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I love my sister and I love my mom. I love some of my woman friends. I respect and look up to them, I hold them dear to my heart.
But, I recently made a change in direction for my life. New choice of career, new way of dating and relationships (FDS😘), new way of talking / speaking and carrying myself.
They don't agree with some of those choices. I have taken in consideration their opinions, but sometimes they can be too hurtful if it comes from my sister or mom. Some of my friends don't say anything and just look at me confused.
I know that they love me and can be worried or whatever, but there comes a point where.... please stop because you're too negative. They give me their opinions on how my life should go.
This hurts me but also confuses me. I respect them and take in their opinions and try to "please" them or at least see, "maybe they are right?" ... then I venture off course to what i feel is right for me. I then have self doubt, and grow confused, highly anxious, and sad. It wastes my time too.
Basically how do I not let it affect me when it comes from loved ones? if it's a random stranger , I would feel hurt but then brush it off. Whatever.
But my self doubt grows huge when negativity comes from beloved friends and family.
I have made the wrong choice before that cost me years of my life, during the relationship and afterwards healing. (being with a LVM that abused me) . my self doubt comes from that too.
, is this a matter I need to take to professional talk therapy or are there any videos
that helped you? Books?
Thank you for reading I know it's long.
"We can't control what people think and say about us, but we can control how we respond" - my psychiatrist.
I think about this a lot because, like you, when specific people are negative towards me it really can upset me. Sometimes for me that still means tears but a lot of times, I have been able to control my responses and not let these negative comments pierce so deeply! I learned also to kind of imagine a beam of light shooting from the top of my head and it circles down to my feet and it is an imaginative barrier. And when I find others being negative towards me, I'll just focus on that beam if I find myself getting too upset.
In my women's group, another woman suggested that after an intensely negative experience, to immediately take a hot shower after and "scrub" it off!
As you go on this journey (and it is a very powerful and transformative one), I think you have to create a space inside yourself that is untouchable by the outside world because we are living in precarious times and in deeply patriarchal, misogynistic societies. You must protect yourself from it. You want better for yourself. You're going down a different road than a lot of the women around you. I hope you can find people who you better align with, but that might not be possible right now. Trust yourself. Trust that you know what is right for you. FDS is very intuitive, and it's proven correct over and over again through lived experience. It removes the romantic, dreamy shine attached to men. It forces us to see them as they truly are, and that is the best thing for us. A lot of the women around you are not ready to live in this way. They will judge your life choices. They will define you by your relationship status. They will think you need a man or you need to date or you need to have children or whatever. But they are not YOU. You are the one who knows what you deserve and the kind of life you want. You must listen to that inner voice and block out everyone else. This is not an easy road. It can be lonely. It can be alienating. But it's worth it.
You don't have to tell everyone everything. Like, people don't have the right to know everything that's going on in your life. If you're an adult, you can control how much access they have to you.
Stop talking to them about it and plan in silence. If you keep quiet nobody knows where to shoot if you don't give them a direction to aim.
Feedback from family can cut deep because they've known you for so long. It's easy to second guess yourself because 'maybe they see something or know something' I don't. Except that's usually not the case.
Remember, family often projects their own shit onto you, fails to see us clearly and has no real idea what we're capable of. They still see us as the kid from grade 5 who did something silly. Next time their feedback is getting you down, consider the lens in which they're viewing you. How accurate is it? How hard are they projecting? Does their feedback say more about them than you?