Nothing to see here people

[nautical999]

what are the jay dubs

[DeadpanDoubter]

JWs, Jehovah's Witnesses. Like how you would pronounce JW, Jay Dubleyew.

[nautical999]

deadpan a few pages back you even stated you have abandonment issues. it seems as if you are standing on two different beliefs here. 1) i have aproblem and 2) i don't have a problem. The ones with the problems i would like to talk to not the one who don't think they have one or need help.

[DeadpanDoubter]

I do have issues with fearing people will abandon me, yes, but Erik Erikson would say that's normal for people in my current age range. I wasn't abandoned, emotionally or physically, by my parents, and the worst "abandonments" that I've experienced were my grandfather's death (when I was a baby) and some asshole "friends" telling me to choose between them and a friend who admitted to being bi/having a liking for yaoi.

Again, yes, I fear abandonment, but I don't have abandonment issues. That is, I'm not controlled by the fear that the people I love will up and leave me, but I do fear the general idea of abandonment.

According to Erik Erikson, I'm in between the stages of Identity vs. Role Confusion and Intimacy and Solidarity vs. Isolation. Translated roughly, that means I'm struggling not only with the issues of who I am and what I want, I'm beginning to truly tackle this crazy thing called "interpersonal relationships" in hopes of finding emotional intimacy. And Nautical, for someone like me with poor social skills, interpersonal relationships are fucking scary. There's this little 'voice' (and please, DO NOT TAKE THIS LITERALLY, it's a figure of speech) that wonders whether I'll ever develop social skills adequate enough to deal with having a close, intimate life partner.

To summarize: I have issues with the fear of being abandoned; I didn't state that clearly enough, and for that I apologize. I believe, however, that nearly everyone deals with this sort of fear to some degree. I do not have an irrational fear that OMG, everyone I care for will leave me all alone; if that's not what you meant, then I misunderstood.

[nautical999]

where did this fear start?

[DeadpanDoubter]

*facepalm* I don't know, Nautical, it's always been there. Some hypothesize that humans tend to fear abandonment once they're traumatically expelled into the world from their mothers' wombs.

[nautical999]

if you were to think back when is the first time you felt it more prevalent than other times

[DeadpanDoubter]

When my teenage hormones started kicking in. :/ So, 14 or 15ish.

[nautical999]

is there something significant that happened at that age other than hormones

[DeadpanDoubter]

Honestly, I don't remember anything...most of the crazy stuff (illnesses, deaths, friends being jackasses) happened either before or after that time period.

[nautical999]

remembering back what was the worst thing that happened before that time period

[nautical999]

and in that time period were you going to church and did you get prayer where someone had laid hands on you?

[DeadpanDoubter]

If you want me to be completely serious, 9/11, even though I didn't lose anybody in the tragedy. Of course, that was 3 or 4 years before the abandonment thoughts started.

[nautical999]

you also stated at the age of 12 i believe you stated you thought you might have a demon? what demon?

[DeadpanDoubter]

Uh. How do you mean? I didn't know names or anything like that, I just thought that I had a demon, then I thought demons were haunting my home, then I believed that I was one. Just, you know, generic "evil and darkness and mayhem" demon-y stuff.