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Viewing 15 posts - 961 through 975 (of 1,634 total)
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  • April 1, 2019 at 9:51 am #287197
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    I am so glad that I made some sense in my recent post to you, I was a bit concerned that I wasn’t focused enough to make sense.

    I think I will try to take a nap or just lie down and relax some. So tired this morning.

    anita

    April 3, 2019 at 6:56 am #287357
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    Hello, did you end up getting some rest yesterday? You did make perfect sense about your comment when we last spoke.  I pondered it a lot.  The concept of having a right to vocalize what is appropriate for yourself.  Such as having someone clean up after themselves, or vocalizing that you are busy, and unable to be as involved as you would like.

    The concept of guilt should not have a place there if you are being your most authentic self.  But of course it often does, especially if you are like me – and have been “motivated” and pressured by guilt my whole life.  To the point that I may not see certain actions as guilt oriented, but more that it seems “habit.”

    It is important to dissect “habits” as to what they really are.  Is it habitual simply because the same fearful narrative keeps playing in your head over and over?

    Where is the “habit” and pattern? In the brain, or the action?

    April 3, 2019 at 7:56 am #287369
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cai Chica:

    Well, I woke up later than usual this morning, so I figure I rested. Still feel tired though, somewhat.

    “Where is the ‘habit’ and pattern? In the brain, or the action?”- everything starts in the brain, what an amazing organ it is. My former therapist mentioned to me “habits of the mind”, we have a whole lot of those. There are some mental habits that are actualized, such as when a person regularly overeats or takes a daily walk, and some habits are not actualized, such as a person wanting to overeat but does not.

    Some mental habits, when starved for a long time (not being actualized) do go away, and that is good news!

    I was wondering most recently, about your .. I suppose mental habit of glorifying other people, like the couple going to Florida, going on and on about their success- it is fueled by your feeling of inferiority, that is, feeling inferior to others?

    anita

     

    April 3, 2019 at 3:53 pm #287459
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    Thank you for explaining to me the concept of habit and your terms. And also bringing up my mental habit of glorifying others. I have thought about this day in and day out since we brought it up, noticing any time where I may feel that I am glorifying someone else or that by reflex I feel that I am inferior to that person or their life. In fact, in my yoga class yesterday, the teacher spoke about the concept of the grass is not greener on the other side, the grass is green on both sides. He stated that it is human nature to think that if someone else has something different than us —by definition what we have is not good enough. I thought that it was interesting that he brought this up, to a public class. Because there are times where I forget that what I think in my head May not be unique to me, although I may do it to a more extreme extent. I do forget that many people to suffer with the idea that they by nature think that the circumstance that others have is better than their own even -without knowing much about the other persons circumstance. I have spent a good amount of time beating myself up over the fact that I do this, but not realizing that it is human nature to an extent. But only an extent.  The pathology lies that although it is human nature to an extent, many of these people do not have the upbringing that I do, the Disney world example, and so it is not to them the suffering  I have from this sort of mentality. For others it may be a transient Thought or idea. However I noticed that for me it is much more than that it is a root cause of suffering, many roots of suffering I do have based on the mother voice, and this is one of them. Anyway regardless of what is human nature to others or not. This yoga teachers passage did get me to think, do I in fact believe that my life is inferior to others. Do I in fact believe that I am inferior to others? What a question, how absurd sounding. Well to an untrained ear. How could I think that way look at my life, great career successful husband living in an amazing city bounty of friends and family galore. And this is the exact thing that kept me from seeing that The mother voice always kept me back.

    So, the thesis of what I am trying to say is the following. Nothing I do in life, no where I go in life ever matters. Because I am fed to believe that nothing  is good enough -everything that I am not is worth seeking. Everything that I am not doing at this exact moment is worth seeking. Everywhere that I am not is worth being at. Everything that I do not like is worth exploring. I cannot sit with myself as I am, because the way I am as a baseline is flawed.  By definition. Always. We as a family are flawed, we are born into unfortunate circumstance, what a tragedy. Our life on this or earth by definition can never lead to contentment

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Cali Chica.
    April 4, 2019 at 8:42 am #287547
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    I am feeling that there is something I need to better understand, so I went back to your Nov 2016 posts. I will quote from you (it helps me process information when I type your words myself):

    “they immigrated here with nothing, and raised my sister and I to  be privileged successful and happy-ish… I feel it was ingrained in my whole childhood to ‘feel bad’ I always recall feeling, wow how sad my mom’s life was, how sad people can be, why did people do this to her?… I felt disappointed constantly, birthdays as a teenager I found myself focusing more on ‘who wasn’t there for me’ then the celebration or party at hand… it started the ‘we have bad luck, the world is against us’ feeling that has perpetuated… I work so hard in career and personal life, stay fit, do yoga, have great friends- but.. it always feels like there is something wrong… I recall a picture from Disneyworld.. smiling at 5.. I remember my mom saying, ‘look at everyone else they are here with a big family..’… my mom had been isolated and mistreated and yearned for ‘company’ as she called it (company of others/friendships) her whole life, that it TOOK AWAY what we had. It’s like sitting at a dinner table of 4 and focusing on the 6 that didn’t make it… When I close my eyes I think of my mom as a damaged soul, a sad and abused.. fragile puppy.. this feeling about her makes it quite difficult to ‘hate her’ or to feel I should attempt to have ‘power over her’ in a way it simply just makes me feel soo soo bad for her”.

    About two years and five months later, after more than a year (?) of no contact with your mother and father, yesterday, you wrote: “Nothing I do in life, no where I go in life ever matters… nothing is good enough- everything that I am…  Everything that I am doing… Everywhere that I am not is worth being at… the way I am as a baseline is flawed. By definition. Always. We as a family are flawed, we are born into unfortunate circumstance, what a tragedy”.

    My hopefully developing thoughts (I will type as I think): I am impressed yet again by the strength of core beliefs. How powerful they are, the beliefs formed in an early age. Your father has been a physician for a long time, your mother and you and your sister traveled the world, you traveled the world with your husband as well, Paris I remember, more recently was it South America? You and your husband are physicians living in NYC. Your mother hasn’t lacked any material thing for decades, living a financially privileged life, same for you and your sister, and yet, “what a tragedy”.

    This means that unless this core belief changes in your brain, life will continue to be tragedy. It is still tragedy-in-practice, every day.

    Cali Chica the five year old, six, growing up, she observes, she listens.. to her mother. What mother says is the truth. She believes her mother and a core belief is formed.

    What holds this core belief in place still is that empathy, I am thinking, “When I close my eyes I think of my mom as a damaged soul, a sad and abused… fragile puppy… this feeling about her makes it quite difficult to ‘hate her’ or to feel I should attempt to have ‘power over her‘..”-

    The Cali Chica Voice of reason is not allowed to have power over the Mother Voice of No-Reason. There is the voice of your mother in your brain and there is that voice of yours, an independent voice. But it is her voice that is still more powerful, and it always has been.

    I think it is the strong emotion of empathy you have for your mother, and you may not be aware of it these days (?) but it is this strong empathy for her that is keeping her voice alive and powerful in your brain.

    “this feeling about her makes it quite difficult to ‘hate her'”- you didn’t hate her yet, you didn’t get angry enough at her and therefore, you didn’t reject her yet, or more accurately, you didn’t eject her yet from your brain and her voice is still in power.

    Time to hate her then, time to see her not as a fragile puppy, but as the vicious dog that she was in your life. See, the fragile puppy that she was when she was a child, you never met that puppy, the woman you met when you came into her life, she was not  the  innocent, victim child that she indeed was. In your life, she was not that fragile puppy, she was a vicious woman who told you that she wished you were never born, the woman who berated you when you broke down and cried in medical school.

    A fragile puppy doesn’t say those things.

    anita

     

     

    April 4, 2019 at 9:01 am #287551
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    More- in every vicious dog, in every cruel adult, there is a fragile puppy, an innocent child locked inside. You see glimpses of that fragile puppy, but what you have in front of you is a vicious dog.

    In your childhood, it was you, not your mother, who was the fragile puppy. When your empathy is with the real fragile puppy in the context of your mother- yourself, that empathy, redirected, will empower your individual voice of reason.

    Empathy removed from her will remove the power of her voice, the power of the core belief you keep hearing.

    anita

    April 4, 2019 at 9:29 am #287561
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    In your childhood, it was you, not your mother, who was the fragile puppy. When your empathy is with the real fragile puppy in the context of your mother- yourself, that empathy, redirected, will empower your individual voice of reason

    I read your post, both of them, twice.  And this quote above sticks out the most.

    I do not have empathy for the fragile puppy – myself.  I may/may not see my mother as fragile anymore.  But what is more important – is that I do NOT see myself as fragile.

    In a way, because I have become “hardened” and lack some of that softness we speak about – I don’t see myself as fragile at all – but instead, hard, harsh, angry, stern, severe – to name a few terms.  none of these terms allow for patience for a fragile wounded puppy – do they?

    I am not sure if I have empathy for her anymore to be quite honest, I know  I did for a very long time of course.  I don’t feel this way actively, but perhaps because I have been ingrained this way it remains somewhere. What I do know is that whether I do or don’t, as above, that empathy is definitely not for myself.

    I notice how I often berate my own self, and notice that – like our previous thread, there is often the blame game.

    The blame game does not exist in a place where you have kindness and empathy.  As I spoke in that conversation, the goal of that game is to create hate, to assign guilt and blame.  If I truly had empathy for myself, I wouldn’t so quickly seek a way to berate and “punish” myself/thought processes.

    I see that these concepts are related, and I am piecing it together. I am human, I am allowed to err, and grow, to be fragile (especially after being beaten down by a vicious wolf my whole life).

    I notice also that because I have been cruel and attacking to my husband – that is a MAJOR reason why I do not see myself as a fragile puppy – or have empathy for myself.  This is a key point, perhaps we can speak more about this after you reply.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Cali Chica.
    April 4, 2019 at 10:04 am #287573
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    “I notice how I often berate my own self… assign guilt and blame… berate and ‘punish’ myself”- your mother did all these things to you and her mental rep in your brain, her  voice, keeps doing the same.

    When you came home from medical school, crying, didn’t your mother say that you were born crying and you are still crying? No empathy for you, instead, she blamed you for bothering her with your tears.

    But this was her message way before medical school, wasn’t it- didn’t she take possession of Empathy, declaring it her own, none for you?

    If you remember feeling no empathy for yourself and you do remember feeling empathy for your mother at any one time, then empathy, on the balance, was hers, not yours.

    Am I correct: did she own empathy and made it clear to you that none of it belongs to you?

    anita

    April 4, 2019 at 10:18 am #287577
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    Yes, she did OWN it and not assign any to me, nor allow it.  she owned and took over empathy – all to herself – none for anyone else.

    April 4, 2019 at 11:39 am #287587
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    My mother too owned Empathy. As a result I too did not feel empathy for myself. My empathy was with her. Similar to you I saw her as the fragile puppy, the innocent child and felt so very sad for her.

    The good news is that it is possible for a child in this case, you and me, to feel self empathy later in life. It still feels new to me, the occasions when I experience empathy for myself.

    Healing cannot proceed to the emotional arena, that is, actually feeling okay in life, baseline, as you call it, without empathy to self. How does one bring it about, is the question, isn’t it.

    You can do  an exercise, here on  your thread. I don’t know if I suggested it  to you before. When you are calm, type away a post but choose the words and syntax of a five year old, type away the words a five year old will choose and tell me about a childhood experience or two, let it flow out of you. Then submit.

    anita

    April 4, 2019 at 12:39 pm #287593
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    Will you tell me: are you still in no contact with your mother and father or are you in some contact with either one, or both?

    anita

    April 4, 2019 at 12:42 pm #287595
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    I will do this exercise like you explained above, I look forward to it.

    Yes Anita, I am in no contact – and have no plans of ever being in contact.  The thought of them hardly ever crosses my mind anymore, it is almost as thought they do not exist.  this is not because I actively avoid thinking about them, or resist it – it is that it is such a far distant memory – akin to a childhood crush or something of that sort. bad example but not even something that crosses my mind

    April 4, 2019 at 12:50 pm #287597
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Cali Chica:

    Good, I was concerned. I was afraid that a renewed contact with her was fueling her mental rep, or preventing further healing. It is very difficult without contact, as you know, but with contact, impossible.

    I am looking forward to read your exercise, you can do as many as you want, submit and submit, if it works for you. I think that I will soon be away from the computer for about 17 hours from now.

    anita

    April 5, 2019 at 7:14 am #287675
    Cali Chica
    Participant

    Dear Anita,

    Thank you for concern – and no there is no renewed contract.

    I will attempt this exercise for the first time today.  I don’t have too many vivid memories of childhood, but I will start somehwere…

    I am 5 years old, I am in Kindergarten with my teacher Miss Z.

    • Hey mom, R was at school today and i had a new toy.  Because I had a new toy she didn’t play at playtime with me.  She probably has jealousy.
    April 5, 2019 at 7:47 am #287681
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear 5-year-old Cali Chica:

    I see that you feel sad, and you worry. Tell me more about playtime today, were you playing all alone with your new toy? Show me how you were playing..?

    anita

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