Thanks, Mike. I'm going to check those out!
And Sesh, Wow!
“mainly having to guess what normal and healthy is.”
Yup – that’s where I’m at. I know that some of my behavior is completely unhealthy, but not sure what healthy is.
“bahaviours were coming from fear…what was my grown up rational thinking”
Oh, interesting approach. I like that. I’m going to try that. This is resonating with me as I find myself lashing out in fear at times…then when I calm down and think rationally, I get annoyed with myself because there wasn’t anything “there” to truly lash out about.
“Pretty soon many things changed for me, mainly due to the fact I was finally ready to be honest with myself, as I decided I can trust myself to protect myself. I don't know if this sounds strange”
Not strange at all – this makes complete sense.
“I guess the best way to describe it is to say I allowed myself to open up to me, I kind of said whatever there is deep inside of me, it is ok, I want to find out, I'll forgive myself, I'll care for myself the way I care for my kids. Once I did that, the things just started to fall into its right place. I'm not exagerating to say it was like magic.
And at the end of this process I kind of decided the healthy, the normal is what I want it to be, what makes me happy, I don't have to please anyone but myself.
I don't know if any of this makes any sense to you, but since I did all that work on myself finally, for the first time in my life I feel complete and strong, my heart is full, and I'm just so happy to be alive and I know whatever happens I'll be fine, as I have this great person on my side: ME!”
Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to post this to me. So appropriate and right on. I feel tremendous pressure from my family to be one way or another and really their values are not my values. I’m struggling with standing by my values while disappointing them. And for whatever reason I fear doing that. I fear disappointing them. I fear losing them. I feel a great sense that I have to please them – sick, right? You have reminded me however that as an adult, I don’t have to please anyone but myself. And there’s great freedom in knowing that. I guess I know it. It resonates with me, but I’m not so sure I fully _believe_ it. And thus, I feel stuck and bound and not free at all. Perhaps working this from a fear perspective will help.