Yay!!!!! Finally a new thread.

[AlexEN]

As a noted scribe once marveled, "I love how these threads seem to intertwine"... well, it was something to that effect...

I just meandered over to @Gardener's thread after catching up on this and @Smiley's and others' threads when I happened upon this post... which ties very closely to what appears to be the current theme running through several threads at once: TRUST...

[So, as an aside in response to @Smiley's question on his thread, I think a thread on TRUST is very topical. Trust, both extrinsically (trusting others) and intrinsically (trusting oneself), is hammered by the range of emotions felt at times like this... There is even a body of academic research on this... I found this Abstract:

We find that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Happiness and gratitude, emotions with positive valence, increase trust, and anger, an emotion with negative valence, decreases trust. Specifically, we find that emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). These findings suggest that emotions may be more likely to be misattributed when the appraisals of the emotion are consistent with the judgment task than when the appraisals of the emotion are inconsistent with the judgment task..]

But, the post on @Gardener's thread said this:

My two cents. You are very hard on yourself (I can relate). You may be attempting to pursue this like a marathon at the end of which you win the trophy (W)...at a certain point I don't believe there is a chance the WAS will forgive or believe your changes if you are still grasping for how to break through to them. One who is strong and secure and more desirable judges him/herself by his/her own standards (now that you are on such a positive track you can probably trust yourself more).

...Very basically, you know that pain and suffering are parts of life and parts of you and you refrain from resisting or trying to avoid those feelings. You live and know they are there and they don't own you.

I keep thinking that if I was evolved enough, I could get through this without so much pain, but my best days are one's in which I let it be. I am human...

So, you, all of you, including a rough night, or sad feelings, or questions on here, or humility, confusion, whatever are all ok. You are a good and sincere guy it seems. Again, I think you can trust yourself more and accept that you are human.

@A&K, I know you know who wrote that... It was very wise advice... @Smiley is right, you don't have to handle it alone, but even when you ARE alone, trust your own counsel to others... TRUST YOURSELF MORE...

-AlexEN