Lack of Self-Care from Shame AND Suicidal Ideation

[Cascade]

I really feel that my back brain has been and is still in charge, instead of my front brain.  Emotions vs. reason and logic.  I'm with you, Chart.

[Chart]

I send you love PapaCoco. I can't feel it for myself but boy can I feel it for you. How  to develop empathy for ourselves still remains a mystery to me. I lay in bed this morning hugging myself and crying. Why couldn't my biological father love me? I know this is a moot point now but this question echos like thunder from my last failed relationship. The relationship could have worked if I had been healthily attached. Ifs, woulds, coulds... somedays Im strong and okay to see the truth. But most others I just fold in on myself. Is there ANY consolation, PapaCoco, in the knowledge that you can see through the lies of childhood and Religion? I keep looking for some kind of "sense" in all this human dysfunction... I don't know. I just keep coming back to the relief I feel talking to you, people who see and question and suffer like me.

[Cascade]

Hi everyone,
Maybe by expressing our compassion for others, continually and repeatedly, we can start to see some ways to do it for ourselves.  One of the supposed benefits of therapy is that a good enough therapist will model a safe relationship and how it works.  This idea doesn't bring me any epiphanies of how to get out of this depression, even though I understand I deserve better.  The idea of expressing our care and concern for others here is just a snapshot in time, of what I'm capable of right now.  Papa Coco and Bach, I honestly don't know what other steps to take.  I guess the hope of it evolving into self-care at least glimmers somewhere in the distance.

I can't even cry anymore or anger out anymore.  I feel sad and mad, and I guess also futile about expressing it.  Chart, keep hugging yourself and crying out the tears.  It's painful to feel that our fathers didn't love us, I know.

Compassion and support to all,
   -Cascade

[Papa Coco]

Chart, Blueberry, Bach, Cascade,

Thanks for the kind words. I certainly can appreciate the difficulties between knowing about self-love and feeling it. I struggle with that also.

It's the trauma that blocks us from feeling it. It's not a rational sense, but it's real. Someone taught us to not feel it. But here, on the forum, we have a lot of compassion for each other. Know that you are deeply appreciated for your openness and sharing here on the forum. Folks like me and you and all the others who respond to each other and share are all in the same boat. Maybe our love for one another can help ease the sense of not being good at turning our own love inward toward ourselves.

We're in this together.