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Like a stone


thyristor

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Just stumbeled across a post on Facebook from a former collegue of mine.

 

He posted some photos of his not all new anymore girlfriend, along with the most sweet words how He is so glad that he went on that first blind date, and that she is his life and true soulmate and all that stuff. She actually has a very similar facial expression to his, on one photo you actually think it's him at first, and in that photo where they are both, next to eachother, they radiate an extreme amount of harmony.

 

I don't know him very well, but I just get this feeling that this will really be a long lasting and fulfilling relationship.

 

And that's it.

 

I think these thoughts, almost as phrases or words, and for every insight, my heart is growing within me, just that it's not soft, but made of stone. It litterally feels like a stone growing inside of me while flipping through the photos and reading the post.

 

I realize that the man is - at least currently - one of the luckiest on earth. And that's like stating the fact that 5+5=10. I know it, but I can't... I don't really know WHAT I can't. What do other people do? Draw energy from hearing it? Smile? Feel warm? Comment the post with a 'congrats' or some heart or so? Obviously if someone is currently unhappily in love, it might make them feel sad to hear of others' success. But certainly other people don't grow stones in their lungs. ??

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I feel kind of nauseous when I see lovey-dovey pictures of people in serious relationships. I think there is a bit of jealousy on my part, but I also don't understand why it's seen as acceptable or favorable for people to post what should be private moments on social media. 

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What do you mean by stone?

Sometimes I have trouble being happy for people and what's going good for them, and I realize it's because of how I feel about my own life, most of the time. It depends what stage of your emotions you're at. If you feel sorry for yourself then yeah it's hard, but if you believe in yourself or things a bit more, than it can be inspiration, or you can connect more with how you care that people are happy and so be happy along with them. That's not always available, but it's possible still :)

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Phantasmal Fingers
34 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

It is growing within me, just that it's not soft, but made of stone. It litterally feels like a stone growing inside of me while flipping through the photos and reading the post.

 

I realize that the man is - at least currently - one of the luckiest on earth. And that's like stating the fact that 5+5=10. I know it, but I can't... I don't really know WHAT I can't. What do other people do? Draw energy from hearing it? Smile? Feel warm? Comment the post with a 'congrats' or some heart or so?

So you're romantic (and lonely) but not sexual? 

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4 minutes ago, HelloBarbara said:

 lovey-dovey pictures of people in serious relationships.

The pictures weren't really that lovey-dovey, but really quite serious. More like an engagement anouncement. Not posing, but natural, but not kissing or anything,they were just harmonic. If they were the typ that I also don't understand why people put out there, I'd just go: ^^ instead of stone.

 

4 minutes ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

What do you mean by stone?

Sort of, what it sounds like. It litterally feels as though the tissue in my body gets dead, heavy and hard. It doesn't happen physically, my heart is healthy, but maybe I could put it as some sort of phantom feeling?

 

12-13 years ago I had been madly in love for the don't know how many-eth time and wrote a song that went something like: "You can't break my heart, it's already pulverized" and at the end of the song it went "I've dumped my heart in [Swedish equivalent to Hudson River]." and I recorded bubbling sounds with a straw in a glass of water. After that, I have only felt love for like three months or so, the first months of a relationship that went on without love for 9 years, and I always use to think that that song really burried my heart. Although I kind of knew back then, that the lyrics were just poetic language, it's as if it has become true.

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9 minutes ago, Moderne Jazzhanden said:

So you're romantic (and lonely) but not sexual? 

Nope.... I was romantic, see my reply above, about the song. But the last years, I haven't felt like sharing love with anyone, I can't imagine myself getting into another relationship, wanting to share a household, being committed and all that, calling eachother on the phone when I have an overnight schedule at work. It's just not me. I'm not a family person or a near-and-dear-ones-person.

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Phantasmal Fingers
Just now, elisabeth_II said:

I haven't felt like sharing love with anyone

Okay! Nor have I. Ever. 

 

Be who you are. 😎

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11 minutes ago, CBC said:

if they're someone I really do care about strongly I feel some degree of genuine happiness for them

That's just there, I don't care strongly for people who are close to me. I care a lot more for teens that write in this forum about their identity or relationship struggles, because it is to me like I'm saving "the world" by helping them. Like I represent the concept of "there's always someone there for you", or the concept of "no one should ever be left alone by the road side". But I just can't get myself to cherish about those that are close to me.

 

Another collegue just got accepted to police academy and the other collegues in the room all sounded like they experience "genuine happiness" as you put it. Even repeating several times: "oh, what fun that you made it, so glad. Oh my god, I'm really so glad for you". I know that I can just say congrats (but I just chose to smile today). But I always feel guilty in a way.

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9 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

The pictures weren't really that lovey-dovey, but really quite serious. More like an engagement anouncement. Not posing, but natural, but not kissing or anything,they were just harmonic. If they were the typ that I also don't understand why people put out there, I'd just go: ^^ instead of stone.

 

Sort of, what it sounds like. It litterally feels as though the tissue in my body gets dead, heavy and hard. It doesn't happen physically, my heart is healthy, but maybe I could put it as some sort of phantom feeling?

 

12-13 years ago I had been madly in love for the don't know how many-eth time and wrote a song that went something like: "You can't break my heart, it's already pulverized" and at the end of the song it went "I've dumped my heart in [Swedish equivalent to Hudson River]." and I recorded bubbling sounds with a straw in a glass of water. After that, I have only felt love for like three months or so, the first months of a relationship that went on without love for 9 years, and I always use to think that that song really burried my heart. Although I kind of knew back then, that the lyrics were just poetic language, it's as if it has become true.

It sounds like a broken heart to me.
So your heart is heavy, I suppose?

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3 minutes ago, Moderne Jazzhanden said:

Okay! Nor have I. Ever. 

 

Be who you are. 😎

Oh, I just have to live with the stone then I guess... Would have prefered not to care and not to feel a stone. The stone-feeling sort of suggests that I feel something but instead of being who I am, I ignore the feeling and it spreads like rash or something until it dies off.

 

It's okay, I'm not devastated in any way... just that today the stone feeling was so explicit and strong, I just had to - erm - get it off my chest! :D

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Just now, Sarah-Sylvia said:

It sounds like a broken heart to me.

Oh noooo!!! help!!!! I'm gonna start crying any moment!! *pulls herself together*

 

*sigh*

 

might be, just as in the song, one too many times, now it's gone.

 

Could it be like with people who have very bad sexual experiences and that causes them to be sexrepulsive? Like, I had too many bad romantic experiences and that causes me to be ro-repulsive?

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Phantasmal Fingers
Just now, elisabeth_II said:

The stone-feeling sort of suggests that I feel something but instead of being who I am, I ignore the feeling and it spreads like rash or something until it dies off.

Yes, it would seem so.

 

If you aren't a stone/happy being a stone, I think you need to investigate this. 

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2 minutes ago, CBC said:

I don't really... understand that? How are you close to someone without caring about them? By "close" I mean you share some degree of emotional intimacy (I'm not talking about romance/sex, just emotional openness) and you matter to each other. If I'm close to someone, it means I care about them fairly strongly.

I mean like my mum, my kids, my eight year relationship, my friends, my collegues. All those people that, when they say "I've got cancer", I'd be supposed to be sad for at least an hour or so.

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2 minutes ago, Moderne Jazzhanden said:

 I think you need to investigate this. 

That's sort of what I'm trying to do a little bit here :D

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I feel concerned every day to some amount about there being people on this planet who are starving. But I just don't do the {"Oh no, have you heard about Annie, they discovered that tumor!" - "Oh so sad!"} -thing. No compassion for the type of relations that people normally have compassion for.

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7 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

Oh noooo!!! help!!!! I'm gonna start crying any moment!! *pulls herself together*

 

*sigh*

 

might be, just as in the song, one too many times, now it's gone.

 

Could it be like with people who have very bad sexual experiences and that causes them to be sexrepulsive? Like, I had too many bad romantic experiences and that causes me to be ro-repulsive?

I'm sorry you had some hard experiences around love. I feel for you. I think heartbreaks can be pretty harsh. And I remember I did have to stuff some of the feelings a little when I experienced my heartbreak. It felt like it was over a decently long period of time, and I just sank more and more.
I can definitely see some experiences covering up certain feelings, including desires to find and be in loving relationships. It's not fun, but sometimes it protects the person a little.
If it's a thing, I hope your heart can heal too ❤️

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Just now, CBC said:

Are you saying you wouldn't be sad if one your own children had a life-threatening illness? Or am I reading that wrong?

I need to think here... you are probably reading me right, I'm afraid. I know it's not supposed to be that way. And, really about my kids, I do hope that my feelings for them will come back some day, I'm not sure what's really going on with me there (and you got me crying now). But trying to imagine the situation right now, if my ex told me that one of our kids had cancer, ? Somehow, I would expect any person to be feeling anxious about missing out many years of being together with them. I don't feel anxious about not being with them.

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Phantasmal Fingers
4 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

No compassion for the type of relations that people normally have compassion for.

So is this self-pity hiding from itself? Or is something else going on? 

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1 minute ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

I'm sorry you had some hard experiences around love.

I think I have never been quite affectionate about my near and dear ones, that's probably just a characteristic. But I should be covering it up by just knowing what to do, like say congrats.

 

The experiences we're talking about are not mostly about the other part being a jerk. There has been one or two jerks, but that's all. Most of the experiences I think are crushes that never even turned into anything. During those times, I remember my heart feeling heavy already, not like a stone, but I always found the comparison to the heart so very applicable for me.

 

1 minute ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

If it's a thing, I hope your heart can heal too ❤️

Yea, if it is really broken, instead of just nonexistent, I hope it can rise from the ashes...

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6 minutes ago, Moderne Jazzhanden said:

So is this self-pity hiding from itself?

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what to make of this. (I'm not easily offended, you can come up with an example making me just as jerk-like or psycho as you want)

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Just now, elisabeth_II said:

Yea, if it is really broken, instead of just nonexistent, I hope it can rise from the ashes...

I think it can. It's definitely not unheard of to grow cold because of pain and other things. It took me a while before I was able to feel more emotional and able to love more freely again, and care. I care more than I used to, but I still put barriers up to protect myself to some degree. It's good to care for ourselves. And sometimes when we can offer ourselves some goodness, it becomes easier to love others as well, because we don't put as much on them. if that makes sense

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Whore*of*Mensa

Could this be depression? It sounds a little like it to me, especially because it seems like you haven’t always felt this way.

 

I’ve experienced that dead-inside feeling and it was (somewhat) cured by taking anti depressants. I’m not saying that’s a solution for you but just a suggestion: what you are experiencing might be more than a broken heart? It might be worth trying to get some help for the way you are feeling?

 

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I don't know if someone out there is typing a long comment or so... it's 35 minutes past midnight here and I need to go to sleep.

 

This conversation has already helped by making me realize that I probably really must look into this more closely. I might not be in an emotional state to do that right now anyway, but I look forward to come back to this thread some time tomorrow.

 

Just letting you know: my kids DO have the most wonderful dad, so although I know it's not really right for me to be practically hiding from them, I feel that they still are very well taken care of and lack nothing. Well, nothing much anyway.

 

Good night for now, I think I just need to shed some more tears here before trying to figure out any more about this....

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1 minute ago, Whore*of*Mensa said:

Could this be depression?

Yes, and I'm already taking medicine. I'll get back in the morning, we could talk about the amount and time...

 

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Phantasmal Fingers
18 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what to make of this. (I'm not easily offended, you can come up with an example making me just as jerk-like or psycho as you want)

You come across as disconnected. I'm not saying you don't want to care - I'm saying you're honest enough to admit that you don't. I find that very impressive. But that, to me, seems like a beginning rather than a end. What follows from this? For you or the other? 

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When my friends gush about their relationships, I smile and congratulate them. I'm happy for them, though the emotion I'm feeling is pretty tame. Like I'm not going to squeal and hug them or anything, but I'm not going to say "So?" either. Like good for them, they found someone they can be happy with, I legitimately hope it lasts and they stay this happy. 

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5 hours ago, Moderne Jazzhanden said:

not saying you don't want to care - I'm saying you're honest enough to admit that you don't.

That is quite true. I had to look for a reply of mine to another post (in "get it off your chest", the poster's aunt is dying and they wonder if it makes them a bad person that they _know_ they should care, but they don't):

 

Quote

What is this stupid discrepancy, I can feel the exact same way sometimes: I _know_ that something is bad, and I sort of _am_ sorry that things are bad, but I am totally convinced that _my feeling_ is different from _my logic_, that is, I don't actually _feel_ sorry or _caring_, at least that's what I think. It annoys me, cos it obviously also triggers the logic in me that I am a "bad" person that does not care for things that I tell myself that I should be caring about.

 

Is it just us, being completely irrational? If you actually know that your aunt is miserable, then _that_ per se is a caring act from you. Probably it's not your type of caring to let your heart sink when thinking about someone dying away, and not your type of caring to be at her bedside and say nice things to her. But the fact that it bothers you to the extent that you get confused is actually proof that you care. And proof that your inner guidelines are along the normal measurements of non-bad persons.

 

5 hours ago, Moderne Jazzhanden said:

What follows from this? For you or the other? 

From the same thread comes this, indicating that I've tried to have (good and "normal") things follow from it, but usually can't follow through; my depression has probably a part in that.

 

Quote

 I can recognize that a bit. Sometimes I wonder if I try to hide in my insight that I'm a mess. When I first realized I'm a mess, I tried to fix it and not be a mess anymore, but I regularly failed and fell back into being a mess. After all these years, I've come to the point where I feel more comfortable in admitting, I'm a mess and always will be. I try to go through with the really important stuff, like paying my bills after receiving reminders, but it's like I have no hope anymore of going through with other things like "normal" people (e.g. calling my family once in a while), so I don't even try anymore, and it's as if failing to go through with stuff just is the comfortable option for me that stabelizes the situation and keeps me from once again starting to try (and fail) to stop being a mess.

There was the self-pity-part I guess: not even trying anymore is my safe and comfortable alternative to failing. (uh... that's usually refered to as "giving up", I believe...)

 

4 hours ago, SithGrinch said:

I'm happy for them, though the emotion I'm feeling is pretty tame. Like I'm not going to squeal and hug them or anything, but I'm not going to say "So?" either. Like good for them, they found someone they can be happy with, I legitimately hope it lasts and they stay this happy. 

Hmm... I can't really say I'm even close to feeling a bit happy for them. It'd be more like, to myself I resent 1) that I will have to get to know another human being that I should care for, remember their job, their name, their allergy (or whatever is gernerally known about the person to all people in our social bubble), 2) that the person will have a new commitment that leaves them less time or level of engagement to the things I want to invite them to (like my interests are so different from those of others, or they are so much more slimmed, as in, I like music, but not the kind that the new person likes).

 

Why is there so much thinking going on when all I'd need to do is: connect "friend happy" with "me happy" 🤷‍♀️

 

Gotta be off to work now...

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15 minutes ago, elisabeth_II said:

Why is there so much thinking going on when all I'd need to do is: connect "friend happy" with "me happy" 🤷‍♀️

Not sure. I'd look into empathy, though. I have been building my ability to empathize with other people. In the "I'm happy you're happy" kind of way, not the crying because you see starving children way. 

 

The way I see it, my friends are amazing and everything, but I don't want them around all that much. Some of my friends can get pretty clingy when they're single, and I'm happy they have someone else occupying their thoughts so they won't be asking me to hang out every day. I need "me time". Like a lot of it. 

Plus, they seem happier when they're with that other person, and they're willing to fix parts of themselves they should have fixed long ago. I like my friends and so want them to be happy. 

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Whore*of*Mensa

If you’re a long term user of anti depressants (as I am) they can blunt your emotions. So that could be part of it.

 

It could also be more of a personality thing; maybe you’re not very sentimental. I do know people who consider the ups and downs of individuals around them to be trivial matters, and think and act more in the interests of changing the world for the better. Maybe they’re more abstract thinkers (when I think about this more I realise these people I’ve encountered are male academics). It’s not necessarily ‘wrong’ not to be able to conjure up emotion about the day to day lives of others. We need both types of people and perspective. 

 

I tend to to hear more from people when they’re sad rather than happy so I’d probably look at the photo of the happy couple and think ‘good for them, wonder how long it’ll last and I hope I’m not picking up the pieces of the divorce in a few years.’!

 

I’m not sentimental either...A lot does depend on your own experience.

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Phantasmal Fingers

Your stone is hardness of heart - the opposite of the sympathetic joy you should feel at others happiness, which would make you feel good as well. But then you also don't feel sympathetic sadness at someone else's dying process either. 

 

You are insightful enough to have seen all this and honest enough to admit it. If you have the self-awareness to know that the stone is some kind of block (that is perhaps causing your depression) then you need to think back to events in the past that may have exposed you to the kind of trauma or suffering that made you withdraw and want to repress all that negativity that threatened you at the time. 

 

Who is the you that knows there is something wrong? The real, hidden, non-problematic you who knows that somehow the superficial ego has become disassociative. This implies some kind of a defence mechanism, don't you think? You've blocked yourself. You're hiding something from yourself. But despite your current invulnerability, which has its own genuine advantages, the price of doing whatever it is you have done to block yourself is existentially too high. But this blocked suffering you isn't truly who you are. And you are emotionally intelligent enough to know this. 

 

Think back...

 

When were you last vulnerable? Who made you feel this way? What happened next? 

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