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The need to be Celebrated

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  • #74905
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hello everyone, I am hoping to receive some spiritual and emotional support. I am going through a difficult crisis which is the culmination of life-time long emotional struggles. Over the years I have gone to psychotherapy to regain my self-esteem and joy in life which were taken away from my family in childhood. I am a young adult now and have decided over time to take the high road and keep the good tone with my family while at the same time building my inner strength to repair the damage they did, to build self-efficiancy. However this was not effective, as I only splitted off my dissapointsments, gelaousy, being undermined from them, and projected all this in my relationships. Relating to people who did not share my genuine love for them, treated me disrespectfully, and showing that to them other people were more important than me and worth celebrating, special attention, and gestures to bring them joy and make them feel good about them selves. And at the same time my family did not change the way they treat me, even when I help them and show them that they matter.
    So this year when I ended my last relationship, having the feeling that I have been watching a movie I had watched before. And then became apathic, I stopped believing that I will ever be happy and loved. Until this family crisis happened. I understood long kept secrets that so far had only given me an uncertain feeling of something “fishy” and wrong. I never felt genuine love from my mother and sister. Only from my father who passed away 5 years ago. My mother had kept their unhappy marriage in order to inherit his properties. She “programmed” me and my sister to stick with her in order to prevent him from leaving her. When I was a teenager I protested and this worsen my mother’s attitude, as she was no longer able to manipulate me. She punished me for that severely by taking away what is legally my inheritance. She convinced my grandmother, mother of my father, to give her share to her and my sister while she is alive, so that I don’t get anything after she passes.
    After being shocked for 1 week, my mother suggested to discuss this with my sister, placing all the blame on my grand mother. Stupid old me hoped they would support me and show me that they apreciate me and will never let one of her daughters harmed in interest of the other. Only to be blamed even more by them that I don’t care about them, that I am a rude person, hard to communicate with, and how people don’t like me as it is my fault for being such a horrible person. They blamed me I only call my sister to share my problems and never even ask about her. I had to remind them how many times I have cheered her up after our father died even when she Never calls me and has offended me in front of friends.
    This is a long story, but I wanted to share that this is a revolutionary time for me. This time I stood up to them. I told them up front that they are not worth the trouble to show my affection any longer if they don’t appreciate it. Even worse, they ambushed me that badly when a normal family would show support. They have never brought me joy and celebrated me as a family member. They have never acknowledged even basic needs like sleeping, stating I was the one to be patient with the people who were preventing me to sleep. I cannot even begin to describe what level of un-appreciation and disrespect is this. While they never did that for my sister who started very early to mistreat me, as she has been conditioned to believe she is celebrated, loved, and more important than me, and that it is ordinary matter-of-course for me to receive bad treatment.
    This is a Revolution because even when I sit here devastated with horrible pain in my solar plexus, part of me is happy that this emotional catastrophe happened. This is a karmic gift for me that enables me to face the painful truth completely, and make changes in the real life, not only virtually in psychotherapy. This time I Refused to play the role they gave me of a horrible person cursed to never be loved by people due to my horrible personality.
    I have given a lot of thought synthesizing crystal clear the lessons I learned in this family and how they are connected to my love life, self esteem and happiness. And while thinking that this is an extremely painful opportunity for change, there is still some part of me that I cannot leave behind – My need to be celebrated by my family. I do realize that it is almost impossible to expect my family to change enough to show me the appreciation and attention I have always craved. And this is the riddle I’m trying to solve. Maybe there are still another 10% work in soul searching to be done.
    So I wanted to share, my Celebration in this horrible pain, and that I Realize how important it is for a person to receive Joy, Love, Affection, and Attention.

    #74967
    Matt
    Participant

    Cheryyblossom,

    I can understand the disappointment in not being celebrated by our loved ones. That your loved ones appear to be conniving instead, ouch! Consider that the act of conniving is painful for the heart, and produces many clouds. Like, they get wrapped up in money, forget what is important, miss out on the joy. Too busy fighting over their inherited stuff to be present. That they don’t have the space or warmth to give you a good hug and share love isn’t surprising, and has nothing to do with your lovablilty, your accomplishments, or you. Just them and their rainclouds.

    Instead of looking to them for that sense of celebration, consider celebrating your own growth. Do you keep a gratitude journal? A cherryyblossom in the spring is one of the most beautiful, make sure she knows it!

    With warmth,
    Matt

    #74969
    Twan
    Participant

    Dear Cherryblossom,

    I also share with you the need to be celebrated by my family. It is a recurring issue that makes me feel empty, not fulfilled. I guess we cannot expect them to change. This post on Tiny Buddha really helped me, it might also help you: http://dev.tinybuddha.com/blog/secret-to-getting-along-with-your-parents/

    I agree with what Matt’s says, maybe try to focus on celebrating yourself for now. Focus on your spiritual growth, and therefore learning to love yourself, and accept the beautiful person you really are.

    I’m happy for you that you feel like this is an opportunity for change. Moments like this can be very insightful and powerful in personal growth. If you need any guidance is growth, in understanding life more, I would recommend you to read ‘The Four Agreements’, by Don Miguel Ruiz. It has helped me so much.

    This is your life, and you can create the most wonderful life. If there are people you meet around you who are not supporting, not loving and not caring, you can decide to distance yourself from them. You don’t need to stay close with them. Ofcourse, this is different with family. You can’t expect them to change, but at least you can change yourself.

    Good luck with everything.

    Love,
    Twan

    #74995
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Thank you for your kind words and for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I absolutely agree with both of you on what I need to focus from now on. Don Miguel Ruiz is in my personal library and is one of my favorite authors. I’m also into eastern tao and buddhism teachings, and practicing yoga, not only as a physical exercise. I think that actually they have helped me a lot in growing to the understandings I had in this situation. They helped me realize that this unfortunate moment for me is a bliss. This is the gift to know who my blood relatives really are, what are their true drivers, and vanished the believe I had for a life time that I am not worthy since I’m not accepted even by my own family. You know people say this often rashly – how can they be a good person when even their own family doesn’t like them. As when you don’t know someone’s true drivers, all you think is – ok, she is my mother, she is my sister, why am I not worthy of their love? Must be something I am not able to see. Years of trying to find this out pointing the blame at me. Years of psychotherapy trying to get a professional opinion on this, I even got angry at professionals for justifying me.
    Not only this – my family has openly made me believe this by saying this is the reason I am not able to keep a healthy relationship.
    This situation pointed at me – this is why: it’s not me, it’s that for them I am an obstacle to their conniving goals. On the one hand yes, it hurts to lift the curtain and find out that your family is not who you always thought they were. On the other hand, it is liberating to discover, that it is Not your fault, and you actually Are worthy. That is the liberating part. No more I will feel unworthy to them or anyone in my life because of this discovery. No more they can use emotional black mail to keep me in depending position to try hard for their affection that they would never give me anyway. It is like these optical illusions that when you change focus you notice the other part of the picture. Before finding the illusion, you only see what the illusion is suggesting to you – that you are unworthy and this is you fate with all people. It is hiding the real picture, that this is not the truth. And after you have figured out the illusion, it’s gone and no longer affecting your perception 🙂

    #74999
    Will
    Participant

    Just wanted to say I read your posts and I recognise your pain and your courage in using it as a catalyst for growth. You’re doing well.

    With time, I think you will find the celebration that you now crave so much from your family. It may never come from them, but there may be other ways to feed that hunger.

    Keep walking. All my best wishes.

    #75060
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi Will, I hope you are right. Because it is true that my reaction this time was revolutionary, but the pain remains and it is not passing easily.

    I have learned self-sufficiency through life as nothing has been given me easily. While my family gave freely to my sister out of consideration, without her even asking, I always had to push to receive what I needed. Also because I understood my parent’s financial difficulties, I did not feel right to depend on them for too long. So I became financially independent very early, while my sister has never taken a job and now depends on other people the same way as on my family before.

    But with all this, my financial independence, moving to live alone, and helping my mother financially from time to time, having my emotional distance, I have never thought in my life to say to them goodbye forever. Moreover my true friends all migrated to different countries over the years, and it is very difficult for me to make new friends. Especially to be able to call someone really close, to find someone who really cares about me. People in my country are struggling with hard life and have lost their humanity in the way.

    I know this storm will pass and the sun will shine again, but right now I feel devastated. My triumph was that I broke the chains and declared I will no longer stand this kind of treatment. The anger is still very strong in me. But now what. My phone is quiet and it feels really cold.

    My therapist said that because my mother destroyed my relationship to my dad, I have learned to depend on my mother in fear, that if I don’t obey to her, the other parent is alienated. Of course I am no longer a child and moreover managing well financially, but the emotional wiring stays. It is through our father figures we learn how to connect with the other person, as the father is the first stranger outside the mother-child symbiosis.

    Maybe these feelings will pass with the time and maybe things are not as scary as they seem to me now 🙂 My greatest fear is emotional detachment from the world, that I will become a forever lonely person with no one to love or be loved, no one to remember me. That I may become just a facebook contact to people who actually don’t know anything about my life outside some pictures and events. That if I remove my birth date from my profile, no one will remember to call me, not to think of surprising me for my birthday.

    This year is odd. I don’t know if it is the Saturn return around 30. I did not want to celebrate my birthday, so I took a vacation and visited one of my true friends at their current country. We had a picknick on the beach. Then I came home. I made one gathering with my current “friends” which was disappointing and led to my final decision never to call them again because of years of being the convenient friend for them. Then I invited my family, which was not a happy gathering as all of our family gatherings on every occasion. Until several weeks later when this happened.

    So long before things actually happened, I had a feeling that I don’t want to spend my birthday here, that it is my country, but not my home. That I haven’t feel at home for long time now, too long, going back to the times I lived with my mother and father under one roof.

    #75166
    Twan
    Participant

    Dear cherryblossom,

    Keep on going, it looks like you’ve had some important insights and that you are on your way to better times.

    Nice said about the optical illusion. I think that most of the profound insights we get are based on this kind of structure. Once you see through the optical illusion, it is hard to go back to the believes that you had first.

    Love,
    Twan

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Twan.
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