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Chloepatra
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Member Since: Dec 2013
Posts: 57
10 yr Member
126 hugs
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Default Dec 19, 2013 at 06:20 PM
 
Yes, Clara... I naturally have empathy galore... yet, it is me I need to give more empathy to...

I have SO much empathy that I even have a half-feral cat...my normal cat took her in when she was tiny and she fake-nursed off him while i supplied the formula...she is the nuttiest cat ever, and very lucky to have found 'us.' She will not allow a person to pick her up and hides from all strangers...to touch her, i have to trap her and force her to be held (I do this to check her teeth, brush her, and also to remind her I love her)... She has progressed to being able to tolerate being held, but shivers a lot with fear at first...

Many people simply would not understand how i could have kept a cat that will not allow humans to touch her...but, i know she is happy in her life...she and my boy cat seem to live at night...they play then, when she is not afraid...when there is not car noise or visitors. In a weird way, she is the cat version of who I was becoming... a recluse... non-trusting... allowing fears from childhood shadows to overwhelm me...

but, i am not a cat...I am a woman who can and IS choosing to 'makes stretches,' and let go of old definitions of myself... i am seeing that I am HER protector... she needed someone, and I chose to be her...

I, too, need someone and I must choose to be Her for ME...
I am, little by little.... it's not an easy journey, as most of us realize...
I have gotten to the point, though.... THE BOTTOM... where there is simply no other thing to do but to let go of each and every one the chains that dragged me there... and i get that I HAD no idea of how to truly live free of those chains, because i could not see them before...

NOW, i am taking them one at a time...finding them, and saying good-bye to their false comfort...

...like not setting healthy boundaries... it was a chain...made me feel 'super nice,' but now the impulses to not look after my needs in relationships too are being released...

i am facing these impulses, along with lots of other chains...
and giving myself the time to grieve that the little girl in me simply could not have known better... i was not taught how to lead a healthy life, and it was bound to come crashing down... i HAD to suffer the effects to see the chains, and cut them... I can now have empathy for me about this...

I used to feel as of the entire planet is in deep, deep need...and yes, it is, but so am I... I led a life of giving, giving, and giving even more, then finally hit bottom... because i had not been giving to me...

thanks... i see now that 'empathy' taken to the extreme, is really just another form of not paying attention to my own needs...of not feeling worthy...another form of feeling like i do not matter....

...it is part of the passivity i am DETERMINED to work through in meeting my own needs, and learning that if I keep 'feeling too much' for everyone else in the world, i will have no feelings left to give to myself...

...this forum is a good place for me to learn from sharing about my own boundary issues and in hearing about others' realities, too....
to learn to both give AND receive...

About receiving... i am finding it, too, to be a place to allow myself to receive caring, without thinking i then owe anyone anything... THAT is something I have never been fully able to do... to allow...i have always put myself last, not having been brought up to receive, but to give...too much... but, I am SLOWLY BUT SURELY realizing that without self-empathy, I am not alive... not really...

That self-empathy is part of being able to set healthy boundaries with others...
valuing my resources, my time, and actively seeing myself as equally worthy of love... as worthy as my nutty half-feral cat... whom I have chosen to name myself after here... "Chloe"

I am so grateful to be learning about healthy boundaries.

Thanks, again, for helping me understand the whole concept of 'boundaries'...your questions have helped me.
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Thanks for this!
healingme4me, JadeAmethyst, Punto Bobo, Scout7