Yesterday I was not truly thinking of what would happen to me for sharing what I was feeling. I started to panic. I caught it and wrote a small paragraph about it. It helped me to expose what I was feeling. It was another classic sign of codependency or someone who has been seriously hurt by others. There were a couple of things that almost slipped me into a full-blown anxiety attack from my last post. I did lose my appetite and my heart was pounding out of my chest.

I became terrified.

I was afraid that people would be angry with me for confessing how I feel. What people? I thought that everyone would leave me because I voiced what I was feeling. Who are these people? I had thoughts about people thinking that I was being stupid and that I needed to just grow-up. These are past voices meshed into one large voice that has managed to take over my own voice. My mind flooded with other thoughts about how so many other people have it all together, but for some reason I cannot get this life thing figured out. Where does this comparison come from? Who has it figured out?

Seriously, has anyone figured “it” out? 

Even if they did their it would not fit my it because I am completely different and have my own experiences that influence my it. As you can see, I am drowning out the nonsensical voices that try to rummage my mind with irrational jargon. It can take a while sometimes to get them to stop. I had another attack this morning, but then was able to drown out the negative thoughts with positive ones.

Thankfully, school keeps me focused.  

Another thing that has helped me a great deal is that I have stayed off my personal facebook page all day. I need to explain a little why this is such an issue. I believe I have become codependent upon my facebook page. I do not do this with my blog facebook page. I am like a completely different person there. Well not completely, but definitely more balanced and more myself when I have the time to post things. What I have not confessed is that I felt like I would be completely disconnected if I were not to go on there. I felt like I would miss out on all of this stuff going on between friends and family. The real fear? I was afraid that people would forget me. I have such a fear of people forgetting of my existence.

In a way it feels like my very existence depends upon whether people remember me or not. 

I do not know where this originated, but I do know that I have felt this fear of not existing beginning from childhood. Whether this is something that I made up over the years or not I do not know – the issue is that the fear exists. I know that in my rational thought it is ridiculous to think that people who love me, or care about me will forget about me. However, there is no reasoning with irrational fears. When I thought about how much damage my facebook page has been causing me, I decided that I needed to stay away from it for a while. My family is a huge stressor because their facebook life and their real life confuse me. I am unable to separate facebook world from real world many times. Other people understand this and can ignore it. It can be a cesspool of social confusion for me. I know that I have talked about this before, but this is the first time I am actually facing it.

They can play pretend and be happy on there while their lives are falling apart.

I am not able to do that. I also have a hard time understanding why others do this. People acting as if they are very close friends when they barely know each other confuse me. It makes me question my relationship with them. What am I to that person? It is all shaky ground for my brain. When I see family members acting as if they are close when I know that they are not, I get confused. Why are they leaving me out? Why doesn’t anyone acknowledge my existence? In recent months, I have barely posted anything on there and have used it as a means for my information gathering or to touch base with other people.

I wish I could understand social outlets like that, but I do not think that I will.

I do believe I may continue to be confused by it all. I have decided to take a break from my personal page and I will stick to my blog page. I like it better anyway, it is full of people that I relate to and understand much better. It feels quiet. I am feeling a difference in my brain already and noticed that I was able to recover from negative thoughts much quicker. I realized that I have used facebook trying to gain acceptance when I feel anxious. I have been going to it when I feel very alone thinking that I will gain some sort of comfort from the people on there. It ends up making me worse and spiraling into negative thoughts.

The truth is not many people pay attention when I am on there, or when I am not on there.

I am not the type of person who gives what people need on facebook. I cannot pretend I am happy when I am not. I say and think very strange things – people do not relate to that. I read things and share things that most of the people on there are do not find interesting. It has nothing to do with how they feel about me. It has nothing to do with me being ignored by them. However, you try telling that to my brain repeatedly.

It is not an easy task.

I do not know why people do not interact with me. In the past, um say yesterday, I would have been sad, hurt, confused, and question why this has happened my entire life. Today I am thinking I do not need to worry about that anymore. Even though it does hurt – it hurts because I do not understand the reason why. The “why” questions are a major problem. They cause me to hurt for irrational reasons. They cause confusion and feed into my lack of understanding. It is not necessarily the person at all it is the self-damaging questions that I am asking myself.

Confusion and lack of understanding causes my soul to hurt.

It causes deep emotional pain. Emotional pain can feel as if it will never leave. I trigger it myself and have used it as a means to protect myself before anyone else can. I have used facebook to feed my pain as well as other things like certain songs, books, or pictures, all kinds of things to trigger my own pain. At this point, I cannot even pinpoint the actual triggers of certain things. I know the feeling and once I satisfy substantial emotional pain I feel that is where I should be. This must be what love feels like, this must be what having friends feels like, this must be the only way that I will feel in any type of relationship. As long as I hurt and the other person is happy… well then that is the best I can hope for. This is why I am writing this stuff out and sharing it.

When I reread these words I actually had empathy for myself for the first time. 

If I were to read these words from another human being my heart would break for them. I read these words and cannot believe that I am actually fessing up that they are mine. I did not connect that I felt like this until now. I am seeing me as a human being who deserves to exist for the first time in this moment. I am connecting to myself in a way that I have not before. In this moment I feel like a real person.

Wow, that may give me some strange dreams tonight.

Ok, back to what I was thinking. I have decided to take control over my negative coping mechanisms. I am trying to pinpoint them and redirect them. I have been doing this for a few weeks and here is yet another one. I decided that I no longer want to go into cycles that continue to feed my anxieties and fears. It does not help me. It makes me focus on “why” questions and places me into a victim mentality without even realizing it.

I am not a victim and I going to stop acting like one. (I may have said that before.) 

The aftermath of yesterday was rough. I am still struggling with thoughts. I have a battle going on in my mind about how it is not right for me to make other people unhappy for the sake of my own happiness. I should not think that I deserve anything. Who am I to desire things and actually go after them? As foolish as I feel doing this I am going to, I am Angel(ique) and I have just as much right to be here as the rest of the world.

I am allowed to exist and discover what that means for me.

I have no control over what people think of me, or how they perceive me. I do not need their approval. I am allowed to have emotions and express them. My emotions do matter. What I want matters. If things are not working, I am going to change them and that is perfectly fine. If something does not work that is fine too. I am working very hard at not falling into old patterns and being consumed by other people’s negativity. I cannot express how thankful I am to have my brain be able to self-sooth in a positive way.

I am rather shocked that it is happening, but it is.

I used to think that I had no way to control my thoughts. I felt like they came from some outward source attacking me. I have realized that the one thing that I can control in this world is my thoughts and actions. (To some extent, I am an Aspie and thoughts can be a bit uncontrollable at times. I can change how I behave with my thoughts.) It is changing me in some significant ways. I do feel that I will have this struggle for the rest of my life, I do not think my social confusion is going to change anytime soon. I have been working on that for a good two years now and I am still confused. People will always confuse me unless they are straight forward and honest with me. The light here is that I am making progress. I am going forward and I am gaining the tools to deal with all of this in a positive way.

I have several resources that I will be sharing. 

Emotional Pain

The Meaning of Emotional Pain

Is Emotional Pain Necessary?

Emotional pain hurts more than physical pain, researchers say

How to reduce chronic or excessive guilt to normal (Video, this guy has several great videos, but I have to share. He makes a whistling sound at times and I found it disturbing and hurtful to my ears at times. I felt that his information was so helpful that I have been working through his video series with the sound.)

Here are some videos that Inner Aspie shared.

The truth about codependence (relationship addiction) 

The Codependent Life and Relationship

Pia Mellody what is Codependence?

What is Codependence Part ll