Dear Gaia:

How are you???

anita

Dear Gaia:

I am fine, as fine as I can be. I understand the frustration about “going in circles”.

“I still feel the same”, you wrote, having “reached a wall, a closed off road”-

– Fantasy is one way to go around a wall, or jump straight up into the sky, lie down of a fluffy white cloud among the stars, no walls.

– Reality is another way to go around a wall, seeing reality is it is.

It is easy to go the fantasy route, difficult to go the reality route.

anita

Dear Gaia:

You made progress being “more present and be aware”, and letting your feelings “express themselves without trying to distract” yourself.

I just read the first post you made on this thread, Sept 2019:”I can be utterly enraged, shamed and revengeful over nothing… there’s no means I can express my emotional storms and mental conflicts and thoughts outside, with someone that either understands or can be trustworthy”-

– why not express it right here on your thread. I know we talked about things but you didn’t express your emotions freely. I think you always tried to contain yourself, holding yourself back. How about this exercise: get yourself ready (maybe being alone in your room with the computer, no interruptions) and type away anything and everything that comes to your mind, all the anger, all the hate, all those “violent thoughts and emotions” you mentioned in that first post of this thread, keep typing away the experience of “feeling pulled and disintegrated by several conflicting parts”.

Don’t censor yourself, type away, and when you are done, relax, then go back to what you typed and make a few edits, just so to take away particular descriptions of violence and adding *** to certain words, like f*** instead of the word itself. Then submit it.

anita

Dear Gaia:

So you are going to do the exercise, excellent! Regarding feeling uncomfortable it being a public thread, worrying about other people’s opinions about you- why does it matter. I mean, it is you and I who are communicating and have been communicating for so long. You can trust me to not use your words against you.

You wrote last year (same quote above): “there’s no means I can express my emotional storms.. with someone that either understands or can be trustworthy”-

– I  understand (and if I don’t, I ask question, and/ or you can correct my understanding) and I am trustworthy!

So go ahead.

anita

Dear Gaia:

I like your analogy very much, I am impressed by how well you expressed yourself using this analogy. “growing ‘randomly'”- quite profound.

I used to make up rules for myself, “to lean on”, rules of behavior. It helped somewhat, to keep going by a set of to-do and to-not-do rules.

A quality psychotherapist would be an excellent support for the Ivy that you are, guiding your growth. I suppose a healthy home is the place for ivy children to grow, and a foundation for the growth. Unfortunately too many of us don’t have that early- life foundation.

anita

Dear Gaia:

Thank you for explaining this to me and for stating what you did in your most recent post. I feel much better (I felt.. using your word in the past, sh**** before). What a difference a single letter typo can make.

Back to your analogies: an Ivy, Gaia the Ivy Plant, climbing/ growing randomly, without supportive surfaces to grow by, to lean on. This is you growing up alone. Your use of this analogy clearly shows that you grew up alone in your home, without support and without anyone to lean on. So Gaia the Ivy Plant “twist and wind around something else.. to keep growing and live”.

Remember what I wrote to you four days ago, referring to you writing that you “reached a wall, a closed off road”- similar to the ivy plant reaching a closed off surface, nowhere to keep growing, randomly. What I wrote to you was that Fantasy is one way to go around a wall and Reality is another way, seeing reality as it is. See, Gaia, really see the reality that you grew up alone in your home, even though there were other people there, you were alone. You had no support and no one to lean on.

You may ask yourself (?) why am I repeating this, why am I rubbing it in, am I trying to make you feel bad? No is my answer. Please pay attention: when I faced my reality, in an emotional way, my mental health improved a whole lot. So I want your mental health to improve a whole lot as well. This is why I am repeating this and suggesting it.

There is a difference between saying: I grew up alone and feeling it. When you feel it and believe it, you look differently at the people in your home and you end your loyalty to the people who were not there for you. When you end such loyalty, you will be able to see yourself in a different way. You will look at yourself and to your surprise, you will see someone you didn’t see before.

Please don’t read the above just once and forget about it. It is very Big, if you get it, once you get it, and getting it is a gradual process, where you get it more one day, and then more a week after, and so forth.

In your post after, you wrote that “what my ivy needs is something happening, experiences. People. Jobs. Skills. Break ups…” Yes, you need new experiences, but I know that you have this cringing, repeating thought that you have been wasting your youth, that it is terrible that you didn’t yet have a relationship with a man, and so forth. I want to tell you the following in this regard: true to me and I’ve seen it in others: new experiences, living-life, does not change people. So let’s say you do travel and so forth, after the High of the experience, you will return to the cringe and regret, and you will think that you need more experience because there is so much that was wasted. But it will never be enough, and eventually, let’s say you are rich and you travel the world and have affairs and whatnot, eventually, you get up one day and say to yourself: why am I doing this.. I feel nothing. (I imagine that’s what Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain figured, that their life full of travels, and fame, full of action, was not worth living another day).

The reason you feel so badly about wasting your youth is not because you haven’t traveled and experienced relationships with men and so forth. The reason is not what didn’t happen. The reason is what did happen. And what happened, going back to the ivy, is that you grew up alone, without support, without guidance, with no one to lean on.

Accept this reality on the emotional level, bit by bit, over time and you will be so much better for it.

Regarding the “hours and days of surfing the internet”, and speaking to me being “one of the few internet activities actually helpful or useful”- I suggest that you stop the unhelpful and un-useful internet activities and do only the useful and helpful internet activities. You value your time this way, and your time should be valued.

And to  your newborn baby analogy, another good analogy- being a newborn at 21- don’t hate that 21 year old newborn. She grew randomly because she was alone. A child needs support/ a parent to lean on in order to grow up. It is not an option: a child can not grow up without emotional support (or with too much negative emotional input).

Put it in yet more words: a child whose mother is hysterical, negatively overly dramatic, crazy… grows randomly. The child doesn’t grow up, but here and there and to the sides, twisting here and there.

Not your fault, Gaia. See the fault where it Really is, and you will be able to feel compassion for yourself. Self compassion is a necessary ingredient in mental health.

anita