I used to think if I had a negative thought, I was that negative thing. If I had had the thought when BFF called, "Oh so you abandon me and now I'm supposed to comfort you!" Bam, I would have been right in Toxic Thought World. My IC has helped me see that we all have those initial negative responses to some things, it's how we handle that thought that makes a difference and so, as in meditation, "hmmm, there's a thought, let it go." It only has importance if we let it. We are not the thought.
About your anger, I'm sure you do still have anger at your H but do you think you might have been letting a little anger out at your BFF. You didn't feel OK being angry at her so you jumped on the other person who abandoned you.
Just a thought.
You're a trooper.
Me 57/H 58 M36 S 2.5yrs R 12/13
Let me give up the need to know why things happen as they do. I will never know and constant wondering is constant suffering. Caroline Myss
S, I know because of my childhood, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. If my mom was in a goofy, happy drunk mood, that meant we had 15-20 minutes of time before it could change dramatically. If she was angry, we had less time. The next day she'd act as if nothing bad or violent had occurred the night before so I learned not to trust my perceptions...and instead to trust my fears.
One of the ways that manifested itself in me was that I needed to be very organized and liked to know what was going to happen next.
I know now why I did that and while I remain organized in a healthy way, I know longer need to know what's next. I am more than ok with just living my life and letting it unfold the way it does.
My guess is that you have a need to anticipate how you are going to feel in order to be able to handle it.
We do what we know until we know something better. It's our comfort zone. We know how to act that way.
The thing about anger is that it should be used to propel you forward. After that, holding onto it just weighs you down.
It stops you from continuing to move forward because you get stuck there.
To me, if a feeling isnt serving me well, I find a way to let it wash over me because it isnt going to help me not to.
As long as we hold onto those feelings, we dont have to deal with any others.
I see such growth in you, S. It is wonderful to see.
S, I know because of my childhood, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. If my mom was in a goofy, happy drunk mood, that meant we had 15-20 minutes of time before it could change dramatically. If she was angry, we had less time. The next day she'd act as if nothing bad or violent had occurred the night before so I learned not to trust my perceptions...and instead to trust my fears.
One of the ways that manifested itself in me was that I needed to be very organized and liked to know what was going to happen next.
I know now why I did that and while I remain organized in a healthy way, I know longer need to know what's next. I am more than ok with just living my life and letting it unfold the way it does.
My guess is that you have a need to anticipate how you are going to feel in order to be able to handle it.
We do what we know until we know something better. It's our comfort zone. We know how to act that way.
The thing about anger is that it should be used to propel you forward. After that, holding onto it just weighs you down.
It stops you from continuing to move forward because you get stuck there.
To me, if a feeling isnt serving me well, I find a way to let it wash over me because it isnt going to help me not to.
As long as we hold onto those feelings, we dont have to deal with any others.
I see such growth in you, S. It is wonderful to see.
PRECISELY!!
I am hyper sensitive to the moods of others, make their anxieties mine (learned from my turn-on-a-dime-mother) and because if the hell of all of that, I definitely wait for the other shoe to drop. I'm afraid to also say that often when I'm not prepared for it, I'm caught unprepared and I fumble so it makes sense to me to uber plan.
Having been married to the most unorganized and scatter-brained man on the planet, I've loosened my ties on things and I'm reminded by our separation that I find comfort in order, not just because it helps me keep control, yes, but also because I HATED not knowing what would happen next ever.
There's a balance between having to be structured all the time and living by the seat of your pants all the time and I'm finding that. Slowly.
I am really unpracticed at allowing feelings to wash over me and just be. I want to get better at it but I keep reacting so fast that I don't catch myself until way after. I phenomenon in itself. The sheer speed of my reactivity. It's amazing. I'm surprised there's no sonic boom that accompanies it.
Jeez uR. "Waiting for the other shoe to drop" are precisely the words I've used all these years after living with so much fear of what was going to happen next with my mother.
About your anger, I'm sure you do still have anger at your H but do you think you might have been letting a little anger out at your BFF. You didn't feel OK being angry at her so you jumped on the other person who abandoned you.
Interesting perspective, labug. I need to think about this further. Major projecting? Yes, it's possible. Almost like I was venting about being abandoned by my BFF directly to my BFF but through the guise of bitterness about my H. Sneaky sneaky.
If that's what I did, isn't that just a little sick? Am I THAT dysfunctional? Oy vey.
S, I had my mother's voice and my xh's voice in my head for a long time. A lifetime really. I kept hearing and feeling the way I allowed them to make me feel. Unworthy, incapable, not enough.
I figured if two of the most important people in my life thought that, well, then, it must be true. Until I realized why they did that. It was how they felt about themselves for many reasons. They were just projecting that onto me.
I realized they were wrong. I was enough. I was worthy and capable. I knew that because I became the person I was meant to be. Dont get me wrong, though, I was a good person before. But it wasnt until I walked this journey that I believed it.
The stronger you get, the more you embrace the good things about you, the smaller her voice will get. And the truth is, that you have the power to silence it whenever you want, right?
Originally Posted By: Ss06
If that's what I did, isn't that just a little sick? Am I THAT dysfunctional? Oy vey.
Careful there, S. ^^^. You didn’t do it knowingly if that's what you did. You reacted out of hurt feelings. You are feeling betrayed by your h and your BFF. Maybe that crossed over, maybe it didnt. It's good to look at it, but, dont go feeling like there is something wrong with you.
The thing about allowing feelings to grab hold of you is that they are fleeting. They also dont hold any power unless you give that to them.
It takes practice to not react immediately. It really does. It is a mindset of sorts. Feelings are just part of us, and they’re not good or bad. They’re information and energy. What we do with that information and energy could be good or bad.Each feeling has a message – a message from one part of you to another part of you.
While there are many ways of responding to each situation, most of us tend to use one reaction over and over. We know it’s not the best solution, but it seems to happen automatically.But behavior is not automatic, it’s something we’ve learned by practicing.
Instead of being proactive and making choices for our happiness, we react to things that happen in our lives, and fight or flee kicks in to minimize our pain.
It’s not always easy to understand a feeling when it happens, especially if you think you shouldn’t feel it, but forget about should. Instead, try to pinpoint exactly what you feel—scared, frustrated, worried, ashamed, agitated, angry—and then pinpoint what might be the cause…then reserve all judgment.
Once you know what you feel, you can then challenge both the cause and the effect.You can ask yourself whether or not you’re overreacting to the event or worrying to find a sense of control. And then you can accept that there is an alternative—you can choose to interpret the situation a different way, soothe yourself, and then feel something different. No one else causes our feelings. Only we can choose and change them.
Pain is part of life, and we can’t avoid it by resisting it. We can only minimize it by accepting it and dealing with it well.
That means feeling the pain and knowing it will pass. No feeling lasts forever. It means sitting in the discomfort and waiting before acting. There will come a time when you feel healed and empowered.
Our power comes from realizing we don’t need to act on pain; and if we need to diffuse it, we can channel it into something healthy and productive, like writing, painting, or doing something physical.
Realize the feeling, pinpoint the exact cause (reserving judgement) then evaluate whether I'm trying to gain control or overreacting. Then find the alternative : breathe, look within, choose to feel differently.
This is my plan (is it weird that in an attempt to not have a plan with how I'll feel, I've now compiled a plan on how to handle them differently?). I like it. I'm going to put in my phone so I always have it with me.
I love what you said about channeling the pain into something productive. That's a long term goal for me. First I need to slow down my reactivity from being the speed of sound to perhaps just the speed of a cheetah. Baby steps.
uR, your words just ring directly to my heart and the right part if my brain. Thank you for your time and effort. It is very much needed and greatly appreciated.
I feel like you're putting all these lessons I know I need to learn into byte sized pieces because if I'm overwhelmed I'll procrastinate and clearly that's not helpful. You keep the wheels turning and I'm really enjoying the process.
Your reminder to me above to be careful and more gentle with myself came at just the right time. Not hear from you that this process shouldn't bring shame or regret so much as a learning and choosing who I want to be. The freedom of that is so beautiful.
Ugh. H just left after dropping D off after going out to his moms birthday dinner.
Here was our brief conversation about Thanksgiving:
H: so what do you think about having family-X over for thanksgiving? Me: No. H: ok, I guess thats an answer. Me: I though we could have our dinner and then after start making Christmas cookies, if you're up for that. H: sounds good... What can I do? Have you reserved a turkey yet? Me: not yet. If you want to do that, that'd be great. We don't need a big one. H: yeah. No problem Me: great! Thank you. H: you know I'm really glad we can do this and have Thanksgiving together and I think it'll be good for D over the years. Me: (thinking, "over the years??!") oh, I think this is temporary. H: what do you mean? Me: I don't know that I intend to have thanksgiving just the three of us forever. H: oh. Ok.
I don't regret saying it, I regret how I said it and let's be honest, I was reactive. Mi wanted to set him straight.
He doesn't get the happy family experience without the responsibility and the commitment. At least not with me.
And his audacity to think I'll cook him Thanksgiving dinner every year. Ugh, I could have tossed my like warm tea at him.
Am I wrong here?
I mean, I'm supposed to wait to decorate the Christmas tree so that he can be part of it. Am I supposed to do that once we're divorced? I think he thinks that's our "arrangement". Is he living in denial or am I being a b!tch?
Please help me look at this from a realistic point of view.
I do not want to be his bestie. I want to make that clear. He seems to be under the strange illusion that he can walk away but have all the perks of marriage (except sex of course, at least with me). The only thing different about our life now than pre-bd is that he sleeps somewhere else and is more accountable to D.
Part of me wants him to be uncomfortable, to not like being away from this family as a whole. Then another part of me says it's not my job to teach him lessons. Then I think that I'm done bending over backwards for him and doing what he wants even though it makes me uncomfortable or not at all what I want.
Hahaha. Hope you read my last posts, just bumped. I think I've seen this in all of us LBS's.
DB coach or not, all I can say at this point is that I'm going to do what jives with my core values and personal needs. I'm not going to worry about how STBX perceives that. I can't control her back, I can't control her to miss me or like me, and even if I could do a song and dance that would win her back I couldn't keep it up my whole life. So I will take care of myself and be respectful but discreet.
Now, I'm still trying to absorb the words of my DB coach when I said something similar about how "we won't live like this once were D and remarried down the road". She dismissed it and said "you're not there yet, do you want to be?" Point is some rules are suspended and it seems like limbo does have its own laws of physics. I am challenging myself because I know if I'm doing things out of hurt, fear, need to control, etc, that aren't helping me, then I need to step up my game.
So no answers, just sharing the questions...
Me:38 XW:38 T:11 years M:8 years Kids: S14, D11, D7 BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
