Letting my needs get met and being oh so needy!

[motheroffour]

One of my crazy-making feelings is that my life is filled with experience that has taught me that people can't be trusted to love me in ways that will meet my human needs.  Maybe they said that they loved me but then abused me in some way or mistreated me.  Well, now after all of that, SURPRISE, I am NEEDY.  And who wants to be around Miss Needy of the Universe.  Well, I really feel that I want to start meeting my needs in healthier ways.  So much of that is out of my control -- can't make the world like me or whatever.  Can't make my pain go away so I will be loveable.  Can't make my H or my bro's and sis care anymore than they do.  You know? 

How do you all get your needs for love,  acceptance , safety, loyalty, trust, comfort, friendship, etc. when maybe you aren't in the greatest place to attract good people?  How do you reconcile making connections with others and trusting the best in them  with "not being able to right now cause I got hurt to bad" and not becoming an island unto myself...shutting out the world and only relying on myself.

Hope you can understand all my gibrish.

[Ami]

Dear MO4,
   I understand . It is a heart cry,. It is a yearning to connect----- to feel whole and to connect with another human being. It is ,also,(IMO)  a bigger yearning to fell "whole"-- to know that you are"you" regardless if your MIL likes you or not(or your H,also). You are who you are inside and that part of you(your core) will protect you and take care of you.Then you won't feel the gut wrenching insecurity.  I hear you yearning for this.
   The problem is the only way that I know that anyone can find it(once they are lost) is to go within and  back as far as you need to. You need to go back to the time when you"threw yourself away". After that layers of lies developed. Those lies set you up to be  "victim" now.
   I think that you are asking "How do I heal without going back in to the pain?" That I don''t know.
   The Bible promises that we will be free when we face the truth.     I think that you want something, but maybe you don't want to get there in that way..
.That is the only way that I know                             Love    Ami

[motheroffour]

 Ami
If that is true, and I don't want to face something....then someone needs to show me what I haven't faced.  Felt like I have gone back so many times, I can't see straight.  Feel like I muster up courage almost daily to face "the truth"  as you put it.  I have laid much of it to rest. I have years of therapy and reading and MDR therapy under my belt.  My college major was  Family Science, for Heaven Sake.  I get that I was hurt- abused.  Whatever. Ok. I have looked at my core beliefs and found the self I lost so long ago (I did not though it away) After all that, I still find myself needing the same things I needed as a child or a woman or a person. Is the answer to that going back to some uncovered truth?  I just don't know.  I agree that pain is an effective teacher. Maybe you are saying go back to the lies and address the lies??????  Are believing the lies making me needy?  Or is just not getting oranges giving me scurvy? Understand?

--mof4

[motheroffour]

CB,
Do I hear you correctly?  I think that you are saying that you have somehow changed your attitude about the universe.  That you no longer believe that your needs cannot be met or aren't being met.  You have opened to the belief that they WILL get met and are open to the possibilities of how.  That you don't try to control the outcomes in order to get your needs met and you don't put all the pressure on yourself to solve it all.  You hope.  you believe and you are patient and then the window opens......

Am I close?

[motheroffour]

YES! CB.  The Community! The community is what I lack.  My old community hurt me so badly.  Many of the new additions to my community in the last few years haven't worked well. Seems perplexing to me to tell myself to go get a new community that will meet my needs when my very "neediness seems to repell.

-- Loved the story.  No worries about length. 

[motheroffour]

CB,
 So was it as simple as believing?  Did you needs get met without you needing to work so hard?

[Ami]

I have to say that I disagree totally and completely with CB'ss view on it. I do so with utter love, respect and admiration.
  I see it as the polar opposite of what needs to be done.
  However, I feel that it is an interesting thing when two friends can see the world very differently and still love and respect each other.                                                     Love    Ami

[motheroffour]

Thanks CB.  I think that I needed that reminder to open my view. To be gratful for the morsels that are before me and to hope.  Too often I get discouraged when I don't see the evidence that my needs are getting met and maybe revert back to not so old habits.
Thank you for pointing me to higher ground.  --- or maybe calling to me from the higher ground.  Seems like you see the beautiful view from where you are.

[Hopalong]

So beautiful, CB.
The few times I've stumbled into faith, that's what it feels like.
When I was so desperate about employment, I found this job.
(That said, I DID email the man at 2:00 and introduce myself, and set up a freelance thing with him, which led to this FT job...)

The need I can't fill in "community" is one that came on fairly strongly in the last few days. I was thinking of how much I wished I had the kind of friend or warm acquaintance who'd come over for about 3 hours and help me with paperwork.

Then another, that I don't indulge in often, was feeling just very sad, and wishing so much that I had a kind shoulder I could lay my head on, physically.

Hops

[motheroffour]

CB,

What you say is truth to me.  Love the walking in the rain...the discovery... the struggle...the breaking free.

I hear what you are saying, hops.  Somebody in the real world who knows you, sees your strengths and is a soft place to fall.  No manipulation. No needing you to fit a a box.  Just to be there.  Tried and true.   Maybe I can hope for this....renew my hope rather.  And try to open myself to the possibility.....