Feeling alone and frustrated with a 180.

[aeolianchaos]

I am still scared that I will "rubber band" back to my old ways, but I think I am going more in the right direction now than before.

What would it look like if your changes stuck?

Is there a point where you become 'deformed' beyond being able to spring back into your old ways?

What changes do you enjoy the most?

And how long they have to stick before she sees a difference...well, I don't know.

Based on what you've said, she sees the difference. Maybe, however, she does not accept that the difference is real and something she can relax into yet. That part is up to her, but the more consistent you are, the more the evidence piles up in your favor.

That is where I often feel at a disadvantage. I guess the upside is that what I do know about my feelings is consciously learned, so I can process it rationally. There has to be some upside to this, right?

Many people never consciously explore or seek to really understand their feelings beyond the most obvious levels. They spend a lot of their lives reacting to what they 'feel' without ever actually learning to distinguish between feelings and thus broadening their palette of response.

You are consciously choosing to do those things - learn about your feelings and emotions and apply some real thought to how they work and what they mean. Perhaps the fact that it doesn't come quite as naturally for you is not a disadvantage right now, because you are able to really examine some of this stuff without the preconceived notions that others might be subject to.

MWD talks abut 'Start with a Beginner's Mind.' Perhaps your mindset allows you to do this in a way that is meaningful and maybe removes some cognitive distortions that someone like me might be more prone to engage in.

You said it is sometimes fun to pretend that other people around us are the aliens. This sounds like you have some familiarity with this kind of isolation. How?

I won't presume to be exactly familiar with the isolation that you perceive, but I have spent a lot of time alone and often struggled to understand how I relate to the world around me.

Sometimes it is nice to think that perhaps I am relatively 'normal' and it is people around me who are like some kind of alien life form - often massing and converging in an almost amoebic way that has a logic I can't seem to recognize.

The truth is though, they all have their own unique stories and we are all having some kind of human experience that is universal yet completely separate from one another. None of us can have someone else's experience. Perhaps through the eyes of one of someone else, I myself am just another amoeba whose path is without any clear logic or sense.