u/SillyBoyYe

Just realized this yesterday. When I was early in my healing, it's like I jumped between extremes. Don't want thoughts or feelings. After years of practice though, I finally see it. It's just about playing a balancing act between emotion, feeling, and thought. You're supposed to be patient and give room. Rumination for example was just a way for me to not give any room to my emotions.

Now it sort of clicks.

I've been working on my mental health for a long time. I'm able to observe, leave space for my emotions, and process things much more effectively. The key word is observe. I've come to some "root" logical patterns I have which I use to keep me where I am and not moving.

Lets take my physical body. Recently I was broken up with and have been exploring my patterns around worth and self worth. Primarily how I related to it. In another thread, someone mentioned going out with others helped them feel like they're "worth something". This is actually somewhat of my problem. For example. Right now my head imagines a sexy, hot, packing 6 abs, white teeth (I mean like pristine), hard working, life fully put together, always dopamine happy man and then my ex there happy with him. You can put any of my past ex's in that spot. The pattern is the same.

I'm a semi fit dude. Tall. People say im handsome so i'll believe them. I find myself handsome with the correct haircut. Other times, use mindfullness to just enjoy myself. Girls do find me attractive and hit on me. Give me 1.5 years more of diligent working out and definitely will be very very sexy. However. Another part of me hates that the working out + sexy + all of that is done for someone else. Like it's not from my own soul but for the others. People and all that. As if the love I want is conditional on me being hot. So i'm stuck in this mid stage where I don't want to get even sexier. It feels like it's not something from my heart?

Something in me wants more ownership over my own body and personality. At the same time a part of me wants to work on myself. Then another part says "Ahhh the girls man they will be all over you, you look so good". Then I stop. Because I don't want to be doing things for others.

Even after all this time. Sometimes. Rarely though. But still sometimes I get a memory of the good times. Makes me cry. It's not full memories though, just snippets.

Sometimes I wonder what they're doing. Its been a couple years now. Almost near the finish line I guess.

I'm healing and growing a lot. This has been already 2 3 years past? Lost count. I'm noticing though just how many small tiny weird wounds / triggers I get. Feeling them through. My body has a couple memories now which can come up rarely but I get a shudder.

Been noticing this observing my patterns. My body seems to signal me an emotion which gets translated into narration. The trigger for said emotion is completely different or somehow adjacent to my narration.

I’ve struggled with OCD for a long time. Now I’m beginning to notice how my body sends valid signals. My narration of those signals though is adjacent at best.

Maybe why it feels so “real” but confusing at the same time. Just some thoughts.

I think for my own mental health I’m not going to surf in this subreddit or watch videos related to this subject. I’m trying to cope with missing her, like the final vestiges of me holding on. It’s over though.

I was an anxious preoccupied type of person for a very long time. Only recently does it seem like I’m handling this stuff much better. It took me a solid 8 - 9 years to reach this place though.

These relationships hurt. They don’t make much sense unless you understand your ex a bit more. So these places can be good for that. Also unhealthy though because it keeps you stuck in your own loop.

It was never these subreddits or videos that led me to understand my ex better. Oddly enough, healing myself and finally recognizing the protective self I have, made me empathize with their protective self.

I wasn’t entirely sure through this relationship how they operated. Only gleaned bits of information here and there. By the end of the relationship I’m pretty confident I see their pattern wholesale. Honestly could piece together probably a full map.

Their anxiety led them through a whole ROCD path of fighting themselves and not really communicating much of what was happening inside of them. A lot of times it felt like I was trying to fix a figment of something they in their head conceptualized. Unspoken expectations, intense shame about themselves, and just attachment fear overall.

They have a protective self that formed because of early emotional neglect. I really did relate to her on that. For me maybe I just went more FA.

I’d recommend anyone really struggling to take a look at the book “Codependent no more”, “Whole Again”, mindfulness techniques, and naming your emotion, feeling, and thoughts. Not an overnight fix, it takes time and facing difficult wounds of your own.

I’m left with an emotion of sadness. It really sucks to see her struggle that much. At the same time there’s nothing I can do to actually help them. I still hold a lot of love for her. Wish her the best. Wish you all the best too. So many hurt people just existing in this world, show some love to yourselves. It’s hard enough as it is.

Used to be excited about coming to work. Had a vision and goal. Worked my ass off, held together a really toxic team through a tough transition period. I’ve seen others have nervous breakdowns at this job. Had VPs telling me minute to minute how much money they will lose if I don’t fix operations. Im in IT. Came in as a sys admin, organized and stabilized the whole mess.

Now they got the CEOs friend coming in. I’ve prepped him, gave character profiles, basically babied this dude through his on-boarding.

The one thing I had at this job was that they promoted me to a lead with a small pay bump. Now this new CTO wants to demote my job title to system admin again. Not even senior. Basically “teams not big enough for a lead”. Nevermind that I had to baby this whole daycare of horrible toxic managers and my own team which was at each others throat,convincing them all onto a 90 day transition plan which somehow WORKED.

Also the job title demotion? I still have all the same job stuff as a lead. The new CTO even asked AI in front of me and it said my title should be LEAD. I’m livid. I poured my heart into this.

I just don’t want this anymore. I’m pissed. Don’t want to show up like I did before. I’m jaded and can’t fall asleep. My brain just keeps ruminating and not going silent about all the anxiety inducing things I need to do to keep this machine afloat.

I genuinely want to quit but in this tech market and the way recruiters are they will just assume something bad about me and reject my resume. I feel so stuck. Like I can’t get another job but also can’t quit this one.

I've been listening to Whole Again. It really resonated with me. I have tools to cope with my emotions, or bring relief. However the sort of numb, aching emotion is sitting there.

So I've tried simply sitting with the numbness. It doesn't go away though. I don't get any insight also into why it's there. Just silently sitting behind my chest. Why is that emotion there? What is that emotion? How do I release it or bring it to the surface?

To figure out emotions is it okay to try and trigger it? AKA I realize it's under the surface, but I have to trigger that emotion stuck there to truly feel it and release it?

I'm getting better at sitting and letting my emotions, thoughts and body be when triggered. Something I simply struggle with now is that when im triggered, my face can get red, thoughts definitely run, body seems to be in this either freeze or flight mode (I have some things im healing through). The question I have is, do other people notice? I can definitely tell they do. When I get triggered it feels like I literally cannot do or be anything I'd rather be. Instead im just this shell of myself for a period of a couple minutes.

I'm conflicted telling people context, so "Sometimes I get really in my head" is something I say as a soft way to put it.

Is there any way in the moment instead of observing just getting your body quickly out of that mode? I do grounding techniques (Breathing primarily) and invoking the higher self for unconditional love. Wish there was something more instant.

Its hard. There's definitely shame around having my body respond like this. I was bullied when I was younger, so the trigger gets another trigger. Now people notice im off. Then I have to sit through that. It's exhausting. Confidence seems to be really praised today, so the shame attaches itself to that too in narration.

Even though I can observe it as just "narration" and my body / nervous system in understanding, it doesn't stop it. Not instantly at least.

After BPD relationships I just take people being really into me a massive read flag. I can't be this cute, funny and all that. It doesn't feel right. I almost think it's like a callback to the way this relationship started. Which was very hard to get over.

It’s hard. I go out sometimes and always get thoughts, “It would be nice if X was here”. I love them so much, part of the reason work hard to close that gap. Just all the times I get to spend with them are so amazing.

I miss them. This is hard. I hope it works out though.

I mean it. All this AI this AI that. Use it at my job, it’s nice. Improves productivity. Replaces me? No. My lazy ass honestly partially wishes it was even better.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with Reddit but people are either delusional, bots, or isolated for so long and pumped full of anxiety from posts.

I don’t see how AI is literally killing SWE. It’s great. Amazing even in some ways. Overhyped though for sure.

Covid really did a number on us.

I'm a Systems Administrator at the moment. Honestly maybe got lucky? 8 years of experience. This company that hired me is a disaster. Turn over rate is insane too. I'm more of a glue between the really outdated (against policy) ERP system, the whole environment and the MSP trying to squeeze the last pennies they can out of this company. I've done Team lead tasks, ERP development tasks (Have prior experience developing in really crappy old C# .Net environments), Sysadmin, helpdesk, Power Automate, you name it. Generalist without much of a specialty.

Anyways, currently im underpaid and they're holding off on even a title change (even though its promised). I'm looking at the market to apply while I have something.

I know that recruiters love certificates (I want more money too) so I'm going down the path of AZ-104 and maybe into Azure Devops or Cloud Engineering. Not entirely sure. So I go online to research (Sysadmin feels like a professional Google researcher at times). The amount of varying opinions that exist is just too much.

1. Cloud is dying people are going away from it
2. Cloud isn't dying get a cert
3. This is true
4. That is not true
5. This industry is growing
6. This one is not

Honestly is the plain old truth that the market is currently squeezed, companies don't have money to spend and the market is generally not good? There's no secret sauce, no secret shortcut. It's just like a lottery. Throw your resume at a ton of places and see what lands?

I'm backing away from any online advice and deciding to just stick to a certificate path I've chosen for myself and wishing for the best. Honestly what else can I do? YOLO