Posts Tagged ‘feelings’

It is amazing how much I can talk and still have trouble communicating. I am extremely bad at communicating my needs and wants. It may come from the fact that I don’t even know what I want! I just hate that people assume they know what I want all the time.

I try to communicate with people the best I can. But how do you tell people what you need so that they understand. And what if they never do? What do you do then? I am always oscillating between trying so hard not to hurt anyone’s feelings and blowing up because I don’t feel heard.

I am currently reading Eat Pray Love, and I just finished the first section of the book where she goes to Italy in search of pleasure. What is that exactly? Just like the woman in the book, I think I am at a point in my life where I am trying to figure that out. I just don’t have the money to go to Italy for months an figure it out. So I’ll have to keep going and figure this out while living my life and doing what I have to do.

Hopefully once I figure it out, I’ll be able to express myself better. This may help my various relationships immensely!

Since I moved out, I find that I have more energy. I don’t sleep as much or at all during the day and I am actually making plans, keeping myself busy and taking care of myself. Could distancing myself from my relationship have caused that? The article also mentions the importance of communication though, and in that sense, we are absolutely horrible, me and D. with this. We don’t really talk. We never solve problems. Everything I say is always seen as a critique and it only helps to keep us apart more and more. We actually seem happier when we DON’T spend time together… could that mean something? Here the article that caused this reflection.

Healthy Relationships Create Healthy Life!

Is your relationship with your significant other, mother, father, or friend making you sick? Believe it or not, there’s scientific evidence to suggest that our relationships can actually contribute to illness. Therefore, in order to achieve a healthy life, it is important to make our relationships healthy.

There have been studies to suggest that people who are married often tend to live longer. Experts reason that marriage provides a nurturing environment for individuals, enabling them to better fight off disease. The support of a loving spouse can make all the difference in the world, especially when one is facing a serious illness.

Maintaining healthy relationships can help to lower our stress. Stress is considered to be an important contributing factor for illness. By improving our relationships with other peopleparticularly with family memberswe can cut down on the stress which can sap our strength, making it difficult for us to ward off infections.

But it is not enough to know that healthy relationships can make us healthier. It is also critically important to know exactly how we can ensure that our relationships are healthy. Psychologists contend that the key ingredient of a healthy relationship is communication. Unless we feel safe to communicate our feelings, we will be unable to thrive in our relationships. If you don’t like to confront people, you might find it more difficult to communicate. Therefore, you must learn effective communication skills.

Before you can communicate in your relationships, you must know your goals and desires. In other words, you have to know what you want before you can articulate it to another person. You should try to keep an open mind, listening carefully to what the other person has to say. If you are bothered by a person’s behavior, try to avoid saying something like, “You are always late.” Instead, say something to the effect that, “When you are out and I don’t hear back from you, I worry.” That way, you are telling the other person how his or her behavior makes you feel. It is also vitally important that you admit your mistakes and apologize for them. Such a simple action shows that you are really concerned about the other person’s feelings.

Healthy relationships also depend upon setting limits for yourself, and respecting the limits of other people. You should never tolerate abuse in a relationship, whether it is emotional abuse or physical abuse. At the first warning signs, you should seek distance from the abuser. Such distance is critical for your emotional well-being and long-term health.

Ray Kelly is an Exercise Scientist with 15 years experience in the health and fitness industry. Check out his Biggest Loser Australia Review or http://www.free-online-health.com

As I try to figure out how to rebuild my life I have come to a realisation. I’m exhausted because I keep trying to teach others to change. I keep hoping and wishing that others will get it, that they will treat me the way I want to be treated. It never happens and that creates resentment, pain and sadness. As read more and more books and keep on with my therapy and I have realised that this method has never worked for me. I have therefore set two new goals for myself:

I will stop doing things for others, hoping to get recognition or appreciation. I will evaluate the things I do and ask myself if Iwant to this for the other person because it makes me happy or because I feel like I need to. This sense of obligation just makes me resentful when it is not recognized or appreciated. This one will not be an easy one to apply because saying no is difficult. I like helping others and most of the time, it makes me feel happy to do it. But if my actions stem from some kind of feeling of obligation, if I feel like I have no choice, if guilt or fear of hurting the other person by saying no is what drives me, it will only create resentment. I’m happy to help a friend move, I’m happy to do the laundry for my family because I love them. I don’t feel resentful and I don’ t get angry for doing it. It does not create a buildup of resentment that will later on explode. But I will learn to say no. I will not put my life aside and make myself miserable just because I want to please others… alright, I know, easier said than done. But it’s a start!

I will teach others how to treat me. I have, for too long reacted in the same way. I get angry, voice my emotions, hurt the people around me when my tyrade, but in the end, I give up and do what people want. I have therefore taught people that it is most of the time, scary to ask me something but that if they wait it out, I’ll give in. This of course are for things that have an impact on me. I’m not talking about asking for a glass of water here! It is asking for a sacrifice, for me to put something I love or like aside for the benefit of somebody else. This is the way I fight with my man as well. It does not lead to a compromise, it leads to him being afraid to talk to me and me feeling like crap after blowing up and giving in. Then comes the resentment because I feel cheated even though I’m the one who gave in and the next time I am asked something, it blows up. I will therefore respect myself. I’ll take a time out when something is requested and see how I feel about it. I will decide of an option that is best for me and I will trust that my man loves me enough to either find a compromise that fits both his needs and mine or will respect how I feel. I will also trust that he will still love me, even though I am not doing exactly what he wants.

All of this is not as clear as I would like it to be. But basically it means respecting myself so that I teach others to respect me. I have to start somewhere and the only person I can really work on is myself!

I’m new at this stepfamily stuff and I can’t say I like it. Day to day life has gotten better. The kids get along, the parents get along when it comes to the kids, rules seem to be established for the household. Overall, the routine of day to day life is working. But the first family, the initial family, the sacro-saint family that came before we did, always disrupts everything! There is this need to make sure the first family is happy, is getting along that makes the second family feel left out, pushed aside.

Decisions as insignificant as buying skates for the winter turn into this HUGE thing. Negotiations about who will pay what, where the skates will stay, how the skates will be exchanged weekly, what rules there will be about the skates… Just little decisions take over everything! The first family decides, the second family follows along.

It is especially difficult when you have a child of your own that has nothing to do with this first family. That child always comes in second. And I’m not even going to talk about where the stepmother fits in! WAY WAY WAY LAST! The decisions are first made in the interest of keeping peace between birth mother and birth father, then in the interest of the child who has suffered through this horrible ordeal that is call divorce, then, if there is still room for it, the interest of the other child in the family, the child with no ties to the original family. You would think that my needs and wants would come after that, but they never do.

I’m 32 years old. Something like a birthday should not mean anything to me, right? But I’ve worked hard this year for this so-called family. I work hard and push myself aside so that this new family works and that the orginal family doesn’t fight. You would think something like my birthday could be important? I’m not asking for much. I didn’t want a big party or anything. Just a quiet little supper with the people I love the most and care for the most. A stressfree day where I could be surrounded by people I know love me and people I feel confortable around. But again, the original family comes first. It is the birthday of the son of birth mother. So move aside, temporary worker. The permanent employee has come back to take its post! Move aside replacement family. Move aside the not a mother, not a wife, not a much of anything.

I’m at a point in my life where I need to rethink everything. As a young woman, I had dreams, like everybody else. To me, life was simple. I grew up never feeling like I really had a home or a family. It hurts my mother deeply when I say this. She worked as hard as she could to create a home for us. But to me it wasn’t enough. She met a wonderful man and he filled in a place my dad never wanted to fill. But he wasn’t my dad. The one who was supposed to love me unconditionnally did not. I spent my whole teenage life longing for something else. For a family of my own. I knew I would love my kids unconditionally. I wanted to find a dad that would love them just the same. I wanted to find a man who would never leave, me or his kids.  Career wise, I did not care about fame and fortune. I wanted to find a fulfilling job. One that would give me enough money to live and enough time to devote to my family.

Things just didn’t turn out this way. I was blinded by wanting this family, so much so that I forgot to choose carefully. I recreated for my daughter a situation just as bad as the one I went through. Her dad took off when I was pregnant.  She feels left out, just like I did … and still do. I tried, like my mother did, to make up for this. I tried to be extremely present. But it wasn’t it. I had nobody to share the joy and the pain with. I was surviving. Struggling. I found a job that was exactly what I had planned. It gave me enough money to put food on the table and enough time to be present. But that’s all I had. No one loved me and my daughter enough… something was missing.

This time, I found a man who embodies everything that I should have looked for in the first place. But I’m just too late. The dream I had of a family, he has had already. Even though his family is broken, it satisfies him. It’s not what he is looking for anymore. The sadness I feel right now is immense. I feel lost. Completely and uterly lost. I will never be the type of mother and wife I wanted to be. I would need to focus on a career that fulfills me, but I just don’t care about that. I don’t want to value myself by how much money I make . I don’t want to wait for a boss to tell me I’m doing a good job. I want to feel it every day because my daughter is happy. Because my husband comes home every day. Because my newborn baby looks up at me and needs me.

I was heartbroken when everything fell apart with my ex. But never as much as I am right now. I still had hopes back then. I still thought that a family was possible. I know that what I have is a sort of family. But it will never be it. When my daughter graduates from universtity, I will be the only one with that immense sense of pride.  Yes, my man will feel happy for her, but never the way he will feel when his own son will graduate. We will both be grandparents, but separately. He will share his joys with his ex, the mother of his child. The one he lived the birth of his son with. They will share this feeling. They will know exactly how the other person feels. I will never have that. My daughter will never have real sibblings. She will never share that bond with anybody else. His son will, he already has a brother, a real one.

I know I should not place those barriers. Stepfamilies work out all the time. To my man, his failure came at the end of his marriage. Mine is happening every day. I will never get my second chance. It is just too late. My life will consist of doing my best for my daughter and being the best stepmom I can be. To love my man as much as I can. But I will never be content. Every day is just another day.  I don’t look forward to anything. I just live because I’m still breathing….

Alrighty, I’ll try this one. But I’ll try to be the wise woman, because right now, I’m still fluttering between stages one and two according to this article.

I apologize for everything all the time, at other times I feel so mad that I refuse to apologize. Let’s see if this helps my anxiety!

Health Benefits of a Sincere Apology

We all know the feeling. You gossiped and the person found out. You helped yourself to something that wasn’t yours (such as someone’s spouse). You stole. You lied. You read your child’s diary. It never sits quite right — you toss, you turn in bed, you have that sinking feeling in your chest, you eat, you drink too much, you get headaches.

Carol Orsborn, PhD, a research associate at UCLA and author of 15 books including Nothing Left Unsaid: Words to Help You and Your Loved Ones Through the Hardest Times and The Silver Pearl: Our Generation’s Journey to Wisdom, tells WebMD about a woman she met while writing the latter book.

Barbara, age 50, was going through a divorce and her brother was her mainstay, talking her through lonely nights on the phone. Then she met the man of her dreams and moved away. She got so swept up in her new life, she put her brother on the backburner. She missed his birthday.

That’s when the sleepless nights began. She was embarrassed to even call. She knew he would be hurt — but would he be angry? Eventually, she picked up the phone. Yes, he was hurt, but he said he understood. She started sleeping again — and talking to her brother.

Orsborn surveyed 100 women in the baby boomer group for The Silver Pearl. “These were women who were role models with a positive attitude, whether or not they had any money,” she says.

A key characteristic was their ability and willingness to clear up unfinished business, she notes.

 http://women.webmd.com/guide/health-benefits-of-sincere-apology?ecd=wnl_wmh_112309

I’ve always been a passionate person. Whether it be for my job, for a hobby or in a relationship. I start out so passionate and so intense. If you hire me, I’m your best salesperson. The problem is, that passion fades… Then I become bored.

I’ve been wondering how to change this. I want to learn to enjoy life’s daily little pleasures and not just long for intensity. I’ve always felt the happiest when things are intense. I’ve longed for big shows of affection. I’m satisfied in relationships when the other person is demonstrative, intensely demonstrative. When I get sent hugh bouquet of flowers. When he grabs me and dances in a restaurant in front of everyone. To me these big gestures meant love. I’m learning that this might not be the case. Love may be the person who stands by you, even when you’re annoying. But I still long for those intense moments.

With others, I’m the same way. I look for those huge compliments at work. I look for huge recognition from students and employers. I’m at my happiest in huge moments like Christmas and birthdays. I’m at my happiest when I’m the host of the party and I feel appreciated. But these moments are not only scarce, they are often not the way I want them to be.

This Christmas will be the saddest I’ve ever had. Finding the strength to still see the excitement in it is so difficult. I long for that day to be happy but I just don’t know what that is anymore. I feel passion for nothing anymore. I feel like passion is what is hurting me and I don’t want to feel passionate anymore. I just don’t know how to go from this intense, passionate personality to the person who accepts life, accepts what she cannot change and can still find ways to enjoy life. I just don’t know how to become that person…

Why is it that some people are destined to be the First Lady and others are just second best. I want to be the one winning the gold medal, because who remembers the one who won the silver medal… I sure don’t! They don’t get the glory, the fame, the million dollar contracts etc. They get to stand there next to the gold medalist on the podium.

This is how I feel about life. I’ve never been the first lady. I’m the difficult one, the cute one, the nice one, but never the First Lady. I’m never the one. Whether it be in my family or my personal life I’m never IT. I’m the in-between girl. I’m the bridesmaid, never the bride. That’s why I get so angry at life. This is why I’m depressed. The unfairness of life has killed my spirit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loved. People are actually nice to me. But I’ve always wanted to be loved for what I think I am worth. But others always ask me to be patient, understanding. The good sister, the good daughter, the good girlfriend who understands how difficult it is for everyone else and will be nice. But my needs, my wants… they are rarely put first.

So, I’ve basically given up quite a few years ago. I stopped putting myself first. I still have those moments of frustration where I wish I was Cinderella, but I’m the ugly stepsister… as I said. … always a bridesmaid, never a bride. I’m not the one people pine after, I’m the one they settle with because it’s comfortable. I’ll be nice, patient…

But I’ll never be the First Lady…