Am trying to make sense of something I don't understand about me.

[Lanark2]

Hello,
I am trying to understand something about me that frankly I can't seem to get right, or get help from family or friends over, and I really would be very grateful for input from people here.

The problem is, that I don't feel appreciated, but its worse than that, it that I don't feel that anybody knows or cares who I am. Its not a weird emotional state, its just kind of true.

By that I mean that I can't remember the last time I had a conversation about things I am passionate about, out one of those end of week debriefs that reset your view of humanity, but on top of this, my e employer thinks I don't have skill in advance of my role, yet I have run projects that are bigger in scope than the department. I have had brilliant relationships, that seemed to just end, either when I was discussed too much by my partner and her friends, or that just fizzled out, and now I am often viewed as 'not boyfriend material' yet I always feel that I am in love with commitment, shared vision, would desperately love a family, and am without exception supportive of my partner, perhaps more than I am supportive of myself.
In my group of friends, I used to be viewed as the successful one, yet in the last six years have been bullied out of three jobs, sometimes aggressively, sometimes passively, and I can't put my finger on why so many things for me go the opposite to the way they go for others.

The relationship thing is the most puzzling, as my last relationship ended up with my partner being in a constant power struggle with me without my playing back, which just deflated everything.

any help or suggestions welcome.

I know I don't sound mature with all those tick boxes, why do you think I hate the situation so much. That's a bit like a doctor saying to a patient 'you shouldn't have a broken leg at your age, children break their legs'

So you are striving for a meaningful relationship.
How much do you invest in your relationships?
What I read is very much career, career.

You seem also quite dependant on other people's opinion. Do you feel others are guiding your life choices?

What about the power struggle in your last relationship? Should relationships be a matter of who is in control or a respectful partnership between equal people?

Yes I am sure a bit of therapy could help to shed some light on all of this. If you look in the counselling directory you can go into private counselling quite quickly providing you can pay for it. Good luck.

Wow, I am starting to see how explaining things gets me pegged as if its my fault!..yes of course relationships should be partnerships that's why I has to end the one that got controlling.

I don't have either money or time to invest in relationships, and I trying to get paid more than living wages so that I can have a relationship that isn't crappy.

I don't need other people to decide my life choices, but I do need someone to treat me like I'm me iyswim otherwise its totally crazy making..

my intent is not to make you feel guilty, just raising what seems unclear.

Its true though, I can find people to 'help' in disempowering humiliating ways, but not in positive empowering socially positive ways..like normal people do to each other, and I can't work out why.. Other than knowing I can't ask people round, can't share family stories, can't say 'let's go out for a meal' but that's not the thing, the thing is I don't feel like a good person who is having a bad time, I feel like (i am instead put in the box of) a bad person who fantasises..its so weird.. Its like the people around me have never met someone who has done more than nothing, and think because I say i have, i must be crazy..not just someone who has done stuff.. Its mental!!

Felling like a bad person. Is this what people make you feel like in the past and in your childhood?
So much so that you might believe it today

Yes, maybe but its more the absence of anything positive said to me genuinely.

I sort of cling on to the times people say 'oh they are jealous' to explain yet another negative attack, but still, no positive comments, its so wearing..

So something positive said to you or not determines your self worth?
If you do therapy, particularly person-centred therapy, the therapist will give you an unconditional positive regard, sometimes it has a massive ripple effect in your whole life...

You sound a bit like a friend of mine. She is lovely but she is different from many of the people she finds herself working with and it makes life difficult for her. She is also a bit confused at times over what she actually wants - to be free-spirited and footloose or to be financially secure and respectable. The two don't always go well together.

Maybe you could have a couple of sessions with a life coach? Talking to someone about very practical stuff can be useful for helping you know what direction you want to head in. There are books you can buy with exercises in them if you can't afford to meet with a coach.

I suppose from this I can see that one thing I am missing is people just basically being nice to me.. The kind of 'friends hear their friend is having a bad time and take time to try and cheer them up' or just a bit of basic mutual ego boosting.. I used to have many female friends in a mixed group.. I think the problem now is instead of being seen as'me' I am seen as a 'man' and therefore nothing nice is ever done for me.

Which I guess is partly my fault, I am very resilient. I guess the problem is I know I can be more resilient than the average person, can work at a higher level than an average person, and when I'm not poor and feeling weak, I'm great company, but at the moment all the signals suggest otherwise..no money, job crap, supervisor bullying, no relationship, no savings no investments, no holiday etc etc, and no way to boost my confidence..

What I mean is, it feels like I am playing hard, scoring loads of goals, doing all the right things, but whever I look at any of the scorecards, they always read zero...

Hi Lanark,

I'm sorry you are going through such a hard time at the moment. You do sound very down and disheartened about your life in general. Being broke always makes it harder to feel you have options and that you are moving forwards.

I wonder if you are hoping to get from others the support and encouragement that you don't seem to have had from your family, even when you were young.

I agree with other posters that you might find therapy very helpful in seeing that you are a decent person after all and that you don't need so much validation from those around you - either friends or employers.

If you are also hung up on a previous relationship, therapy could also help you to move beyond that so that you will feel able to start a new one without so much baggage.

I realise that you feel you can't afford therapy at the moment, but see if you can get yourself on a waiting list for a reduced-fee scheme. It could help you unblock some of the issues you feel are holding you back in life.

The other thing I am struggling with is that I just can't seem to make connection with people who are like me, or who are into what I'm into..in fact I don't think they exist where I live. Another thing I am aware of is that I prefer female friends, but in the town I am in, it seems that even these become 'resist the guy who is trying to sleep with you' level, I don't trust men that much because as you imagine when you get on with women well, in a small town that can be threatening to men, and that has caused me problems in the past.

It still feels wrong that it seems so stacked against me as it seems even quite dull people are doing better than me on the relationship and family scores so the logic kind of defies itself iyswim, but however its rationalised i t just so completely unfair...I am looking like dying without having had a family, when I used to be and still am someone who has always really really wanted one.

Have a look at the BACP site, click 'find a therapist' where you can specify your area; have a look at the list, see what/who you like the sound of, whittle it down and call each one - it's good to talk! - and, after you talked over the basics, and know whether or not you like the sound of them (therapists are like shoes, they have to be a good fit for YOU), ask about their fees, whether they have a sliding fee scale. They won't be offended to be asked, the answer is yes or no. It is worth taking an extra little job to pay for it.

Fwiw I have a similar family to yours and bottom line is I didn't get the goods when it mattered. No worries I said to myself, I'll get what I need from friends... Only it doesn't work like that, we take all that stuff with us. I can track my friends from friends I made when my expectations were low (as a result of my childhood) and friends I made after a lot of therapy. Most of my 'old' friends are gone (ditched) and I have worked on the relationships with those (few) left - thankfully these friends have stepped up and the relationships are on a healthier footing. Not perfect, mind - you can't entirely erase that history. My choice, though.

Therapy identifies damaging inbuilt beliefs that are so longstanding they are invisible to us. Eg you have already identified that you were told you'd never amount to much - the message you got loud and clear from your childhood. You may say you don't agree with the message you got from your parents - but the evidence that you do believe it is being played out in your current life and achievements. The fact you are repeatedly bullied suggests there is a history of bullying, probably at an impressionable age, probably from people who were important in the formation of your identity. Etc.

Therapy is priceless. It's also crucial to have someone in your corner, someone who gets you.

My previous comment was not about you not having ticked the 'right' boxes.

It's about your attitude to life, which on this thread is coming across as basically; women don't like me because I haven't ticked boxes, friends don't understand the real me, no-one says anything positive to me, no-one at work values me...

This is like Neil the hippy from the young ones...

You can't rely on being liked by others for your own self worth/esteem.

What do you think you could do to improve some of these situations in the short and long term?

I personally don't compliment my friends. I do when they're going through a hard time and need cheering up but I don't as standard and I don't think I would expect people to towards me. I certainly don't know what they think of the whole of me. But we all have fun and enjoy a catch up and nights out. I have good friendships with people I like, but it's not deep and meaningful and we all discuss what we think of each other and the real us. I have a similar thing in that people sometimes assume I am one thing and I don't see that in myself so ignore any reference to it.

Also, where work is concerned you have to fight your corner and be assertive about what you can do. If someone says on paper you can't do something then put on paper that you have with examples. I don't think employers are always designed to see the best in people as much as we want them to.

The family thing is hard to come to terms with. I have a similar thing where I would say to family, I got a pay rise today (for example) and their response would but are you any good at the job. It's jealousy or its to stop you "boasting", I dunno but some family default modes are not exactly encouraging. Don't take it personally

What field is it you work in? What job do you want to do? At 42, why are you letting people saying, "ooh don't do that" stop you? What are you qualified to do?

I only ask because there is a bit of a subtext here. You have a very external locus of control. You don't appear to have any sense that you can control, manage or effect your own life and find others at fault.

Believe me, I understand the not living in a likeminded area; I feel sometimes that I was cast In technicolour and I live in the beigest of beige areas. Vair naice and the schools are good and crime is low, but it's so dull! I find colour in other aspects of my life and I socialise with people who are like me and source them from other places.

You need to make these changes. Stop waiting for them to just happen.

The reason I thought you sounded like a graduate is it comes across bit like they do sometimes, when they start their first job and have a bit of an attitude of "I'm just here for a bit of experience before I get a manager's job as I have a degree actually", before realising that so do most people they're working with, and that success and promotion doesn't come as easily as you're led to believe when you're at school/university.

I do think you sound quite depressed, and that you are blaming every external factor for your feeling that way. I think this is too passive a mindset and will do you more harm than good. You sound like you expect all your relationships (platonic and otherwise) to be very "deep" - but in general they aren't. And if you are always looking for that then you'll end up disappointed and it looks like it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also, this may sound harsh but I can't think of a better way to put it, but you say that everyone that you are 'better than' has what you think you should and that it's not fair they've overtaken you. I don't think that thought process is helping you.

It's hard to work out what's happening here but it is very unusual to be bullied out of three jobs when you are in your 40s. I don't mean to insult you but is it possible you have a personality disorder or a mental health issue that is affecting your work and relationships?

No what I mean is, I have had a boss who.made up evidence to get me fired, a supervisor who consistently blocked training and development opportunities for me and a colleague try to take a major project away from me who when it was discovered spent a year trying to encourage people not to work with me. Further to that, a person I disagrees with, who was also.seeking to undermine my role to get influence to pay her political party colleagues for work they hadn't done, write to people to claim I had a mental health disorder to try and undermine the evidence I had against her (it was all.in writing, but she still tried).

MH is often used as a 'blame the victim' technique, when sometimes it's the circumstances. If everyone who is treated badly believes this, its great for the drug industry, but not for solving the problems.

Actually it's more likely that I am good at my job, have integrity, its noticed by good managers and rewarded/taken advantage of, but bad managers notice it and treat it as a political attack. That is certainly the case in the last example, my supervisor sent out emails with the wrong telephone number for the company, miscalculated performance figures, set up systems that lost incoming appointments and racially abused a welsh member of staff. I helped correct all of these, and so I am her target.

I really don't think you're going to get much solace from posting here. Just more shaming re you sound young/whiney/entitled.

Though I would say to look at your current circs and note how closely they mirror the landscape of your childhood. Psychology really is dead obvious sometimes.