Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsOn Feeling UnwantedOn Trust and BetrayalOn Healing and PTSDOn Outgrowing FriendshipOn Trusting Your Journey Towards LoveOn Overwhelming Emotions
Table of ContentsView All
View All
Table of Contents
On Feeling Unwanted
On Trust and Betrayal
On Healing and PTSD
On Outgrowing Friendship
On Trusting Your Journey Towards Love
On Overwhelming Emotions
Close
OnThe Verywell Mind Podcast, host Minaa B., a licensed social worker, mental health educator, and author of “Owning Our Struggles,” interviews experts, wellness advocates, and individuals with lived experiences about community care and its impact on mental health.
On this season of the Verywell Mind Podcast Minaa B., licensed social worker, mental health educator, and author of Owning Our Struggles has sat down with numerous guests to discuss a plethora of topics in relation to mental health and community care. But this week we’re doing things a little bit differently.
“Usually, I’m chatting with experts, wellness advocates, and others about the community care necessary in improving mental health. In this episode, though, we are taking a different approach. Instead of having a guest, it’s all about our audience, because it’s ask Minaa anything day,” says Minaa.
“Listeners had the chance to write in and ask their burning questions, as well as their dilemmas, and I’m here to assist them in addressing their issues, provide advice, and share some insight.”
There is tons of helpful insight in this episode, so let’s dive into some of your questions.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision
Listener:Dear Minaa, I tried to make friends, but from childhood till now, everyone has used and abandoned me I accepted this as my fate, as no one wants to talk to me. I feel lonely what should I do?
Minaa’s Take
So first, I want to validate how difficult this can feel—when you feel as if you have no community and no support system. You’re not a part of a solid friend group. Dealing with loneliness can be extremely hard.
The first thing I want to unpack is you sharing that you try to make friends, but from childhood, even until now, you have felt used and abandoned. It sounds like here you have some childhood wounds that might still need tending to.
Tend to your inner child
When I, as a licensed social worker talk about an inner child, it really means reflecting on the different ways you’ve regressed to childlike mannerisms to deal with conflict in your life.
As adults, we all know that age does not equal maturity. When you deal with trauma, especially if that trauma started in childhood, sometimes you might regress to childlike behaviors to manage stress, to deal with conflict, and even to just deal with certain issues in life that are really heavy and hard to handle.
What did your childhood self need when you were in these relationships where people were using you and abusing you? What kind of love did you receive as a child? What kind of support did you need as a child that you feel that you didn’t get? And how can you now start to show that to yourself? How can you start giving your inner child the things that you didn’t get to have when you were younger?
Consider your core beliefs and what you actually deserve
Another thing I want you to be thinking about is your core beliefs. Sometimes we can have negative core beliefs, which sounds like, “I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. I’m a failure.”
And the reason why I want you to unpack your core beliefs is because you share in your question, “I have accepted this as my fate.” And so what you’re saying is, “I’ve accepted that no one’s ever gonna love me, no one is ever gonna want to build authentic connections with me.” And that is now forming your core beliefs around how you see yourself, and the type of relationships that you feel that you can build.
I want you to be thinking about who you are as a person, and what you feel you deserve, and how you can now use that information to inform the type of relationships you want to build. If you create this idea that people don’t want to build loving, authentic relationships with you, it might inform the types of relationships that you build.
Consider your standards
The second thing I want you to think of is, what are your standards? When you say that people used and abandoned you, can you reflect on some boundaries that you didn’t have during those times in your life? And what are some new boundaries that you can create so that you’re not engaging in one-sided relationships?
When you feel like you’re being used or abandoned, it’s often because there is no reciprocity in that relationship. You’re investing in someone, but you’re not necessarily receiving a return on your investment. You find that people aren’t showing up for you. When you find that people aren’t showing up for you, it can create unsatisfying relationships.
And so I want you to be thinking about your core beliefs, but also, what are some boundaries that you need to start setting, so that you don’t continue to end up in one-sided relationships where you feel used and abandoned, but instead, you are developing nourishing relationships with people who actually want to build with you.
6 Benefits of Friendship and Why It’s So Important to Stay Close
Healing from betrayal
Betrayal can hurt because what’s happening is, there is a rupture in a relationship that ruptures your trust in the person. It ruptures your sense of safety in that relationship as well.
I want you to be thinking about the different ways that the other friends are showing up for you.I want you to be thinking about what trust looks like for you in a friendship?I want you to be thinking about, is there respect? Is there vulnerability? Is there reciprocity in that relationship?
I want you to be thinking about the different ways that the other friends are showing up for you.
I want you to be thinking about what trust looks like for you in a friendship?
I want you to be thinking about, is there respect? Is there vulnerability? Is there reciprocity in that relationship?
I also want you to be thinking about, what are some red flags in the current relationships you have, as well as new relationships that you build with people, so that you can recognize, “Okay, these are some behaviors they’re engaging in that helps me to understand, I need to create a full stop. This is someone who is nottrustworthy, and someone I cannot move forward with.”
Listener:“Dear Minaa, having had PTSD twice in my 77 years, once during childhood, and once after Vietnam, I have also struggled with depression, but only intermittently. Are the two connected? And how can I better cope now in advanced age?”
You bring up a really important question. Isdepressionconnected to PTSD? The answer is yes. Dealing with depression can be a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.
You can also experience anxiety, and the different ways depression can manifest as a sense of fatigue, constant tiredness, dealing with insomnia and disturbances to your sleep.
You might also notice dissatisfaction in your life and other things that are happening, which shows you that there’s a disruption to your mood, your sense of self, as well as your overall mental health.
However, I want you to also understand that there are so many other life stressors that can be taking place that could also be leading to depression. So I hear you outline childhood and also Vietnam. But I’m curious to know, are there other stressors in your life happening right now that you think is playing a role in why you’re feeling depressed?
Consider your stressors
Stressors could look like, one, aging. It could look like a disruption to your relationships. It could look like circumstances that are really stressful, and these things can also lead to depression.
And so I want you to consider what those stressors could be, because there might be some things you can roll out, to help you figure out what is the core root of this depression that is happening intermittently, and maybe it’s tied to a different stressor.
Think about your support system
Now, the next question I have for you is, what kind of support have you gotten for yourself once you left Vietnam?
I also hear you saying, during childhood. I love that you bring this up because it reminds us that no matter how old we are, we can still deal with the wounds of childhood trauma. And when that childhood trauma is not treated, it can impact us for the rest of our lives.
I wonder what would it look like for you to get some therapeutic support? Some therapeutic support could look like talk therapy, but it can also look like maybe utilizingEMDR, which is a form of therapy that helps you process maybe upsetting memories that are tied to Vietnam as well as your childhood, and other thoughts, feelings, and symptoms, to provide you with some sense of relief fromPTSD.
What does self-regulation look like for you?
Another thing that I encourage you to think about is, what are your self-regulation and co-regulation practices?
Going to war can be really stressful on our nervous system because you’re chronically in a state of flight, fight, or freeze. And it’s really hard to give your nervous system a break from that stress, because you’re chronically exposed to some sort of factor that leaves you in a dysregulated state.
Even though you’re not in war anymore, your body might still be struggling to figure out how to regulate itself after years of trauma, and then you add, again, dealing with trauma in your childhood.
So what does self-regulation look like for you? This could look like engaging the body through breathwork. I always tell people to remember, the same body that you hurt in is the same body that you heal in.
Breathwork can be one way to engage in self-regulation. You can take yourself on walks and engage in nature. And doing other practices with yourself really helps to put you in a calm state.
Co-regulation is when we use someone else’s nervous system to calm our nervous system down.
Thus, I’m curious to know, what does your community look like? Because studies also show that people of older ages, specifically past the age of 65, also struggle with loneliness. And so you are at a high risk of experiencing loneliness at this particular age.
What does your community look like? Do you have a support system? Do you have people that you feel like you can have nourishing and safe conversations with? People who don’t judge you, people who can understand what you’re dealing with, and also provide you with some form of support.
I encourage you to think about self-regulation, but also co-regulation, and including some therapeutic services to help you manage the years of trauma that you’ve been carrying for so long.
Listener:Dear Minaa, how do you know if you are outgrowing a friendship?
I think this is something that so many people experience and struggle with. And I think the best way to know if you are outgrowing a friendship is if you find that that friendship brings on greater levels of dissatisfaction versus joy and pleasure.
If you find that every single interaction with your friend starts to leave you agitated or annoyed or you realize that there is no connection, and that connection is the foundation of that friendship, that can be a sign that you have outgrown this person.
Maybe because you’re in a different season in your life, or maybe because there was a rupture in the relationship—and it might be really hard to try and repair it.
Maybe the only way for me to repair this rupture is for me to exit the friendship. I realize that whatever happened just brought on so much hurt and pain that I don’t think I can move forward in this friendship anymore, but I can still respect you as a human being.
I don’t have to leave this relationship with toxicity. We can just both understand that because of what happened, we are not able to move forward, and we can wish each other well. We can be meaningful toward one another, and we can have well intentions for the other person, while knowing that our time together is done."
Outgrowing a friendship isn’t the same as ending it
Now, another thing to pay attention to, however, is sometimes outgrowing a friendship doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to terminate the friendship. It might help to use discernment in figuring out, ‘You know what? Maybe this is one area where my friend can’t meet the specific need, but what about the other areas?’ Are there other areas where I do satisfaction in this relationship? This area brings me so much joy. It helps me thrive. It nourishes me, and it makes me want to stay connected to you.
I want you to think about what outgrowing looks like for you, because sometimes outgrowing a friend might just look like adjusting the degree of closeness with the person.
It Sucks, But Sometimes Ending a Friendship Is Necessary—Here’s How to Do It
Listener:Dear Minaa, I’m struggling with being single, and I feel like I don’t have support. People say things to me like, ‘The right person will come at the right time,’ and it’s truly not helpful. What can I do to manage the difficult thing… What can I do to manage the difficult feelings that come with being single?
Hearing this type of advice can be really, really hard.
It can make you feel like you don’t have support when the people around you are saying, “Well, the right person will come at the right time.” Or, “If you keep looking, no one’s going to come up. They’ll come at a different time.” Or other things I’ve heard people say, like, “You have to love yourself more in order for someone to love you.”
Learn how to communicate that you aren’t feeling supported
There’s a whole plethora of things and terms that people say to us that really don’t feel supportive. So I want to start there. What it would look like for you to tell your friends or whoever these people are, “This doesn’t help me. This maybe makes me feel invalidated. It doesn’t feel like my feelings are being validated when you say that. It makes me feel like you’re dismissing me or minimizing the things that I’m feeling”
The reason why I think starting there can be important is because sometimes people think that they are being well-intentioned. They think they’re saying the right thing to you, and sometimes they need to know that, “Hey, I understand that your intention is to provide me with support, but I need to let you know what the impact is. It’s not landing in a supportive way.”
It’s ok to struggle with the feeling of being single
Now, to answer the second part of your question,being singlecan provoke a lot of difficult feelings. And first, I also want to validate that it is okay to struggle with the feeling of being single.
You don’t have to pretend that being single is the best thing that has ever happened to you if it’s not. The first thing you can do is honor that this is a hard time for you. Honor the different emotions that are coming up for you around what it looks like to be single.
But how can you be proactive about these feelings?
The other thing I want you to be thinking about is, how can you be proactive during this time to manage those difficult feelings?
The reason why it’s so important to be proactive is because in order to engage in a relationship, you need the consent of another human being.
And so, until we get to that stage, learning to deal with your singleness might require you to, one, adjust your mindset around what you feel being single means to you. Because sometimes we struggle with being single because we tell ourselves really negative narratives around singleness.
We might say things like, “I’m not worthy, or I’m not lovable because nobody wants to date me.” I want you to be thinking about the narrative that you’ve been creating for yourself around what it means to be single. And if you find that those narratives are negative, how can you really change that story into something that is more positive, into something that is more nourishing for you?
How can you accept and embrace how your life is now?
The next thing I want you to be thinking about is how can you just be more proactive with your life for what it is right now? What does it look like to do the thing, like, take yourself on a date? What does it look like to treat yourself to things that you know you’re deserving of?
What are some things in life that you feel like you haven’t participated in or done yet that right now, while you are single, and you can focus on yourself, how can you engage in those things? How can you make this season of your life fun?
Listener:Dear Minaa, why does stress make me go from sad to overwhelmed?
This is a really good question because I’m sure so many people can relate to this.
First off, stress impacts the nervous system. And so when you’re feelingchronic stress, which is prolonged stress from a situation, it can create a mood imbalance, and that mood imbalance could look like you ebbing and flowing between a state of hyper-arousal, which is where your body is chronically anxious.
Maybe you’re even havingpanic attacks, or hypo arousal, which is where your body might fall into a state of depression, fatigue, or even sadness.
The goal here is to ask yourself, how can you get back to your optimal level of functioning, or your window of tolerance?
I always tell people, when you think about your feelings, it can be really hard to name them. It can be really hard to say, “I feel sad right now.” Or, “I feel angry right now.” Or, “I feel joyful.” Right? And so when we’re thinking of our window of tolerance, I want you to measure it on a scale of one to 10. One being your worst, 10 being your best, and asking yourself, “When I’m thriving in life, where do I fall on that spectrum, on the scale of one to 10?”
Because even though 10 is operating at your best level, you don’t always have to feel like a 10 in order to thrive in life. You can say to yourself, “You know what? As long as I’m a seven, I feel like I’m good.” Or maybe you might say, “As long as I get to an eight today, I know that I’ll be satisfied. I might not feel euphoric, but I will be at peace. I will have ease in my life.”
On Navigating stress
Stress is one of those things that can feel really tricky because sometimes stress isgood stress. It might bring greater awareness to the fact that we have things that are urgent.
It might bring greater awareness to things that we’re passionate about. It might even bring greater awareness to things that we really have to give our energy and attention to. And so when we tackle those things, we can eliminate those problems. This is what problem-solving looks like.
When stress is prolonged, it can lead to feeling overwhelmed, but it can also lead to feeling burnt out.
So another thing to you wanna ask yourself is, “Are there stressors in my life that I can eliminate?” or “Is this a particular issue in my life that I actually control over?” If it is, then that means I need to engage in problem-solving coping. That means tackling the issue and providing a solution to the problem.
And so, if there is a deadline, for example, that you know, that you have coming up, problem-solving means, “What are the actionable steps that I need to take so that when that deadline comes, I have completed whatever that task is, so that I’m not late with the task, and so that it is done on time?”
Try “Emotion-Focused Coping”
But there’s another way that we can cope with stress called emotion-focused coping. This is when we recognize there is a big issue in front of us, but the reality is, we may have no control over the solution.
And this is where radical acceptance comes in. It says, “What is my emotional response to this thing? And how can I learn to make peace with knowing that this is a situation that I am dealing with right now, and it does make me sad? It does make me angry. It does make me rageful.”
When we learn to accept these emotions that are tied to the circumstances that we’re dealing with, it can bring in a greater sense of peace.
Radical acceptance does not mean dismissing how you feel. It does not mean pretending your problems don’t exist. It means owning the reality of your situation and learning to acknowledge truth instead of operating through life in a state of denial.
But when we recognize that this is a small dot on this large map of life in front of us, I can own it, and I can recognize it’s hard to deal with it, but I can also make peace with knowing that this is a circumstance that I have in front of me. When I make peace with that circumstance, I can now learn to maneuver around that thing, so that it doesn’t engulf me and take up my whole entire life or even affect my well-being.
That’s All For This Season!
And that is also all for Season 2 of the Verywell Mind podcast. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in all season long and for sharing our episodes with your networks. Even though we are wrapping up, you can still go back and listen to past episodes with our guests.
A few suggestions. If you’re struggling with anhedonia, which means a lack of joy, listen toepisode 264 with Dr. Judith Joseph. If you want to learn more about activism and ways we can show up when trauma is impacting us all, listen toepisode 267 with Felicia Henry.If you struggle with loneliness, especially as we approach the holidays, listen toepisode 268 with Dr. Jeremy Nobel.
We hope you’ll join us again for the next season of the Verywell Mind podcast.
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