No Stupid Questions

Support groups.

Seeing a therapist is a great idea, but most people can only afford to go a few times a month, if that.

Support groups are cheaper (or free) and they accomplish the same thing, albeit without the focus being solely on yourself.

I'm not asking for details, but first you said the issues were nasty and then you said they were fixable. That's a sharp contrast. Regardless, once one person checks out, the potential doesn't matter any more.

Another thing, perhaps more importantly, is that your worth is not derived from your partner. If it were, all the single people would be worthless, and we aren't. But you might have grown up being fed that value, that you have to get married or whatever, and if you don't then somehow you messed up, or some bullshit like that. It takes time to let that kind of bullshit value go.

Are you me? Fuck.

The best I've got is to be more selfish and be okay with the idea that people and relationships are temporary. When a relationship feels like an event and not a forgone conclusion it doesn't hurt as bad when it ends. It also helped me with grounding myself and recording my emotions are not always mirrored.

First of all, I would spend some time being single and learning about yourself. Who are you as a person? What do you value? Second, sit down and make a list of all your uncrossable boundaries. This applies to every relationship you have, not just dating. For example: I won't allow poeple in my life who hit dogs. I won't allow people in my life who are rude to wait staff. Third, and most important of all, ask yourself what you bring to the table? Learn to recognize green flags in yourself and others. Be kind, be a helper, but remember your boundaries.

I highly recommended Pete Walkers book Complex PTSD From Surviving to Thriving. Along with What Everybody is Saying by Joe Navarro. These books will allow you to start fixing your "poeple picker." So you can stop of cycle of being around the poeple who drag you down instead of biuld you up.

Best of luck!

Could you be confusing the facts with your feelings? You thought the relationship issues were fixable but the partner did not. Were they just saying that as an excuse to abandon you? You could look at this differently. Everyone gets to decide if a relationship is where they want to invest their life. If you honor their right to do this, you could stop looking at it as if the entire enterprise was a great big abandonment of you. That really does sound like your take on it. We’ve all had relationships end. I’ve been on both ends of it. I didn’t see it through the lens of abandonment because I don’t have that upbringing.

But you seem to insist that the facts align with your feelings, therefore your feelings are pretty legitimate and so you don’t know what to do. It really sounds like your feelings are 100% in charge of you here. They don’t have to be.

Granted, I never lived in any other era of human history, but I imagine our fractured society plays a huge role in why so many of us feel this way (because you are absolutely not alone in this experience.) We used to stay in close-knit communities, which forced us to hold our ties to each other, but we now have the entire globe to connect with. Consider how dating sites proliferate the idea that we can pick people the way we pick items in a grocery store - check one out, put it back on the shelf, put another in your cart, return another at a later date. It's a pretty messed up way to think about other humans, but unfortunately a lot of people have internalized that this is a normal way to treat others.

When this happens enough, it's easy to end up feeling disposable. It's important to remind yourself that it's not about you per se, but about how others treat each other. Being loyal is an underrated trait nowadays, made all the harder when you've gone through experiences where people take advantage of it.

I would love to offer solid advice on the matter, but unfortunately I often feel the same way. The best I can offer is the knowledge that you likely aren't doing anything in particular to bring this on yourself - it's a massive societal issue. Not the greatest hope, I know, but you are far from alone. I think it's important that we recognize that loyal people are out there. It's just hard to know how loyal someone is until the chips are down.

Do not have an expectation of loyalty. It’s not about what you get from others but what you’re able to give/share. When you are a good friend, even to a stranger on the street, it will always come back to you. And if it doesn’t, you still have the pleasure of spreading smiles. Expectation is the source of disappointment and fear of abandonment.

I have kind of the opposite problem. My friends and family are very attached to me. I would prefer to be a vagabond again, for a while.

I find it hard, but try some introspection to find what your mental and physical needs are (hobbies, bodily movement, experiencing nature, whatever it may be) and then see how you can meet those needs on your own.

Once you start to get a better grasp on yourself and your own needs without external validation, youll be closer to the zone of "happy on my own/loving yourself".

Then you can start to fit someone else into the picture, be it a romantic partner or more friends.

If you do have any close friends you know you can trust, lean on them. Tell them where you are mentally, and let them know they don't need to be there always, but when you're in the shits they will be better prepared to support you

And always remember, baby steps are still steps forward. (Also, if you have access to therapy/counseling, please reach out to someone professional)

What helped me was roughly two beliefs:

1. That "worth" is not necessary, life is/humans are entirely fine existing without any concept of it
2. There are other people equally "unworthy" as me (or more) and I'd tell them it's fine, so why wouldn't I extend the same to me?

To an extent, embrace it.

You're disposable to other people?

Other people can be disposable to you.

Other people treat you like you are inadequate?

Their cruelty is their deficiency that makes them inadequate to you.

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If people do not respect you, your boundaries, your minimum requirements, reject them.

Not out of malice or a misplaced sense of revenge.

Out of a safety mechanism for yourself, to prevent you from becoming too attached to people who are likely to fuck you over.

Become more self-reliant, become more functional without depending on others who extract more from you than they give in return.

You are not nothing, other people are not nothing.

I'm not saying 'fuck everyone, everyone is awful, you don't need anyone!'

But every particular person is much less necessary to be a part of any other particular person's life than you would think.

There is a happier, more stable middle ground between total rejection and closing yourself off from the world entirely, and gloming on to anyone who even just once shows you the slightest kindness.

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You've got a lot of experience with shitty people.

On the one hand, that's immensely traumatic and destroys your self image, and that needs help to recover from, process, understand.

But on the other hand, its given you a strong sense of red flags that shitty people display.

After you've processed the harm that's been done to you... view that as a kind of fucked up training guide for the kinds of people to be wary of, not become attached to or dependant on in the future.

Become a greater degree of self-reliant, capable of existing and doing more and more things, experiencing more things, on your own. This will bolster your sense of self, and it will give you practical tools to avoid bring abused in the future.

That's not to say to look all gift horses in the mouth; helpful people with good intentions do exist, and can benefit you.

But you need to learn who you really are, what your values really are, what boundaries you really need to feel like a stable and competent and respect worthy individual are.

Its a journey that lasts untill you die, not a goal that you just a accomplish at some point.

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Keep doing the right stuff, you're already on the right track. Learn, not so much to love yourself unconditionally, but instead, how to respect yourself.

Develop a fair standard that you hold yourself and others to equally. Be forgiving to both yourself and others for minor deviations from that, but be wary of those that repeatedly deviate from it, or massively transgress it.

In defining yourself, you gain identity, confidence, and practical means to avoid being exploited again.

Stop seeking the approval of crappy people. Let them go, and stop trying to think you can 'win' them over. You can't. You never had them in the first place.

I've been here too. I just kept interacting with crappy people. Good people won't abandon you.

You are disposable, and there is nothing wrong with that. Thinking that you can make yourself indispensable, is where you go wrong.

We are all disposable and pointless, friend. Even the richest man in the world will die and be forgotten unless he goes full Hitler. That’s the only people who are remembered. The ones who kill a ton.

So embrace it.

Not to pry, but could you talk more about what actually led to your now previous relationship ending? Like what was the situation as objectively as you can describe it. Sounds like it might have been a last-straw kind of thing but it would be helpful to have a better picture

We're born alone and we die alone. Rejection is tough but helping others is always a cure. All the best.

The abandonment issues are a huge challenge. Empathy by way of anecdote: my abandonment issues as a child were so bad that I couldn't tolerate the idea of limited edition breakfast cereals. "What if I really like this cereal and they stop making it?!"

It took me a lot of time, professional help, and mindfulness. Understanding my attachment style helped a lot. The super short, abstract spiel: attachment style is mostly set in stone; we can only work on our reactions. A positive inner voice is a huge step.

Everything as it is, I’ve started having issues with feelings of being disposable... I can’t expect people to stick around, like they’re waiting for a reason to abandon me.

That shit is going to happen. Stick with me here, because this is going to take a dark turn, but I found what works for me. You are disposable to most of the world. And you absolutely cannot expect people to stick around. To wish otherwise invites disaster. Graveyards are full of irreplaceable people.

You can, however, be such a positive addition to your physical circle (with enough self-awareness and boundaries to prevent getting exploited) such that your circle regard it as unthinkable to be without you. That positive inner voice you're working on... great! But it's not going to be one big thing that makes everything work better. It's going to be lots of little (and a few big) changes that turn the ship around. Give the self-work a couple years. You may not even notice the changes, but they all add up.

In understanding your attachment style, you can more easily find people who are compatible. Spoiler alert: avoidant attachment tends to trigger people with abandonment issues; anxious-avoidant attachment styles tend to burn everything down around them.

Calm your reactivity, improve your communication and self-awareness, grow your mindfulness and acting with intention. Non-violent communication (NVC) is the kind of thing that pays dividends everywhere in life. As is mindfulness. Develop a consistent meditation routine.

In my experience, very few people are looking for the relationship exit. Those that are, you didn't need them around.

Edit: forgot a word

It is a process, but try to learn to be happy with having yourself and what you have for yourself, and nothing more. Then everything is good on your baseline living. Any addition to that is a bonus, and if that bonus disappears, the baseline is still something you are happy with.

People will tell you what they'd do or what works for them. You can get ideas that way but nobody but you can tell you what works for you.

Why do you need them to stay?

I think you are correct to identify it as a contradiction, and shouldn't fight your feelings. For lots of people absence of durable connections inherently just hurts you and you can't change that by pretending like it doesn't. How you are treated is experienced as an opinion, and in a real sense it is one. Something that helps to cope with it though is realizing that the opinions about you that society expresses by being such an environment are disingenuous and deluded. So much about the way people think about and treat each other is wrong, both factually and in terms of whether it makes for a good way to live, but even if you can't ignore it you can object to it through the way you treat yourself and others.

Love yourself. It's pretty easy to love yourself enough to say yes, not easy to say no to things we should. It starts with boring, mundane things. Love yourself enough to say no to the large piece of cake and yes to the banana. Love yourself enough to make yourself brush your teeth when you're really tired and it's just once. Enough to choose water over soda, a salad over a burger. Enough to look in the mirror and say, "I'm enough." "I've got this." "Thank you for loving me." "Seems like you've got complex feelings, let's sit with those and work through them."

"Hey Doctor, everybody ignores me all the time! What can I do?"

"Next one, please"

In your experience, does fighting the feelings help? Answer not using your logic, but your felt experience.

Odds are, fighting doesn’t help. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here asking for help.

You hurt because you care. You care about belonging, about contributing, about being open to others. And, since you care about this and you’ve experienced their opposites, you hurt.

We can’t get rid of this kind of hurt. Would you even want to? Would you want to be indifferent to other people?

I’m not trying to be mean or brutal. I’m just trying to get to a place where this hurt is a meaningful part of your life and not something you keep fighting (and failing to defeat).

So what can you do? You could notice your thoughts as thoughts. You can try giving your brain a name and thanking it for informing you about the things it informs you throughout the day. This doesn’t make thoughts disappear, but it helps seeing them as thoughts and not reality.

You can also imagine that you carry your sensations, memories, moods, thoughts, images, etc. in your hands, as if you were carrying a delicate flower. This is a way to honor your life without running a way from it and also without being entirely determined by it.

Finally, you can ask yourself what kind of person you want to be, what you stand for. What are the qualities of being that you would like to adopt in your life? You can discover this intuitively by wondering what you care for. If rejection hurts, you likely value inclusion. If abandonment hurts, you likely value consistency and kindness.

The task the becomes accepting our current reality (thanking our brain for its suggestions and holding our whole life experience preciously) and taking our next step with the qualities of being that we value.

If you’re curious about this perspective, let me know and I can tell you more about it :)

I don't know if my comment is going to help or not I just want you to know you're heard.

I'm coming at this from a totally different angle, and I'm not asking you to be the same kind of someone as I am, I'm only giving you this for sake of giving you a greater-scope map, so you can better-decide where you want to go, ok?

WHEN one has no honest-acceptance in any others, THEN .. there are several directions one can try to go..

• one can try to gain belonging, while doing some work on making oneself more-acceptable ( 1/3 or less of one's effort going into it, aka part-time )
• one can try to gain belonging, committing total-immersion, possibly with a job-change, to earn ( in 1/4-1/2y, or more ) enough identity-transformation to become more-belonging with the someones one wants to be belonging with ( realistically, 3y might be required: bootcamp SMASHES identity, & it still has to take 1/4y to do it gradually-enough that it isn't killing people )
• other options I've never thought-of
• instead of earning having a home in someone-else's heart, belonging, earn a home in one's own heart: self-acceptance.

( there is a fundamental-principle that alone isn't inherently lonely .. that is actually just social-conditioning, including all the love-songs, all the stories, movies, advertising, etc.

Few people break the programming, however.. )

Another point is that co-dependency is what's normal, nowadays, but Stephen R. Covey ( 1st, not 2nd or 3rd: apparently they proliferate, when you aren't watching 'em : ) spoke on interdependency..

I'm not sure if he understood just how independent people have to become, in order to be independently collaborating in inter-dependency..

but it's turned-out to be real & significant.

People who're codependent .. simply aren't standing on their own, collaborating autonomously, independently, as capable individuals..

& society's wired to push codependency, because dependent-populations are more manipulatable, & therefore more easy-prey, if you see..

People who are self-determining .. are much tougher to feed-on, for economic-parasites, ideological-parasites, or "pushers" of other kinds..

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While nice in theory, that doesn't help anyone understand how to earn such a transformation, right?

Simple: exactly as the root-guru of the Christians told us, face into karma .. essentially, getting-addicted to growing-up!

He phrased it "take up your cross", but the meaning's clear.

( what a soul sows, that soul reaps: karma. there's no escaping his meaning, once one understands that frame-of-reference )

So, what facing-into-karma would work-on-perfecting your greater-meaning?

I'm not asking you to tell me, any reader, I'm asking you to dig, & dig, & dig, until YOU understand what your greater-meaning is..

& once you've identified it, then make it ( if you want to ) your mission to get addicted to grinding-through your unconscious-ignorances, getting addicted to the realizations, to the growing-up process, & to the greater-freedom-of-self that that-process earns.

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Here's an orthogonal tip:

What makes a good partner for someone?

Some want a doormat, so their ego can feel "big".

Boring.

Some want to be pushed by a domineer, until they reach something deep in themselves, that they can't reach any other way..

Dig this, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus

See how what one wants in a partner changes, as one grows-up?

The final condition in that is wanting someone to be collaborating-with, while earning OUR way into realizing-our-souls, together..

A partner, not a use/having relationship.

Can you understand that if someone I treasure hates/despises me because of misunderstanding, or because of harm in them, or because of how wrong I've been, or ANY reason, that it's fine?

So long as they're being true to themselves, then they're progressing, & their-progressing makes me happy.

If circumstance ever grants that they value me, fine. If not, that's fine too.

They aren't mine.

NO-one is "mine", except me, see?

Independence, having broken the belonging-drug's geas, can feel incredible.

& simply treasuring someone, regardless of where they are, or what they feel about one, wishing them well, wishing LivingSpirit to be taking-care-of-them..

it's good for one, see?

Not as good as absolute-altruism, but I'm not there yet, & that's fine..

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So, all of this is simply to provide you with a greater "map" of the available territory, which the social-programming-management-process won't ever tell anybody about..

& if you do a good mind-map of your current condition, & a good mind-map of what you want you to become, & you do a good here-to-there-transformations diagram, identifying what steps are required in each dimension, then you can progress more easily..

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I'm recommending a very-few utterly-glorious books, for liberating your life from unconscious-dysfunction-habits that we were all programmed into:

Logan, King, & Dr. Fischer-Wright's book "Tribal Leadership", on the 5 culture-process levels ( street-gang/mass-shooter is 1, "LIVING IS SELF-INHERENTLY AWESOME" is 5, btw: 2 is the default )..

I'd require all highschoolers to read that, so as to OWN their own live-quality more, & not be so helpless in the social-processing-machine..

Kegan & Lahey's book "Immunity to Change" which is on the mechanism our unconscious-mind has in it to fight off growing-up ( hence the title ), so as to protect dysfunction .. & how to simply get past that dysfunction-protection-racket that we've got in us..

Schneider's book "Lead Right for Your Company's TYPE" I also recommend, because we're all applying the wrong processes onto the projects/works that we're trying to get done, by default, & THAT is obliterating our life-opportunities from our world!

Schneider puts it upside-down ( most authors who have profound-insights do 1 or more things dumb/wrong, in their books.. I hope I outgrow that, but .. bleah, on that unconscious-mind habit of making-mistakes! it's quite noticeable in my writing ), putting the pie-in-the-sky Potential on the bottom, & putting the concrete Actuality on the top, of the 2x2 Matrix, but uprighted it's brilliant what he gave us:

| | People-Centric | Task-Centric | |

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| | Pie-in-the-sky Potential | Quadrant 1. Growing, Learning, Healing school, hospitals, mentoring, life-coaching | Quadrant 2. Science, Discovery, Exploring, Driven-Excellence products/services | | Concrete Actuality | Quadrant 3. Consensus, Urban-Planning, Mediation | Quadrant 4. 6-Sigma, command-and-control, Manufacturing |

Notice that in an industrial-accident, in a factory, then suddenly we'd be in ALL OTHER quadrants, except Quadrant-4:

( I'm thinking of that video I saw of a German steel-mill, with a giant noodle of brightly-glowing steel filling the plant, setting fire to anything it could, filling the place FAST, as the ur-example of "industrial accident", for this example )

• Quadrant-1 getting the retrieved-casualties as healing as one can..
• Quadrant-2 discovering what the hell's the cause of the messing-everything-up
• Quadrant-3 gaining consensus on "it's been shut-down", with no people left on the wrong page..

Why would knowing which frames-of-reference are valid for each of those quadrants affect one's ability to have quality-relationship?

The more-completely one's work takes care of itself, because one is now solving the right problem ( wisdom: solving the problem quickly is intelligence, but solving the right problem is wisdom, see? ) makes work more effortless, & that makes more of one's effort be available for relationship!

I don't understand why people don't understand that principle better..

Right infrastructure reduces wasted-effort for all who are affected by that infrastructure ( I'm including software, legislation, public-works, community-harmony, everything we live among, rely-on, work-with, etc, as infrastructure ).

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So, here's the links to those 3 books, in case you, or any reader, want to earn greater freedom-of-your-life from frustrations:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/tribal-leadership-revised-edition

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/immunity-to-change-1

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lead-right-for-your-company-s-type-1

& no, I'm not an "affiliate" of any book-company, any for-profit operation, & my not-for-profit hasn't been started yet ( been working on understanding it for decades ), so all this is just-me recommending stuff.

Good books multiply one's capability!

Oh, that too!

Please also read John Truby's book "The Anatomy of Genre", to understand how we program our unconscious-minds with the 14 genres, which genre works-on which dimension-of-our-unconscious-mind, so maybe you can progress quicker in earning YOUR essence & meaning..

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-anatomy-of-genres

He makes 2 ( plus? ) noticeable mistakes in his book, but he's of US culture, so .. those are kinda expected:

1. the true Archetypal Village isn't the Wild West Village of the late-1800's US, rather, it is the Mother Tribal Village, of the entire previous 2-million years, in the tribal lands of the world.

He grew-up with westerns, so .. that pushed him into wrong-framing..

2. the root of humor is the moebius-strip, aka the strange-loop, not the put-down/drop, as US & English cultures have it.

I'd never have clued-in to the truth, but Hofstadter's GEB identified this back in the last century.

Being walked around in a circle.. but now one's upside-down for some reason??

THAT is the "shape" of humor.

Surprisingly-violated-expectations!

Aside from those 2 botches, that book of Truby's is massive psychology advantage for anyone wanting to understand what their own unconscious-mind's working-on, what others are working-on, what one's culture considers meaningful, etc..

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So, anyone who wants to dig-in, enjoy!

All paths are valid, just some are more-efficient, others more-effective, etc.

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