Women who Love too Much Community Group
WHEN BEING IN LOVE, MEANS BEING IN PAIN... This group is to help women through the journey of realizing they can love themselves. To help realize that they are capable of having a happy, healthy, whole relationship and break the cycle of abuse and heartache from loving emotionally unavailable men.
Well today I did not want to get up. I am severely depressed. I guess what my father did to me yesterday was so humiliating that I am not dealing with it well.
I have allowed him to get into my soul once again. When he was first saying that stuff, it just felt so unreal. I was able to roll with it and not feel too bad. Probably because I knew it to not be true and I was at work. But then there was the 1 1/2 hour drive home. It brought up memories of when I was a child. I was sexually abused by the neighbor boy when I was 7. Both parents were never around as they constantly worked. So It left me to feel very confused about myself. As I got older I knew it was bad and I was very shameful. But back to the parents. I never felt loved and most of all protected. Why didn't they protect me from that boy? I know the answers now, but for most of my life I just thought " because you are not worth it." So again last night I felt worthless, not protected, and not loved. I broke down crying most of the way home.
But here is what I really noticed. That when I got home all I wanted to do was have my BF hold me. I felt extremely needy. He was very kind and loving which helped. It made me depressed. It has made me re-think all my decisions about my life. It has made me go backwards in self worth. It has made me angry and want to lash out at my parents. I just feel helpless. Helpless to lead my life in every way shape and form. So I am realizing that allowing people to treat me this way is not taking care of myself. It is ME who is causing these feelings by letting others hurt me.
I need to learn how to stand up to people. If it were a stranger I would have no problem. But it is with those closest to me that I have this trouble. I guess I think they know best and I trust them that they have all the answers for me. Well I am learning that what it is is that I do not have trust in myself and I have no answers for me. I need to start trusting myself. I need to start being ok with my choices in my life. i need to be stronger and stop discounting me.
So if I tell them that I will no longer tolerate this behavior I fear that they will go away. Then I am back to that poor little girl who was abandoned by them when she was 7. And without them I may be hurt again. That is my true fear. But thinking about what I am going thru, is that any worse? Yes. Because now I would have hurt them too. This is my sick thinking.
So here is what I have learned: I have a severe abandonment issue. It makes me feel needy and clingy. I need others to show me how much they love me, because I don't love myself. I allow men to push me around and put me down because that is what I was taught when I was 7 and also through out my life by my father. Someone who is suppose to love me unconditionally. I surround myself with unhealthy people which keeps the cycle going.
Am I worth changing? Yes I believe I am but I see how difficult it is going to be to change a lifetime of dysfunction. I need to stop discounting my feelings. I need to take care of Shani.
In learning what no longer works for me, maybe I am figuring out how to love myself a little more each day.
I have allowed him to get into my soul once again. When he was first saying that stuff, it just felt so unreal. I was able to roll with it and not feel too bad. Probably because I knew it to not be true and I was at work. But then there was the 1 1/2 hour drive home. It brought up memories of when I was a child. I was sexually abused by the neighbor boy when I was 7. Both parents were never around as they constantly worked. So It left me to feel very confused about myself. As I got older I knew it was bad and I was very shameful. But back to the parents. I never felt loved and most of all protected. Why didn't they protect me from that boy? I know the answers now, but for most of my life I just thought " because you are not worth it." So again last night I felt worthless, not protected, and not loved. I broke down crying most of the way home.
But here is what I really noticed. That when I got home all I wanted to do was have my BF hold me. I felt extremely needy. He was very kind and loving which helped. It made me depressed. It has made me re-think all my decisions about my life. It has made me go backwards in self worth. It has made me angry and want to lash out at my parents. I just feel helpless. Helpless to lead my life in every way shape and form. So I am realizing that allowing people to treat me this way is not taking care of myself. It is ME who is causing these feelings by letting others hurt me.
I need to learn how to stand up to people. If it were a stranger I would have no problem. But it is with those closest to me that I have this trouble. I guess I think they know best and I trust them that they have all the answers for me. Well I am learning that what it is is that I do not have trust in myself and I have no answers for me. I need to start trusting myself. I need to start being ok with my choices in my life. i need to be stronger and stop discounting me.
So if I tell them that I will no longer tolerate this behavior I fear that they will go away. Then I am back to that poor little girl who was abandoned by them when she was 7. And without them I may be hurt again. That is my true fear. But thinking about what I am going thru, is that any worse? Yes. Because now I would have hurt them too. This is my sick thinking.
So here is what I have learned: I have a severe abandonment issue. It makes me feel needy and clingy. I need others to show me how much they love me, because I don't love myself. I allow men to push me around and put me down because that is what I was taught when I was 7 and also through out my life by my father. Someone who is suppose to love me unconditionally. I surround myself with unhealthy people which keeps the cycle going.
Am I worth changing? Yes I believe I am but I see how difficult it is going to be to change a lifetime of dysfunction. I need to stop discounting my feelings. I need to take care of Shani.
In learning what no longer works for me, maybe I am figuring out how to love myself a little more each day.
Like you I had a difficult time relating to my father. He is now dead and I had to forgive him after he died. We never had a chance to reconcile or relationship and honestly even with me forgiving him I am not sure it would have change how he acted toward me. I realize that what he said was a projection of how he saw the world and me in it. It has taken me a long time to stop seeing myself through his lens.
When we start setting boundaries we can expect that others may be a bit upset--some will leave but those who love you will stay and respect your new boundaries. I realize that the ones that left needed to leave- by setting boundaries I have not lost anyone close or important to me. There is nothing that you can do or should do to change your father but forgiveness will change you. Forgiveness does not mean it is okay that he did those things--forgiveness means that you can allow it and him to be as it is because you realize he is not needed for you to be okay. I know that everything in you is telling you that you need him to be okay but when you release that belief you will be free and that is forgiveness.
I never knew a father's gentle hand or tender kiss upon the forehead. I don't know what it is like to crawl in your father's lap and feel safe from the world. What I knew was harsh looks and even harsher words. I knew what it was like to feel small and then even that was not small enough. I knew what it was like to hide and to hate to hear his car pull up. I knew how to avoid, how to please, how to cater to, how to care take. I knew how to love him desperately and want him from a far. I knew what it was like to feel unloved and unwanted by a father. For years that defined me but not today. I am not telling you to forgive because it sounds good, or because I read it in a book. I am telling you that because I cried out in so much pain that I told God I was willing to let it all go to be free. I am not my father's little girl anymore I am a grown ass woman who was brave enough to do the impossible---to love him despite his faults, to forgive him despite the fact that he never ask or felt the inclination to do so. I am free- no longer in pain, no longer seeking to rectify my broken spirit in the bed with emotionally unavailable men who mirrored my father. I wont date my daddy again--I have dated him for 20years- I am done.
I love the part about us dating "daddy." My hubby, soon to be ex, is just like my father. I thought about that many times in the past 10 years or so. I wondered why I would pick such a similar guy to my dad when I know that that is NOT what I would ever want in a husband. And yet there he was for the past 16 years. When I left him last year I remember a last camping trip we took. It was with my parents. I remember hearing my dad insult my mother and tell me how bad she is for his life and if she would just stay home he could be happy. He was very upset and angry at her. She was just being her usual co-dependent self. Nagging him as usual. But it made me feel sick to my stomach. I suddenly became very fearful of ending up just like those two and I told myself I would never allow that to happen in my life. When I got home I left my hubby within a week. It was all fear driven, but there seemed to be a basis for that fear.
As I learn to get healthier, I hope my picker improves as well. I am seeing that my vision of love is so warped. I learned love from two very dysfunctional people and two kids who took advantage of me. No wonder I am so screwed up. I constantly look for validation in others. I base who I am today by how I feel today. I run on a self driven propulsion to thrash my way forward as fast as possible. This way there is little time left to look at me. To look at life.
I once read a quote that said " wouldn't it be terrible to come to the end of your life and when you look back you neither can see anything nor remember anything because you rushed through it without really being there?" It scared me to death, because that is how I was living my life. I have become a lot more mindful these days, but have a long way to go. I have just recently sat still long enough to realize that I don't even know who Shani is! It will be two years ago in November that I sat at my desk at my hubby's house and realized why I was so very unhappy and why I was finding no success or happiness in my life....because I really did not like myself. It was such a scary thought that I must have pushed it away for a while longer. But it's never too late to start, so here I am.
You were here when I started and I have to say that this time around your post a deeper than before. I don't mean that as a slight because I don't know what you were going through then but you seem stronger now. We date our father's in an attempt to heal the broken relationship we have with them. We want to win their love and prove ourselves worthy. Its funny that you mention rushing through life because I just had that same revelations upon waking today. I realize that there are many unresolved issues in my life- within myself that I have tried to cover up and move pass. But they are still there and they are no longer willing to be ignored. Letting go of my past and the me of it is hard and scary and I feel like it will take to long. I am resistant toward allowing myself the time I need to heal and grow. I already feel like I wasted to much time and that I need to just go go and go- but go where to do what the work is here within me. I don't want to get to the end of my life and realize that this was a crossroad- this moment right now that I am in- and I choose the wrong path. I don't know exactly what I must do to release all this pent up energy but I am willing and I am learning that just being willing is the first step and the rest will come. We have to embrace being uncomfortable, we have to embrace the unknown, we have to embrace letting go of what we believe is a sure thing. I am with you I think it is time that we both just leap.