How To Know What You Really WANT

how do you know when something is right for you if you were traumatized as a child this part of you which is almost like one of your senses that is supposed to give you a feeling when something is right for you it's a recognition of harmony and love with another person it's something you want it's something that's an opportunity for you but what do you do if it's gone numb or if it gives you broken information this can happen for people who are abused and neglected as kids not only do you sometimes walk right into bad situations that don't fit but you can feel an aversion to good events and kind people and living your life where this happens all the time you end up making strange choices driven not by your heart's desire not by what's right not by what's a good fit for you but usually by other people's agendas and societal expectations and when this happens you can end up with a life that feels wrong and is full of regret and that's exactly what happened to a woman i'll call christina who sent me a letter recently and here's what she writes this is a long letter by the way but i kind of needed to include the whole thing dear anna i'm a high school teacher and a part-time university professor in southern europe i grew up in a home where illnesses both physical and mental were present there were early deaths aggressive behaviors money problems and emotional abuse these were all the norm i started developing eating disorders skin problems eyesight problems anxiety and depression when i was nine years old and things went worse with time with ups and downs but never finding peace fortunately i was always a high achiever at school which helped me mask my inner struggles and consider myself normal i circle things we'll come back on a second reading in a little bit for far too long i refused the very idea of going to therapy until i finally yielded to getting some professional help when i was daily thinking about my own death and now i work with a wonderful psychologist while i'm finding some clarity i often find myself struggling with the same old problems of anxiety depression unhealthy eating feeling overwhelmed feeling unable to cope detached and unworthy to have a normal life in particular i have recently realized that i've been sabotaging myself for a long time just to name a few episodes a couple of years ago i had the opportunity to work at a prestigious university abroad but i found some excuses not to go there three years ago i had the opportunity to marry a man who had been sincerely and deeply loving me since we were 18 but again i left him and then i kept him distant every time he tried to re-establish a relationship with me the sad thing is in all those positive situations which could have helped me build a better life instead of feeling happy enthusiastic and grateful i felt angry disgusted irritated and disinterested for no apparent reason only now am i aware of that mechanism but i regret those decisions and other ones too so badly i can't forgive myself for not having taken those opportunities the deepest regret i have is not having married that wonderful young man who i'll call guy who had patiently waited for me throughout the years who had built a good position starting from scratch who was ready to love me despite my depression my anxiety my problems and my strange family when we were a couple i fell in love with another man but i remained faithful to guy until i decided to break up five years later we started dating again and later i broke up with him again but we remained friends we each went to other relationships until three years ago guy reached out to me again with serious intentions that time again i felt totally cold and distant and the more he was showing me love and interest the more i got irritated until i started dating other men who never became my partners i'm deeply ashamed of admitting i had this behavior but that's what happened now only now do i recognize that in reality i was just afraid of attachment of intimacy of commitment now guy is happily married and has his own engineering company the day i knew he had gotten married i suddenly and painfully realized what i had missed all the emotions and feelings i had toward him but had unconsciously suppressed and hidden came to the surface to crush me i cried for days i still try to soothe regret with prayers i pray for him and his wife to be happy successful surrounded by children and dear friends i wish him all the best at the same time i think that there is no hope for me i've screwed up god's plan for my life that i have completely ruined the course of my existence that i don't deserve anything because i'm the cause of my own pain i think i should have chosen a different faculty at university a different career path a different location different friends many of whom actually did not seem to want the best for me i'm 34 years old and i think i'm too old to find a good man to start a family and too old to change my job to change life for the better too old to figure out what i really want in life and often i think that even if i knew a good man i would not be capable of a healthy commitment of faithfulness of a sincere love i so often feel empty trapped in my sorrow and i feel like i have an invisible glass panel separating me from other people i tend to isolate myself because i can't stand the presence of other people for a long time and i can never be fully myself i feel i'm fake even if i'm not a liar i was recently invited to a small party at a friend's house and even though i was surrounded by very nice people who i knew very well i was totally stressed out so that as soon as i came home i started crying and sobbing i perceive time passing by my own life passing by out of my control and i see myself in a painful unstoppable process of being more and more lonely older and older with the wrong career with no family and no friends i've always had serious difficulties figuring out what i wanted to do in life both in big decisions and in minor ones and even now i often wonder if teaching is the right job for me when i'm at school i'm disgusted by the environment and when i'm at university i suddenly think after all i don't care about the things i'm teaching i lack motivation which is not helping me progress in either direction this is extremely tiring because i go through my day with the constant thought of always being in the wrong place of being unsuited for my jobs of having chosen the wrong path for my life and with the feeling that i would like to throw the last 15 years into the waste bin and take completely different decisions in every single facet of my life how can i know which of these feelings and thoughts are real and which aren't how can i fall in love again when i feel so distant hopeless and cold how can i know if i'm on the right path will i ever be able to find my way of life my purpose to fulfill my mission in this world even though i'm not a young girl anymore thank you so much in advance for your reply with gratitude christina so christina i'm so sorry that you've been going through all this pain i'm going to see if i can help you find a little perspective on this we're going to go through your letter again and i'll show you what i see in it i know you're seeing a therapist which is great hopefully that person is helping you just with the fundamental depression that you keep referencing and a lot of what you're describing they are symptoms of depression now you need to know what to do so i'm going to see if i can suggest that for you okay you said you were always a high achiever at school you had this very difficult intense stressful home life when people were sick they were mentally ill they were early death they were aggressive money problems emotional abuse it sounds like endless drama and you ended up with a huge arrangement of physical symptoms with all of this and anxiety and depression when you were just a little kid i can only imagine how hard that must have been for you so you had a coping mechanism and that was to be a high achiever at school and being a high achiever at school is a certain kind of mastery and pleasure and i always say like if you're going to have a coping mechanism some people are going to be doing hard drugs some people are going to be committing crime if you did well in school i know that that leads to emptiness and feeling driven just like all the other coping mechanisms but at least you end up with a job so i'm proud of you for doing so well in life that you've become a professor as well as a high school teacher you have been willing to get therapy which is super positive and so you introduce these two major things that you've done that you regret and one is to not take an opportunity to work in a fancy place you didn't feel like it and the other was to not be with and successfully stay with this man who loved you for many years so right out of the gate i want to introduce a possibility to you because when you have childhood trauma a lot of stuff gets psychologized and sometimes that's a little more straightforward than that okay it's possible that you had these incredible opportunities in something and you self-sabotaged that's possible but what if the problem the self-sabotage actually happened in you thinking that you should want those things and i'm just going to point to this guy who loved you for so many years and kept coming back and kept coming back but you were not feeling it for him now i believe he's a good guy and i understand how scared you are then it's never gonna happen which i don't think is true but i know that fear but what if christina what if you just weren't that into him what if he was such a good guy that you think i should be with him but i'm just not feeling it you know what that happens to everybody and so maybe maybe the pain that you feel right now is just that you don't have the easy way into the relationship that seems to answer all the problems that are confusing for you right now every time he loved you you weren't into it and it's been my experience that falling in love kind of takes care of all of that it makes you want to be with the person it just does it makes you want to be with them makes you excited about it so i i just suspect that he was in love with you you were not as in love with him and what happens with cptsd especially when you know there's so many big problems that you don't really get that validation that a child needs like i see what you're feeling little kid this i see what you're going through i'll help you deal with that like you didn't get any of that everybody was like completely caught up in sickness and money problems and emotional abuse so you were sorting that out for yourself trying to conform trying to get approval trying to minimize the drama you know very good coping mechanism for a kid just a really difficult thing to be stuck with as an adult but here you are i'm also going to say christina 34 is not too old 34 is a really good age to be waking up out of the ways that you have felt limited like so many of us including people who don't have trauma kind of wake up around late 20s mid-30s and sort of go something is really not working here because up to that point it's easy to put our faith in i'll just like get the new job i'll get the new relationship everything will be great and then we we can think of people we see around us right and they're like they did okay with it they're happy they seem self-actualized and that might be true but it's not just that we have trauma it's that people are different every person is different and some of us are going to be later bloomers in terms of the meaning of our lives the joy of our lives personally my life was really not fun until i was in my early 30s and even then it was really hard for a long time right about in my 50s there's been this huge like shift to life getting easy so i don't want you to despair that it's going to be 20 years before life gets easy i'm just trying to paint the picture for you and just show that getting free enough to be happy about what's going on right now is an acquired taste and you have plenty of time and i just want to encourage you to let go of any despair that it's too late you have time to change everything about your life your career who you're with where you live you know whether you're a a professor or teacher or not all of this can be changed and isn't that cool you know i i'm in a career that only started in my i think i was 53 when i started this blog and um and here i am it's like the best part of my career so far i finally love what i do like every single day so uh i and i i'm confident that i want to work for a long time and i'm curious about what's going to turn out to be interesting and engaging and important for me 30 years from now you know god willing that i live so long and i can still work i hope so because i love what i do so i just want to put that out there that i think when you got validation for going to school and being a good student and a high achiever at school what's the logical extension of being a good student it's to be a teacher right those are the people who validated you and that's what kids do and when i was a kid i wanted to be a teacher too because the people i admired who were right in front of me were teachers and and then life exposed me to more things and i got some new ideas and here i am but i guess actually right now i'm kind of a teacher right so maybe your life is going to take a similar turn where uh you're going to discover something new and more about what you enjoy and what's fulfilling and what you're meant to do now that you're free of the old need to get that approval and recognition and protection of doing the thing that all the grown-ups think is so great so yeah i just see that's what you're doing right now and maybe that's why the new opportunity wasn't that attractive it was going to take a huge investment of time and a commitment of moving somewhere and somewhere in you maybe there's a voice that goes yeah but this was never what i wanted to do anyway i want to keep my options flexible to do the thing that i do want to do if that's what you're thinking christina that's a good thought you get to honor that thought and it doesn't mean you have to run around and find yourself like all the people in the 60s but you can do it in a good way it sounds like you don't yet have children there's still time if you want to but you don't yet have them and this would be a really good and wonderful time and you're doing it you're going to therapy you're writing this letter you're part of the crappy childhood fairy community how brilliant of you to start getting brave about making these changes i think your happiness is right in front of you but what's in the way is the choices that you've made so far and christina there is no shame and really no problem do you know some of the things i used to be a data analyst i'm glad that i changed careers but i was having time when i was a data analyst i was having days when i was thinking i'm so dissatisfied i just don't think this is what i really wanted to do it didn't stick because when you're called to something when there's something greater inside you that you're meant to do it's that's how you're going to experience it as dissatisfaction with the best choices that you've made so far like you're trying to make the right choices but when we're young especially hopefully it's going to get better as you get older you know you're trying to do what other people think is the right thing for you to do so i don't know what the right thing for you to do is but i know how to start finding it and and i have great news it's very simple it doesn't cost any money it might but what you do is you write down your wildest dreams about what would be the happiest life that you could possibly imagine for yourself and i do this in my dating course and i have people write down and it's also in the healing childhood ptsd course not in the context of dating but you write down if your life if money were no object and your life could just turn out any way that you wanted how would you like things to be and i encourage you to be specific like where do you live what what's your daily life like when do you wake up who's in your life who's not in your life anymore what do you like to do for fun what do you do for exercise like to start just thinking what would be the ideal scenario now i'm not one of those people who says oh you know just because you named it now it's going to happen we don't always get what we want but to go ahead and acknowledge what you really can imagine wanting and enjoying and getting it on paper is the first step now it's going to evolve i have news for you it's going to evolve and so you get that on paper and then you think is there a little action that i could take today that would help me move toward that goal because usually when you are thinking of like you know great pie in the sky thinking of how life could be it's kind of far away from where you are right now and and you'll you'll be tempted like i don't want to think too big because i have no idea how it would get from here to there like how would i even support myself while i figured that out how would i pay for such a thing and you don't worry about that stuff when you're just dreaming it's just it's just you're dreaming up what would be lovely for you and then all you have to conceive of is in all the thousand steps between where you are now and where that is you know probably the last oh seven to 900 of them you have no idea what they are right but the very first one like what would that be what would be the first little step that you could take and so it might be to go online and google search something that something that you know interests you but that you thought you could never do so i'm just going to make something up let's say that you become very interested in building rock walls beautiful rock walls and they don't build them like they used to and i don't think that's what you're interested in and that's why i'm using it as an example it's just neutral you love rock walls i wonder if i could build rock walls this is actually something i've thought about i love rock walls go online and search who makes the best rock walls what are the characteristics of good rock walls that's all you have to do do that for 20 minutes today and you do a little bit of research in what you think might be interesting to you now what's going to come of that 20 minutes either you just go you know not that interested and if that's the case then you write down what you're going to do tomorrow what will be your small step tomorrow but take a small step or you might go look online at a place that hires people who do this crazy job that you think you might like or you look online at a place where you could take a vacation and just get a feel for a country that you always thought might be nice to live in or you call somebody who you always admired because they changed careers late in life you could do anything at all a small thing and you start with the small thing and you completely stop worrying about where all of this is going is it a waste of time it doesn't matter you have 20 minutes to waste on it better you should do this than waste your whole life doing something you you don't like and there's this funny magical power that comes in when you take one little action is it begins to open your mind to new things to new things that you might love and enjoy and do it just has this funny power to do that we can go ahead and chase goals and just go ahead and sign up for phd programs or all this stuff but what if you just took one small action and allowed your mind to open so the second thing you can do is you probably know by now i teach this thing called the daily practice and the daily practice is done once a day and it's basically an exercise to acknowledge fearful and resentful thoughts and i hear that you have a lot of them and you don't know which ones are real i recommend this to everybody who's been traumatized but here's why i recommend it to you it's okay that you don't know what's real and i when you said that it felt like there was a piece of glass between you and the world i remember that you know when i had that feeling i was in uh a very degrading relationship and i developed this feeling of having something between me and the world i just couldn't feel it anymore i went numb and i don't really have much analysis for that but i'll just say that's when i felt it and it changed when i began to speak honestly about how i felt what i was sad about what i was mad about who i actually loved i just started to be more honest about things i had stuffed down what i really thought so long and it just felt like that was the consequence i don't know if that's what it is for you but you might want to try that is at least with one person to be radically honest about what you want and and and with somebody who's going to assist you and maybe when you say when they say oh well what would you like to do and you say oh well maybe you know teach at this other university somebody who will challenge that a little bit and say all right well let's just kind of brainstorm a little bit what if it's not teaching what if the reason this is unsatisfying is because teaching isn't really the thing and then you go okay well what would that be and they encourage you to brainstorm so to let yourself think really freely and brainstorm honestly with somebody no consequences no commitments you're not committing to go to leave your job or make a difference or anything but to start articulating and saying and writing down and making real the ideas that come into your mind about what might make you happy it's more powerful than you think it's in there somewhere and this is the thing about childhood ptsd like all of this is your natural your natural thinking your instincts your intuition about things your self-knowledge but all of it is very complicated and crunchy because you had to press it down to get by you had to press it down and distort it and lie about it and tell yourself you felt a different way just to cope with what was happening so don't beat yourself up you did good you stayed you protected yourself and you kept your spirit intact for this day at age 34 when you're going to come out and begin to look at this stuff again one other thing i wanted to say about this guy who loved you so much and moved on and now he's happy i'm proud of you for going ahead and wishing the most the best for him and and really like taking action on that by praying for him and working on accepting that and kind of um blessing what is happening in reality that's a very good thing to do very advanced there's a second step you can do because this is torturing you and it's to stop thinking about him this matter has been decided it's been decided and there is no need or purpose or benefit to be gained from thinking about it i bet you've thought about it for years i bet you've talked to your therapist you've probably read books and done things to try to understand why why why it's just there's no why it's just because because because it's stuff that happened to you in the past and um you know you're together with us now with all of us who have gone through a rough past where we all lost people we made mistakes we had strange ideas and you you may get clarity about what this relationship meant for real to you i don't think you're there yet and i don't want you to worry about it because it's resolved he's married and has children and that's done so you don't have to worry about that ever again and you know a lot of people don't talk about this but you can do this where when you catch yourself thinking about it you go oh i'm going to change my thought about that i'm going to try not to think about that it's sort of like you know when you have maybe a piece of your tooth breaks and you can't stop feeling it with your tongue you feel it all the time and your tongue is wrong and it feels so huge and that's what it's like when you keep thinking about a sad thing that happened but losing a love that feels like it could have been great is something that happens to almost everybody and it's going to be okay like almost all of us on earth are here to tell you it's going to be okay and again i just think that if this relationship if this was really who you loved this aversion wouldn't have been coming up all the time i think that's part of being oriented toward love and toward coupliness is there is a way of ne where when you're with somebody who sort of fits the bill there's a naturalness to the way you sort of love fall into it you fall into love it just sort of happens for you and it's not something you have to make happen and i do i hear from people all the time and i've been there with people who have trouble accepting a healthy relationship and that happens too but even if that's like an expression of ptsd the next step isn't to feel all sad about that person and try to get them back necessarily like if that's settled it's settled the next thing is to heal the trauma so that you can start to have a match like alignment between what is good for you that you really want and what feels um happy and satisfying in the moment so you don't have a giant mismatch of just like here's the thing you always wanted uh aversion i'm just gonna go out on a limb and you know i'm not i can't see the future and i haven't met you and i'm not a therapist but just from what you say this is my gut feeling you didn't have a chance to make mistakes based on your own choices you didn't have that chance enough as a young person and you're paying the price right now you're continuing to try to operate within this role that you decided to play and from this role it's very difficult to make a satisfying choice or decision like nothing fits things can begin to fit when you begin to be yourself and you may not know who that is yet but you will discover it by taking these small actions if all you know today is i don't know i just know i really need to ride a bicycle today and you go ahead and let that happen and you start to train yourself it's like self i am going to respond to things that sound good to you i'm going to do that i'm going to eat the food that sounds good i'm going to take the action that sounds good i'm going to go ahead and not go to the social event that does not sound good but if you're not using any special tools you run the risk of just becoming like like a feral child you know i don't want to do anything i don't want to eat that i'm just going to eat cake and avoid everybody i've done that i've done that so we're not trying to become feral the daily practice that i do where we get our fears and resentments on paper and then and i i see from your letter you're like me you're a person who who believes in god not everybody here has to these techniques work whether you do or don't but if you do you can use the daily practice to get your fear and resentment on paper and ask for it to be removed so that the whole thing is a gesture that's like a prayer like i recognize i have negative entangled thoughts all over my mind i would like you to take them from me now and then after you use this technique it's very specific technique i'll put the link below for anybody who wants to do it so so that because so that you don't go i journaled and it didn't work it's like yeah it's not a journal not a journal it's a specific technique and then once you've done the writing technique then you do this very simple meditation and you sit down and you rest and it's the simplest possible meditation you don't have to focus on your breathing you don't have to empty your mind it's very easy once you've written all your fears and resentments you'll find your mind is a little quieter than it was before usually and then you rest for 20 minutes and then you see what happens and little voices and impulses inside yourself tend to come out a little more easily when you're relaxed in this way when you have less of this oh i gotta i've made a mistake i'm so terrible you know that's a little quieter and your mind and your brain are rested a little bit because remember childhood drama is a neurological injury so when things get out of whack there in your neurology it affects all your body systems it affects your mood it affects your your emotions it affects how you think it affects your heart rate so everything is driven by these dysregulated thoughts fear and resentment and when you can reduce those successfully and there are a number of ways you can do that if you have a better way to do it you can do that i use this writing technique when you have less of that your natural intelligence and instincts start to come through and can begin to just gently fill the sails of your life they're not like forcing you into anything but with less fear and resentment there's a little wind blowing in your sails and sort of nudging you into the right direction and if you relax a little more you'll find yourself moving right you just find yourself moving in a better direction it keeps being my experience after doing the daily practice that life feels like a current like a river or a stream and that it's it's easy and i can i can stay outside of it i can get in it and try to swim upstream or i can just relax a little bit and float with it and i tend to move along in life towards experiences and commitments that are better for me than the ones i had yesterday that i am continually growing a third thing i want to put in front of you christina is just that when we worry so much about am i doing the right thing is this the right thing what should i do what should i do one of the sad things about that is we're withdrawing into ourselves and a little bit i would just say don't worry about it too much if you are in action surrendering your fear and resentment healing your mind sharing the truth with a therapist and friends and perhaps groups progress is going to happen whether you design it or not progress is going to happen and you're going to discover it and when you're regular in these ways of supporting yourself you're just going to find that it's a lot easier to try new things decide you don't like it and go okay i'm not that let me try another thing wouldn't that be great where you didn't have to be afraid to change something up because you knew you could always change again and that way your life continually moves towards you becoming your real self that's the goal here not just to feel better not just to get the man not just to find the right job but but to become your real self and it's in using that real self and the gifts that you've been given to bring into the world where your satisfaction lies i'm not surprised it's not satisfying yet because it's just not there yet and that's okay it's totally normal for people in their 30s it's normal for people with cptsd and you're taking action now that will help to put you in direct contact with ways of moving forward i feel good about you i think you're a lovely soul you're asking the right questions about life you can see the problem right now i think you're about this far from just gently getting over that hill and beginning to enjoy and coast a little bit and discover the joys that life holds for you so if anyone listening to this feels that their childhood trauma might be holding them back now there's a quiz i add always write down below it's in the very top line of the description section there's also a little read more uh thing that you can link that you can click on and the whole thing opens up you can find more links to courses with me and if you love this topic about trying to get truer and more real and more yourself i will would like to point you to this video right over here that's what it's about and i will see you very soon [Music] you

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

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Id: lhJOlZaAuLY

Length: 32min 1sec (1921 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021