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Post by ocarina on Feb 4, 2018 20:58:54 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2018 21:28:58 GMT
i will check it out. when i would lay down with my ex to snuggle i practiced being very present and it was so beautiful. he noticed too, he said that being with me made him feel calm and peaceful and he would just listen to me breathe. so it was just one small way of being fully in the here and now. doing that every moment of my day that i remember to, especially when i am enjoying something simple like a flower or a friend, really is satisfying and i think balances out the bad things we all face too. its a good way of life for me. i feel content most of the time because it’s not hard to remember to just be there and show up for whatever it is . it took a lot of practice but i would say it’s a good habit by now. |
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Post by yasmin on Feb 4, 2018 21:40:30 GMT
How true, because some avoidant characteristics can be perceived as very attractive. For example: Men often tell me they love that I am patient and don't scream and shout or chase them like other women. They think this is "chilled" and a sign I have my shit together. Really it's just me being unwilling to show my tears to anyone - which is a very avoidant behavior and a hiding of my deepest self and emotions within a situation that has very much hurt me. A kind of conflict avoidance because I pretend there isn't a conflict! Inside someone can have ripped my heart out, but I won't show them or even communicate it. I will just quietly mark it down as a sign that they are someone who is going to hurt me and I disengage my heart. These conversations have been so good for me in the way that they have helped me flip my seemingly positive characteristics and see them as the defence mechanisms that they are. Do you consciously know that you are hurt ? The problem for me is I am so out of touch that I don't even know that I am hurt. It has to be so over the top before I feel it. I think this "armor" is what makes me DA. In my 20s, I thought they were good characteristics. In my 30s, I started realizing I had a problem. Now I am really working to realize more and change them. These discussions have really made me think on things and I appreciate them so much. I always know I am hurt, but find it very difficult to communicate it. That eventually becomes something I can do but only after a very, very long time and I often then only communicate it without vulnerability and also have difficult identifying my own feelings and needs in relationships, so I sometimes become ill instead of arguing with my partner. For example I once had relationship where my partner was, on the surface, extremely loving and adoring to me and very clear he would never leave me (worked well for my FA needs) but he did not meet my actual needs in my day to day life. for example he did not go out very often with me and we stayed home a lot. His job made it hard for me to attend family events. He spent a lot of our money frivolously which meant I had to give up important things (like my car!) and I was completely unable of identifying any of these gripes in my own head until many years later. I considered myself to be very happy but wondered why I was often ill with strange complaints. I think the way we react is such a direct result of our childhoods - as DA who learned as a child not to have feelings and that no one cared etc. it fits that you don't even know how to identify your feelings. ocarina and I experienced intermittent loving behavior combined with being pretty scared of our caregivers and feeling like we had to parent them / keep the peace so I think we both have that tendency to know our feelings - but to keep them inside and feel unable to trust anyone would care enough to help us. And also to feel like our "job" is to be perfect |
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Post by ocarina on Feb 4, 2018 22:02:30 GMT
I wonder sometimes if being FA is a kind of evolution from a DA - for me at least. In years gone by I really would have struggled to recognise feelings and was to a large extent walled off emotionally. After therapy, lots of meditation, learning and living I can certainly feel - but struggle to express those feelings and often seem to be somewhat dissociated timewise ie feeling does not always follow directly from event there's often some kind of processing delay.
I did have a childhood with extremely erratic and often alarming caregivers and had to keep the peace - off the back of that for the most part I hid my feelings from everyone including myself. I would self soothe by lots of exercise, often without being able to recognise what the feeling was I was attempting to soothe. Much better at it now and in my last relationship I became something of a pro - well relatively speaking at least!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2018 1:08:44 GMT
Do you consciously know that you are hurt ? The problem for me is I am so out of touch that I don't even know that I am hurt. It has to be so over the top before I feel it. I think this "armor" is what makes me DA. In my 20s, I thought they were good characteristics. In my 30s, I started realizing I had a problem. Now I am really working to realize more and change them. These discussions have really made me think on things and I appreciate them so much. Yet again Yasmin this is me - the world can be falling around me and I will continue to appear calm and collected. Men love that I come with no drama and I can internally talk my way out of emotional turmoil and appear to be cool with just everything. Outwardly cool but inwardly often just plain numb. I like that i am rational and live life with a degree of equanimity but there is a balance to be had when I purposefully tune out and ignore pain and pretend to myself that I can deal with everything and anything. It blocks intimacy by not allowing others to support or to really see how their actions have hurt me. It also, i believe, has led me to store pain internally which resurfaces inevitably. I occasionally find myself becoming very emotional some time after the event sometimes in response to some tiny trigger. It's very peculiar.I have definitely experienced it. It's like a delayed response. I have had some delays as long as a week or even two. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2018 1:13:47 GMT
Do you consciously know that you are hurt ? The problem for me is I am so out of touch that I don't even know that I am hurt. It has to be so over the top before I feel it. I think this "armor" is what makes me DA. In my 20s, I thought they were good characteristics. In my 30s, I started realizing I had a problem. Now I am really working to realize more and change them. These discussions have really made me think on things and I appreciate them so much. I always know I am hurt, but find it very difficult to communicate it. That eventually becomes something I can do but only after a very, very long time and I often then only communicate it without vulnerability and also have difficult identifying my own feelings and needs in relationships, so I sometimes become ill instead of arguing with my partner. For example I once had relationship where my partner was, on the surface, extremely loving and adoring to me and very clear he would never leave me (worked well for my FA needs) but he did not meet my actual needs in my day to day life. for example he did not go out very often with me and we stayed home a lot. His job made it hard for me to attend family events. He spent a lot of our money frivolously which meant I had to give up important things (like my car!) and I was completely unable of identifying any of these gripes in my own head until many years later. I considered myself to be very happy but wondered why I was often ill with strange complaints. I think the way we react is such a direct result of our childhoods - as DA who learned as a child not to have feelings and that no one cared etc. it fits that you don't even know how to identify your feelings. ocarina and I experienced intermittent loving behavior combined with being pretty scared of our caregivers and feeling like we had to parent them / keep the peace so I think we both have that tendency to know our feelings - but to keep them inside and feel unable to trust anyone would care enough to help us. And also to feel like our "job" is to be perfect This makes a lot of sense. I am so out there, I don't even know the feeling is there a lot of times. Someone can say something really nasty to me and I have absolutely no feeling about it. My main focus now is trying to bring feelings to the surface, so I can be conscious of them. I know, I'm sure this sounds really strange to some people. |
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Post by Jaeger on Feb 5, 2018 1:35:42 GMT
I always know I am hurt, but find it very difficult to communicate it. That eventually becomes something I can do but only after a very, very long time and I often then only communicate it without vulnerability and also have difficult identifying my own feelings and needs in relationships, so I sometimes become ill instead of arguing with my partner. For example I once had relationship where my partner was, on the surface, extremely loving and adoring to me and very clear he would never leave me (worked well for my FA needs) but he did not meet my actual needs in my day to day life. for example he did not go out very often with me and we stayed home a lot. His job made it hard for me to attend family events. He spent a lot of our money frivolously which meant I had to give up important things (like my car!) and I was completely unable of identifying any of these gripes in my own head until many years later. I considered myself to be very happy but wondered why I was often ill with strange complaints. I think the way we react is such a direct result of our childhoods - as DA who learned as a child not to have feelings and that no one cared etc. it fits that you don't even know how to identify your feelings. ocarina and I experienced intermittent loving behavior combined with being pretty scared of our caregivers and feeling like we had to parent them / keep the peace so I think we both have that tendency to know our feelings - but to keep them inside and feel unable to trust anyone would care enough to help us. And also to feel like our "job" is to be perfect This makes a lot of sense. I am so out there, I don't even know the feeling is there a lot of times. Someone can say something really nasty to me and I have absolutely no feeling about it. My main focus now is trying to bring feelings to the surface, so I can be conscious of them. I know, I'm sure this sounds really strange to some people. It doesn't sound strange at all and it shows your progressive awareness of your own thought process and how it impacts you. My ex could never put into words how she was feeling. The spectrum she could identify was limited to angry and annoyed. It's hard to identify feelings, especially when in the one hand, those are the exact things you've spent a lot of time ignoring or denying, whether consciously or not. I very much respect the soul searching you are going through and have gone through already to reach this point. |
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Post by yasmin on Feb 5, 2018 8:32:26 GMT
I occasionally find myself becoming very emotional some time after the event sometimes in response to some tiny trigger. ocarina me too!!! |
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