantic relationships.

Emotions are not neatly filed in the brain.. emotions cross over from this context to that context.

Not just when it comes to boys/men, but also when it comes ti girls/ women.

There’re no separate files in the brain, as in: this is what I felt in context of my mother. This is what I feel in context of a girlfriend, and the two are not connected.

Affected as in needing a woman (mother, romantic interest) and being scared of the same person.

Not that you consciously compared her to your mother, it’s a deeper, ancient kind of connection.

??