|
|
Post by tnr9 on Aug 12, 2018 2:43:16 GMT
Hey happyidiot ....I get it...from one AP to another...I get your comment about the fear of losing the depth of your emotions. I was in a class 2 years ago where they wanted us to remove our garments of shame. I remember that after that exercise, I had a lot of fear...because shame was so entrenched in how I defined myself and without it...I felt naked, exposed and I did not know what to replace shame with...I think as APs, we tend to define ourselves by what was relevant to us when we were younger and part of what is so scary about trying to move towards secure is that it means defining ourself so differently. So..for instance...you will likely still be able to feel and access those very powerful and deep emotions..but you will no longer be defined by them since you will have more options in your toolbox to look at and respond to your feelings differently...and that is not a bad thing. It will be an opportunity to define what defines you as you a bit differently than what defined you in the past. ❤️❤️ |
|
|
|
Post by notalone on Aug 13, 2018 3:21:42 GMT
I get it too, the fear of losing depth, and I like what tnr9 said.
|
|
|
|
Post by alpenglow on Aug 13, 2018 14:03:42 GMT
I concur...I would be afraid of losing that depth as well. I liked your comment, tnr9. Comforting to know that we're not going to lose anything, but enrich our experience with something more (more options n the toolbox). And let's not forget that our depth of emotion can be turned into something positive! We are used to having them work against us, but it doesn't have to be that way. I can also totally imagine not knowing what to without those garnments of shame! This is something I work on with my therapist. I often tell him that I am afraid to lose my personality if it no longer is defined by all those "not good enough"-beliefs. What will be left of me without those beliefs? They are so entrenched with what my personality is today, that it's extremely difficult to dissociate those beliefs from the rest of me, or the younger me whose personality had not yet been so defined by these negative beliefs. He conceded that it was more difficult as we grow older, as these beliefs do indeed mesh with our personality. |
|
|
|
Post by alexandra on Aug 13, 2018 19:44:29 GMT
It's a little ironic, right... afraid of dispelling not good enough beliefs out of fear that the personality you find underneath may not be good enough?
I don't feel less me, on the other side. I just feel less weight and struggle. My levels of joy and passion about things haven't changed, but my magnification of problems through taking on absolutely all of the responsibility and blame in the entire world (!) is a lot less. It leaves more space to be present.
|
|
|
|
Post by happyidiot on Aug 14, 2018 18:53:53 GMT
i mean, it was really awkward the way i blurted things out but i just stopped hiding. now i can tell him any thought i have and be completely open and i know i'm safe. i feel really good about it. so i feel like i'm respecting us both fully. before i started blurring things out i told him i notice that i am not used to bonding with anyone like that and that i'm not good at knowing how i'm feeling sometimes, and then i'm not good at being true about it. So, i let him know that i would have to be honest going forward, it's something i need to do for me now that i know it's a problem for me. He responded well and let me just be however and didn't react in big ways, he was just kind and accepting of it all. I started sharing more of what goes on inside of me, and started sending him pictures of my projects and art and stuff, just sharing my day more. we talked about that just the other day, how i learned to relax and open up by being with him and i appreciate that, because he was the other half of my process. The point is you have to know how you hide and stop doing it. That's very brave of you. I definitely hid, and I wish I had seen that there was a way out from that earlier. How could I expect him to be open with me when I wasn't being open myself. There were many things I didn't ask him out of fear. I talked a lot but didn't ask/listen enough and was silent about things that were most important to me in regards to our relationship. I realized recently that I mistakenly thought that I was an open person just because I share personal or embarrassing stories about my life easily. Maybe think of it this way... That vibrancy of feeling (and I also know it well) is coming from within you. Wouldn't it be better if you could fuel your own passions yourself instead of relying on another person to trigger it for you? That's more what the goal is in feeling secure, I think. Keep your depth of passion, but allow it to apply to everything you're passionate about, not just rely on a romantic interest to inspire you. That would be great! Hey happyidiot ....I get it...from one AP to another...I get your comment about the fear of losing the depth of your emotions. I was in a class 2 years ago where they wanted us to remove our garments of shame. I remember that after that exercise, I had a lot of fear...because shame was so entrenched in how I defined myself and without it...I felt naked, exposed and I did not know what to replace shame with...I think as APs, we tend to define ourselves by what was relevant to us when we were younger and part of what is so scary about trying to move towards secure is that it means defining ourself so differently. So..for instance...you will likely still be able to feel and access those very powerful and deep emotions..but you will no longer be defined by them since you will have more options in your toolbox to look at and respond to your feelings differently...and that is not a bad thing. It will be an opportunity to define what defines you as you a bit differently than what defined you in the past. ❤️❤️ Thank you! That makes a lot of sense. I get it too, the fear of losing depth, and I like what tnr9 said. <3 I concur...I would be afraid of losing that depth as well. I liked your comment, tnr9 . Comforting to know that we're not going to lose anything, but enrich our experience with something more (more options n the toolbox). And let's not forget that our depth of emotion can be turned into something positive! We are used to having them work against us, but it doesn't have to be that way. I can also totally imagine not knowing what to without those garnments of shame! This is something I work on with my therapist. I often tell him that I am afraid to lose my personality if it no longer is defined by all those "not good enough"-beliefs. What will be left of me without those beliefs? They are so entrenched with what my personality is today, that it's extremely difficult to dissociate those beliefs from the rest of me, or the younger me whose personality had not yet been so defined by these negative beliefs. He conceded that it was more difficult as we grow older, as these beliefs do indeed mesh with our personality. I have done a number of things in my life that I previously thought were completely impossible and completely changed my identity, so maybe we just can't imagine what that would be like until we are there. It's a little ironic, right... afraid of dispelling not good enough beliefs out of fear that the personality you find underneath may not be good enough? I don't feel less me, on the other side. I just feel less weight and struggle. My levels of joy and passion about things haven't changed, but my magnification of problems through taking on absolutely all of the responsibility and blame in the entire world (!) is a lot less. It leaves more space to be present. Do you think you've become fully secure? |
|
|
|
Post by alexandra on Aug 14, 2018 19:09:02 GMT
I test fully secure. It doesn't mean I never get AP triggered at all anymore, but my views of myself, others, relationships, and boundaries are a lot healthier, and when I do get triggered, I recognize it. I am still working out the best ways to deal with feeling triggered on my own or better ways to communicate it if appropriate.
|
|
|
|
Post by happyidiot on Aug 14, 2018 21:28:00 GMT
I test fully secure. It doesn't mean I never get AP triggered at all anymore, but my views of myself, others, relationships, and boundaries are a lot healthier, and when I do get triggered, I recognize it. I am still working out the best ways to deal with feeling triggered on my own or better ways to communicate it if appropriate. Cool! Are you in a relationship with a secure person? My level of security seems to vary depending on who I am dating and whether or not I have major stressors going on in my life. In general I am definitely way more secure than I used to be though, which is something. |
|
|
|
Post by alexandra on Aug 14, 2018 21:43:33 GMT
Nope. Believe it or not, my final push through into secure happened when I was dating a kind of extreme FA (we dated, broke up, very long no contact break and casually dated others, reconciled).
I did tons of self-work after the first break up, which I had been doing long prior too, but I got more focused about it. I then found that I still really wanted it to work out with us once we reconnected and was able to see things from very different perspectives that were previously foreign to me as we worked through it. Those turned out to be foreign to me because they were secure!
But it probably helped that we were pretty stable for a long time at the beginning of the first relationship we had, so I had learned a new appreciation for that and didn't want to go back to a stressful push/pull dynamic that I was used to from too many AP/DA relationships. It was really hard for me when he went full FA and that all started up, and I was already attached and we'd gotten really serious.
Now I'm single (he's yet to face his deep issues, so there was no way to work it out and he ran again...), but I'm looking to date someone secure. In retrospect, now that all of the attachment theory stuff finally clicked, it's something I haven't done much of, and I think the timing is right to change that.
|
|
|
|
Post by alexandra on Aug 14, 2018 21:47:57 GMT
Cool! Are you in a relationship with a secure person? My level of security seems to vary depending on ... whether or not I have major stressors going on in my life. I so distinctly remember worrying about that when I was AP in the first relationship. We had a bunch of career stuff come up and I was like, how can we handle all these stressors at once. I don't think that way at all anymore... stress is just so separate from how I feel about someone. Yeah, it needs to be managed, but I don't anxiously pre-emptively worry about it anymore because I guess I no longer fear that I can't manage it. |
|
