Abby

Posted Tuesday, March 28, 2023

1y

ENFP

Sagittarius

30 meetings down!

I have a personal goal of attending 90 meetings in 90 days, and I'm so happy to say I'm ahead of schedule. I'm officially over 1/3 of the way! Things I've learned: I am slowly accepting I'm more controlling than I realize. The desire to hold onto tightly my hopes and dreams for the future can lend itself to manipulation. I have a hard time labeling my emotions in the moment, and negative ones are even harder to muster out. I feel them strongly in my body, but it takes me hours to actually be able to figure out not only what I'm feeling but communicate them as well. I have isolated for my whole life. Felt I was too screwed up or unlovable to make worthy connections. Felt I was also better than people and could only make "true" connections with "equals." I have my inner critic (still) that tells me I'm ugly, lopsided, fat, disgusting, unworthy of someone truly seeing me and loving me for who I am. They also say that everyone is as judgemental about me as I am about myself, so I can't let anyone in because they will hurt me even more than I hurt myself. I've felt that I had to be perfect in order to "earn" acceptability, love, and worthiness from the people in my life. I have expected my partner(s) to be my emotional and mental safety net, which was unhealthy and unbalanced. I have abandoned myself time and time again for acceptance, "love," and staying "loyal" to people who were not loyal to me. I have deeply felt that my previous partners were incapable of taking care of themselves and took on the burden of their responsibility to show I loved them. I am well known by my loved ones as the "Therapizer," who is intelligent, caretakes, and offers help and guidance, which is a passive form of trying to control a situation. I have for years at a time behaved as a Intimacy Anorexic so as to avoid intimacy in relationships in order to keep myself safe from harm. I have allowed my addictions to food, internet, board games and Tarot to take away my energy from my previous relationships. I hope that as I work in recovery I can continue to distance myself from these codependent patterns and become a healthy person for not only my future partner(s), but firstly for myself. I am capable of maintaining loving healthy relationships. (edited)