Posted by sunny10 on February 3, 2005, at 12:44:48
In reply to Re: A thanks -Please Hear What I'm Not Saying » sunny10, posted by jujube on February 2, 2005, at 21:07:50
> Wow! Thanks so much for sharing that. I see so much of myself in those words, as I am sure many others do. I wish I trust myself enough to let the walls come down and to overcome my fears of emotional intimacy. I want so much sometimes to remove my masks and expose myself a little bit more, but it is hard and I've grown comfortable behind the walls and the masks. The way I look at it now, although I may be guarded, I can't say I'm unhappy. So, I guess that's a good thing. At least I know that I won't get hurt.
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It's odd, isn't it, that we stick to the devil we know? I know all about guarded. I was given that piece to read while being released from being an inpatient at a mental hospital. The pdocs were letting me out, but the T wanted to warn me about pretending to be fine and how much more I could hurt myself if I continued to pretend.The problem with being guarded and not "letting yourself get hurt" is that hurt can always creep in from the outside world just because of my reaction to it. I could be housebound and listen to the radio and get triggered if I didn't work on WHY I reacted to things the way that I did. Because the truth of it is that other than death of a loved one, which can be grieved, we are the ones that hurt ourselves. If we don't know ourselves well enough, we choose poor companions who really don't suit us at all. Then we wonder why it did last. And hurt because our dream "of what might have been" died.
By not taking risks, we risk being unsatisfied, and unloved, for the rest of our lives.
That's no longer good enough for me. I want it all. I want to try things and take the chance that I'll fail; because all humans are fallible. I want to travel, whenever I can, after scrounging money together for ages; I won't miss out on seeing the different cultures that the world has to offer just because I'm afraid of change. I want to reach out to other people, like on Babble, because I am a people person. I love people; I'm not going to close myself off anymore because people may judge me.
I keep that essay around because I REFUSE to be that person any more than I HAVE to. The times you HAVE to? Sometimes, to save someone else's feelings I will keep my opinion to myself if I already know their feelings on the subject. When something bad happens and I can't just let myself cry at work... And after I leave those situations, I let myself feel the feelings that I suppressed at the time. Sometimes it is many hours later, sometimes days, but that is not nearly as bad as the 28 years of my life that I never let them out; I stuffed them so deep inside me that they turned toxic.
Now, granted, I am a slow learner. It took me two inpatient and one outpatient hospital stays before I started to learn. (Those toxic feelings became positively life-threatening)
But I won't visit there again. I'll check in with a T from time to time, when I can no longer handle everything myself, and work on my affirmations. (which, by the way, I put no stock at all into when they we first suggested to me) Now, those affirmations are why I am
sunny10
poster:sunny10
thread:451744
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050118/msgs/452456.html