Judy2

i feel so stupid for struggling around family. i don't understand why i am like this around them, and a completely different person around friends and everybody else. my relationship with food is almost okay when i'm on my own, but with family i can't even share a holiday meal. (i'd much rather excuse myself and eat alone in my room.) my logic with this is that if they anger, upset, or disturb me regularly even without food at the table, i'm definitely not gonna be working, eating, or thinking and feeling through personal, private, emotional stuff in their presence. i can tell they judge me a lot for the way i am around them. they never stop to ask why i developped like this, why i became this way...why i'm already angry in anticipation of some sort of hurt occurring in any given interaction.

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what if my family (parents) make me feel so hurt and scared and angry i can't be kind to them? i can be polite around other people, but i'm the opposite with them.

in the life purpose course, i've finally arrived at the section on values assessment last week. i've tried to do some of the exercises but find that it's difficult to get clear on my values. the hardest part is probably that i am supposed to imagine what my "ideal" self would value, which is driving me more into hypothetical "should" territory where i imagine some picture book version of myself....it's hard to say if this would be the authentic me though. for example, i can't get quite clear on how much i actually value community. is it just social anxiety that's in the way, or is my desire for engaging with other people in a communal way naturally low, or something inbetween? it's also really hard to determine if a value is mildly important vs the thing everything else hinges upon for me. and i have the same issue with many other core values as well. i guess it's a bit of a catch 22 because you need to know your ideal self to know what you value, but you need to know your values to know your ideal self. and then this usually culminates in me trying to analyse myself like some omniscient narrator, rather than connecting with myself. any advice on how to gain a bit more clarity? is there any method to make this inquiry simpler, rather than drifting off into too theoretical territory?

you don't.

it depends on the individual therapist/counsellor and their own development. there are really good ones out there, and others who lack competency and professionalism. to label them all as enemies lacks nuance and this can be harmful to you, too, because it prevents you from getting help if you need it. if you are being disciminated against and not taken seriously, you can communicate this to the mental health professional and see how they respond. if they respond badly, i hope there's some way for you to look for an alternative. also, if something bad or inappropriate happened, you can describe the situation here if you'd like and we can try to give more specific advice.

🙏🏻😇

okay so i'm currently in a phase of figuring out what's next for me in terms of university, internships, and jobs. this is stressful in and of itself and causing a lot of anxiety. sometimes i talk to my mother about these things and she's trying to help, and sometimes she makes helpful suggestions, but every time she doesn't or misunderstands what i'm even working on at the moment, i feel disproportionately hurt and upset, even violated. even though i know she's just trying to help. why? why is the emotion there in the first place, and why is it so much stronger than any rational understanding of the fact that she's genuinely just trying to help. i feel like a bad daughter for not even being able to show her that i see that she means well. feeling misunderstood by my mother is generally so painful. it's worse when it's about important things (like applications and finding a job), but it's still bad when it's about totally insignificant things. i don't know if strangers on the internet can provide any insights on this. you probably can't tell me either. but i feel so broken because my emotions work that way and i don't even know why i react so strongly. oh, and my mother and i sometimes try having rules about simply not bringing up certain topics because i notice they keep hurting me, but then we break these rules again and again and in a moment of connection, we want to talk again and share our ideas, and then she signals some subtle misunderstanding again and i feel so hurt. it's the same pattern again and again.

@Vali2003 yeah, true. thank you:)

i find it so triggering that my family is constantly buzzing around and running errands in the house, making noise. this makes it impossible for me to rest or feel safe. there's constant potential for something threatening to arise.

staying with family again and i just can't bring myself to eat enough around them. which is stupid, because i'd like to take good care of my body and have the energy to accomplish things. makes me wonder how i could grow up in this household and morph into a being that's still so deeply maladapted to their ways....constantly on edge around them, angry on principle, never at ease. in never-ending anticipation of conflict, fights, disagreements, disharmony. i wonder how this came about, and why i didn't develop into someone who would internalise her discomfort more or could pretend to be fine more than i do. could delude herself into feeling fine, even. maybe things would feel easier around here if i was more repressed.

next day (i.e. today) the landlord forgot about us and was an hour late. then i spent seven hours on the train, with one huge suitcase and three hyperdimensional heavy bags. exhausted and very overstimulated when i got home, and it's difficult to eat. my brother had already eaten the safe food (low fat greek yoghurt) i'd told mum to buy. i had a huge meltdown (number three or four since friday) when i got into my room because of the series of triggers combined with the physical exhaustion....cause it was all too much. i feel some concern about the future; the next few months and how i'll manage to figure out what's next, find a new place, a beautiful new apartment...and to keep myself safe and sane on the way there.

(notes i took on Sunday evening to share today) stressful weekend. no surprise with that, but okay. basically i'd already told myself i need to say goodbye to this place before my parents come here to help me move, because there wouldn't be the time and space to let myself feel things through when they're here. and i knew there'd be conflict - the kind that makes me feel twice as bad when it interferes with my own emotional bubble. indeed, it's been quite conflict-laden, especially when trying to get everything in the car. my dad wanted to make some major change last minute, called it a crisis, and wanted to get everything out again, wanted me to cancel my train or spontaneously rent an additional car. it had me feeling quite tense, so eventually i said i need a minute, started running off around the block and went through the alphabet listing different animals, the way i was taught. i don't need to do this very often, but today it was necessary. anyway, we found a solution (one of my neighbours is now a proud owner of my vacuum cleaner). i decided to stay in tonight, to finish packing and to give myself some space to cool down (very much needed). probably said it before once or twice, but even though i hated this place and felt trapped, lost, and imprisoned most of the time, i am leaving with quite some gratitude, love, and appreciation. which is itself something i am very grateful for♡ and it makes me quite sentimental. i spent the first 5 years of my adulthood here (i originally fled here because i was quite unwell, physically most of all), and now we painted the walls and turned "my apartment" back into "some apartment, any apartment, an apartment". which is fine. i feel fear of what's next, but no regret about having decided to move on. i am so glad that this has been my home, but i have outgrown it, finally, and now all my energy has to go into creating a new chapter that is even more beautiful - in the present, too, and not just retrospectively. because this chapter here has only revealed its beauty in retrospective, it seems, and sometimes it takes a lot of conscious effort to see the beauty and love in all the imperfection, pain, and self-hatred i have endured here. all those days of feeling less than, anxious, and never quite enough. i am so grateful, i feel so much love, i feel sadness, nostalgia, sentimentalism. which is fine. it's the good, sweet kind of sadness now. that sweetness has been missing for so long. and i'll pour my everything into doing better moving forward. being more aligned with the wisdom of life. the game. the "oh this emotion is horrendous but what would Life, what would a Dream be without emotion?". i love that life is emotional for me, and i can feel pain without hurting (myself). Love *probably most people move without that much sentiment? and maybe it's an odd thing about me that i project so much onto spaces. yet i do, and it's fine, and i love it. (i also notice space isn't even real because space changes with time....as i found out after returning to my hometown after a five years' absence this summer...trippy.) ... major sobbing and meltdown after writing the above because it felt like a huge violation that dad had handled my stuff (connected to my identity, and i had already anticipated for weeks that him helping me move would be such a HUGE trigger because of this violation of boundaries, and sometimes i am ridiculed for communicating a boundary because they say it's absurd that i care about some things, when i just want to make clear from the start what is important to me to avoid future conflict)...anyway, he had put my decor on the bare ground and urged me to throw away some of my things last minute and decided i should get on the train with four bags. HUGE trigger. dysregulated. called my mum twice this evening after i couldn't stop feeling upset about it. the second time i sobbed for a minute straight and was glad she was the relaxed mum who could calm me down in that moment - not the angry mum who would have made the triggers all the worse. i am glad that she notices when emotions are serious on my end and she is able to respond compassionately. ...i feel sorry that she has to deal with my sobbing - it's probably hard for her to bear. i didn't even think about that...

i'm awfully mean, unfriendly, and angry with my parents. even though they are helping me move and paint my apartment. ...need to think of some ways to be nicer to them and say thank you. maybe get a small gift for dad or plan a nice activity we can do together.

moving this weekend. i'm glad to be able to leave while feeling love and appreciation for this place that has been my home for some very formative years of my life. i'm also glad that i am able to leave in a state where i am a lot more hopeful about the future than i was expecting to be, knowing - at least roughly - what's next, what my goals are, and what i'm working on.

if you allow yourself to feel your emotions more consciously, they won't build up as much and won't overwhelm you in the moment. so the task is to register and deal with the subtle anxiety that starts building up before it completely overwhelms you. you can also start introspecting in a quiet moment what fear is and what it is that you are generally afraid of in life. and sometimes the best way to defeat fear is to run toward the monsters and give them a big hug. when i had a panic attack earlier this year and a psychologist talked to me, he had a very strict tone and wanted me to recite what exactly had happened in the moments leading up to the attack. i didn't find it helpful at the time, but maybe there is something to this strategy. other than that (shocker, i know): have you considered getting therapy/counselling? if it's not accessible to you, there are also many resources online to help you learn about your nervous system and how to calm it down. you can google the butterfly hug and other vagus nerve stimulation exercises. other things that might help are grounding yourself through hot and cold showers, running up and down the stairs, looking for 5 blue things in the room, then 4 orange ones, 3 red ones, 2 yellow ones, 1 black one (or any other colour and you could also include other senses, like saying 5 things you see, 4 that you hear, 3 that you feel, 2 that you smell, 1 that you taste). ground yourself through your senses (strong smells like coffee beans, vinegar; intense flavours like chilli, lemon, or sour candy; the visual exercise i described above; or physical stuff like running, squats, hot and cold showers, sucking on ice cubes or running ice cubes across your skin until they melt - the physical stuff probably works best for states of anxiety, the others might not work for you). i've also had a handful of panic attacks due to excessive caffeine consumption lol. in case this is you, you know what to change:) sorry for the advice:)

i've been observing my inner monologue and it sometimes seems as though it's more of a dialogue. like there's the inner voice just rambling thoughts all day long, and some kind of responder going "true", "yes we should do that", "are you sure?", "not really, right?", "but i also feel that....", but maybe this "responder" is also more emotional/me trying to sense any sort of reaction that my system may have to a given statement. or maybe it's just the (illusory) thinker/perceiver divide that i become aware of in these moments? is this just me sensing the individual "parts" that my self consists of, or how would you describe this phenomenon? idk what's the broader significance of this, it's just something i've been noticing. perhaps it speaks to how much i'm generally identified with this voice in my head. when i'm at the gym doing cardio, it's a unique situation because i can basically tell myself "look, i don't even have to do anything right now" because all i have to do is endure a bit of physical pain, but finally my inner voice isn't required to achieve anything in that moment (other than dealing with the boredom). it's kind of fascinating how much bs my thoughts keep rambling all day just because they don't have anything else to do lol. it's like all they can do is talk, and so they talk, and talk, and talk. when i'm still sleepy in the mornings, and my brain starts talking, sometimes i'm more likely to see how nonsensical all of it is, and how i'm just making random statements in my head. any thoughts on this? what is your inner monologue like if you have one? is it totally coherent or a bit scattered, like mine? i know that not all people have an inner monologue. some also aren't able to imagine visuals inside their head due to aphantasia. i have both the visuals and the monologue, with greater emphasis on the monologue/inner voice.

this may be true at the moment. it may even have been true for quite a while. but it's not a universal truth about you. was there ever a point in life when things did come easy to you? what did you enjoy doing as a kid?

@UnbornTao i remember that Nahm used to point out the two mes/yous a lot.

except for a few instances of feeling energised and many instances of feeling stressed, i've been feeling so bored these past few days. so bored. such a weird problem to have.

thank you, @SimpleGuy i've watched the episode, but i don't think Leo will be mad:) he'll probably think it's good that i came up with something on my own, rather than copying from his videos. the words chosen for the values list have to make sense to me personally, and i find truth almost too abstract, like i don't even know what's meant by that. besides, there's not much use in making it all look good on paper if it's not helping me navigate my lived experience, which is what ultimately matters. being a good person "on paper" and "in theory" doesn't really do much for anyone.

@SimpleGuy infj.

@Joshe the course makes the distinction between positive vs negative motivation, too.

the song is already 15 years old, but i've never watched the video before. really sad. sadder even to know that this is what everyday life looks like for so many women.

yeah it's been recommended to me before:) i started reading it and will finish it in a bit.