The dreaded break up talk :-(

[D-Lish]

I have similar feelings as well. I struggle with rejection too. I'm really striving to work on that now. This is the agreement I responded to the most and it's the second of the four:

How this applies to me: oftentimes I take responsibility for my actions to a fault, if that makes sense. "Since I was left behind, something must be so flawed in me that others can see it, but I cannot." I care and I love so much that while hurting over a rejection is normal, I intensify the pain because I actually believe I deserve to be left behind. It's that search for validation other than myself and that the external validations of others are primary to my own.

 

How messed up is that, huh?

 

It's not messed up at all- that's how I live my own life. That's how I operate, and how I process things.

 

Everything you said resonated with me.

 

With regards to how I'm integrating this in my life, I acknowledge that I'm responsible for my own thoughts and my responses to stimuli (whatever it is - another's anger, joke, poop, whatever) and I simply cannot be held accountable for another person's reactions. If I know I did my best in my relationship with a friend or a significant other and acknowledge the mistakes I made to the best of my ability, then I can't do anything about how the other reacts because the other's reaction is a reflection of their own thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Definitely independent factors from me. So if they reject me, it's more likely "about them" than it is "about me." All I can do is assess what I believe I did wrong based on what I've talked about with that person, how I felt when the other person did something that hurt my feelings and how I reacted as a result, so on and so forth.

 

How do you bridge that gap between knowing it's not all your fault, and accepting it? That's my issue. I can look at something logically- but I've never mastered the ability to NOT internalize things like "guilt".

 

Guilt is such a natural reaction for me. I can change my thought pattern- and I often do, but the raw emotions always linger relentessly. I've never been able to change how I feel when it comes down to it.

 

That's always been my burden- having all the tools, but looking at what needs fixing and being at a loss as to how to fix it.

 

I just thought I'd share with you. I hope I don't attract aggressive dissenters in your very thoughtful thread. You've stripped your feelings bare here and you have my respect for sharing this much of yourself. I'm learning a lot from you and the others' $0.02, too.

 

I always strip bare here:p It's good to do so. There is nothing more comforting than knowing you're not alone in your issues. Just knowing someone experiences the same things you do- has the same reactions or feelings, really makes you feel more normal. Unless someone else admits "OMG, I do that too, I feel that way too", you might tend to think you're weird, lol. And let's face it- feeling weird is NOT good for your self esteem

 

Thanks for your insight and support.

[dreamingoftigers]

Hey D-Lish and OhP

 

I have found that people who are sensitive like us take the rejection and bring it to a level of personal failure. I completely understand and have felt in my past (in fact fairly recent past) that when I was rejected that it was because of something wrong and flawed with me.

 

Lately I just can't subscribe to that notion anymore. Often when we are rejected/abandoned as children we internalize it in a kind of attempt to have our environment that we observe remain "secure." during those early imprinting stages we are so dependent on our adult caregivers to provide us with our emotional templates and our physical needs that it is better for our survival for our brains to internalize their rejections and craziness, instead if realizing the instability in our environment.

 

It is what wired me as a child to believe that I was "bad" or "unworthy." (of course two thirty-something parents screaming it at me day after day was a

bit of a convincing factor.)

 

As we grow up we keep the same survival mechanism. If we think back to the old days where we would go from crazy father to husband, we would gain resources to share from a male to give to our young. The same security of believing something was wrong with us to chase down what may be the only resource provider in the jungle remained. We would do whatever was required of our brains to gain that sustenance.

 

It is about 2 am here so I hope that I am making some sense and that there aren't too many iPhone spelling errors.

 

Anyways, the further I go with healing and the more I start to like myself I can see that I am flawed. But it isn't bad enough to warrant my discarding from the relationship pool (by far).

 

When we come from a place of feeling ashamed of ourselves it is like we abandon the notion of us being worthy in favor of other's opinions. We are literally split against ourselves and give ourselves a failing grade. Coping with this idea in a relationship is nightmarish. We almost bring on our own abandonment from being insecure etc.

 

I have come to realize that human beings are not a "pass/fail" group. We fall along a continuum:

 

Shame|------------------|perfection

 

Shame is utter failure on all fronts. There is no human alive like this. Perfection doesn't exist in any humans alive today either.

 

Everything in the middle? Degrees of success. All of the little gaps are failures.

 

That means that we have tons of faults and flaws but we are still a certain degree successful. I think that the best relationship matches happen where we can recognize and be honest about where on the continuum we are and nit see our selves as shameful failures as people, but perhaps those that have made failing choices on the road to increasing success.

 

For instance we may be 78% on time. That means that we are 78% successful at being on time. We aren't 22% dismal failure. It means that overall we are successful but will have some room

For improvement.

 

In a relationship we may feel 71% secure about ourselves. That doesn't make us a relational failure or a failure as a human being. It means we are successful! It means that we can become more successful too. That success generally comes from trying and failing.

 

If there was ever a race that trips it's way to the finish line, it is human beings.

 

Furthermore, it is our behaviors that tend to fail relationships, not feelings or internal turbulence. It is both who we choose abdvhiw we act with that. Very tired now, hopefully not insane ramblings