Just wanted to say - me too on this, big time....it almost seems silly to focus on my own needs since that was always negotiable and flexible, and something I could put aside.
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Just wanted to say - me too on this, big time....it almost seems silly to focus on my own needs since that was always negotiable and flexible, and something I could put aside.
Thanks for this @PreciousChild ! That's described really well.I've been reading Heller's Developmental Healing too, and I'm finding it helpful for him to describe what it's like to not be simply trying to survive and protect oneself against threats. He was asking the reader to imagine how she would feel if she heard an intruder in the house. How do you react? You freeze and become frightened, and you scan the environment for signs of the threat. Once you realize that there is no intruder, and that it was just a cat, you can relax and go on with your evening. One way or another, you get the tension resolved. But for those of us whose whole childhood is feeling threatened all the time, everyday, there is never any reprieve, there is just a constant life-force draining series of stressful moment after another. It makes a person want to bunker down, hide, protect, stiffen up, freeze, avoid, lash out, be hypervigilant, etc. It makes me so sad just to think about it.
Yeah, I have a lot of modelling gaps too. Often, I actually think about how an animal would react, because I know more healthy-normal-sane animals than I know healthy-normal-sane people!!!! ??????????? Most people are just too neurotic or insecure or f*cked up in other ways... With things like parenting/ looking after kids, I usually think "How would a healthy, well-adjusted dog mum treat her puppies?"So not only do I have these ptsd symptoms, but I had a lot of gaps in my life skills that needed to be filled because no one modeled for me how to be a decent, kind person, or ever talked to me about problem-solving or strategizing how to deal with uncomfortable situations.
I wanted to post an update on my work on codependency. I took a suggestion from @shimmerz in another thread, and have been doing stuff with the explicit thought-intention of it is "for me", like even something as simple as having something I want for lunch or taking a shower. I've been reading and reflecting on books and stuff too, so it might be part of a broader progress. But I really feel that this simple daily habit of intentfully meeting my own needs is helping me be okay with attending to my needs at all, like a form of desensitization.
I think what it's doing is enabling me to focus on myself which also makes me less focused on the external whatevers (I'm often hyper-focused on other people's validation, other people's needs so that I can anticipate them, other people's judgements and disapproval, etc.)
By focusing on myself, I'm also letting people be. In Healing Developmental Trauma, Heller talks about how physical and energetic boundaries are violated when we're abused as kids. I think focusing on others instead of myself is a part of that violation of boundaries. Just to survive my childhood, I had to focus on my parents' needs. I buried mine way down until I couldn't even access them anymore. I was severely depersonalized and depressed in college. I almost feel like just by me feeling my needs was a trigger because that would have lead to catastrophic consequences (my dad was quite sadistic in his punishments). So having tread on my true needs and self, I treat other people's wishes and needs and problems as though they were my own. But of course, it's a total mind game trying to guess what other people think, need, and want, which causes anxiety. But focusing on yourself is simple and easy because I kind of know exactly what it is that I want and can control the actions it takes to get it. Wow, if only I had just been allowed to do that in the first place.
I'm glad you're making progress too, @Sophy. I agree that being mindful about codependent tendencies all by itself helps towards resolving it. Thanks for your insights that have helped me on my journey. I would do a hug emoji too, but it seems that my computer doesn't do emojis. I guess it's dissociative too. : )
Thanks, @mumstheword. :hug:You can make a hug emoji, it's just : then the word hug and another :
Thanks so much for that feedback @Pippi427. I wish you the best in attending to your own needs. Amazing how we can be trained to become so alienated from ourselves.Beautifully put. It's been hard for me to say these things myself. It takes some time and self-focus for sure. Thanks for helping me see for myself