I feel pretty good about the way things are going with my life.  I put my dating profile back up and would like to meet people in hopes to eventually meet the one.  However, I have been extremely discerning and have come across many red-flags that I see and look out for.  I admit, I delete most of my emails that come through, the ratio of maybe 1 out of 10 emails are worth responding back to is pretty accurate.





1. I receive a message from a man who has a picture presenting himself in a way that he is somewhat gangster or thug.
2. I receive a message, respond back asking a question about themselves and they answer but don't ask anything back.
3. They admit that they haven't read my profile.
4. Make negative comments about dating or admit they aren't looking for a relationship
5. Have little or no common interests or values.
6. Use poor grammar and spelling.
7. Are too aggressive.  I had one man ask me during an initial email conversation whether or not I had a 'hot bikini' to wear on his boat!?
8. After I stated in my profile none-the-less that I didn't drink, he asked me to go for drinks, he continued to ask how I couldn't drink on a boat?
9. The guy is completely self-absorbed and do not take reference anything I say in my profile or probe about what information I do share with them in effort to get to know me.
10. Are in a mad rush to meet because they don't want to waste time.

These are my 10 standards

1.  A profile presented with photos of a well-respectful man and introduction with proper spelling and grammar.
2. Asking me questions directly related to my profile, engaging and lively.
3. They show they have read my profile by paying attention to the details.
4. They clearly state they are looking for a relationship and have a positive outlook.
5. Share values and common interests. We share common goals.
6. Respectful, consciousness, thoughtful and fun.
7. Clearly express an interest in getting to know me.
8. Are in an appropriate age range.
9. Have a respectful living.
10. Must be a nature and animal lover.

The truth has set me free, I am an alcoholic.  I don't look at it in a negative way - I'm relieved!  I now am taking responsibility for my well-being.  Sobriety so far as in a month long journey, but I am celebrating everyday and not discounting any length of time because it's cherished.  For the past five years I've debated whether I had a problem with drinking. For the most part I appeared as a party girl, going out to the bars every weekend, mostly blackout by the end of the night, but lets face it, that was the culture.  I stopped drinking for a months, to figure out what was going on.  None of my friends or family understood; and they told me that they don't think I have a problem.  They just thought that I should "cut back on the amount of drinks" when I did it. Easy enough right?  Well for someone who isn't a problem drinker.  I finally hit a point where the truth was in my face like a pie - I had memories and flashbacks of all the times that I drank and blacked out, especially the most recent waking up on a sidewalk near the bar.  I knew this was no accident, no party phase I was going through. I am an alcoholic and I can not drink.  Accepting that truth actually lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.  I felt like I was like a gay person that was coming out of the closet for the very first time, I was finally being authentic with myself.  Now sobriety for me is much more than not drinking.  It means healing those parts of myself that I didn't face.  Sobriety is an emotional and spiritual journey towards inner peace and growth.  It's becoming of you, who you truly are.  You can not have a solid foundation if you are not building it on solid ground.  A few days after my 31st birthday I gave myself the gift of choosing sobriety. 

I just finished a nutritious, delicious meal outside on my porch which consisted of steak, spinish with garlic and a salad.  The Florida night breeze with the tree right next to my porch and the sounds of crickets put me at a sense of calm and ease.  I felt grateful without words to express.  I was reflecting as usual.  I just got back from National Guard training and on more than one occasion a few people asked why I was to myself.  I did explain that I am somewhat reserved but I welcome the experience to become more involved with others, especially since I live alone.  I realize that there is nothing wrong with my personality, but it's almost like being with almost everyone who loves Rap, and I am the few that loves Country.  If most people in my unit were my personality type, we can identify and understand eachother.  However that leaves me questioning, am I introverted now by personality, yes I love solitude, but am I missing out, am I holding back because I was abused, bullied and supressed myself for so long?  I know it has had an effect on me, no doubt but I see it as a challenge to overcome, to accept, to not be so hard on myself with.  Without words, I communicate with my inner self, that inner child and I feel compassion for her.  She was so beaten emotionally, physically, mentally and verbally and beleive it or not it was the words that hurt the most.  It's true when you are at the mercy of those who care for you, you really are cornered and alone.  The part that kills me is that even in my twenties I was still abused - I was still part of the same dysfunction that I was in when I was living with my family.  I was so conditioned to it that although I felt great dispair when it occured, I would put it in the back of my mind and truck on.  I would continue to forgive, but really it wasn't forgiveness, I supressed and denied how terrible it was, how much my abuser did not deserve me in their life.  One occurance that I remember was when my Dad took me to get my car insurance in Melville.  I met him at the train station.   When I told him that I needed to stop to get money, I pointed at an ATM machine which had my Bank lable on it and said, there is a Bank.  He exploded and yelled, that's not a Bank, it's an ATM, I never heard anyone call it that, how could you be so stupid! There was another incident when he picked me up from the train station so this way I could attend my cousin Micheles wedding.  He exploded on me, he totured me verbally and emotionally, I was brought to tears.  But to this day, he will deny the abuse, he won't admit it and he will point fingers at me.  That is why I decided to severe ties with him and have been cut contact for the past five years or more.   Slowely I am gaining a sense of a healthy identity, where I don't depend on, or relate with people abusing and putting me down as much as I maybe expected in the past.  I have asserted myself more than once when someone spoke to me in a disrespectful way and although I felt a deep sense of despair, I fought through it to speak up.  I remember during my training that just passed one of the Sgts in a nasty way called me out because I was letting everyone go ahead of me, but really he was mad because someone went ahead of him and he wanted someone to blame it on.  I couldn't control the fact that I went into tears when I confronted him and he didn't honor my feelings, he was a crude jerk.  I went into the latrine and gave myself a pep, love talk.  I told myself that I had no respect for him, he isn't worth being sad over and he has no power over me.  I found myself being able to dry my tears and now when I am in his presence, I don't feel anything bad or good.  I could imagine my little girl being tramatized and bewildered over the lack of emotional support and love that I needed.  I now know that I can

I was doing some research online on the topic of feeling like you are not able to concentrate, retain and process information and came across this excellent article on trans4mind.com.  I'm going to share the content in which I found valuable in anyone going through this similar situation because it really seemed to bring light to me with my challenges.

This is what the person who was having difficulty shared:

"I have an embarrassing problem with concentration and retaining information" I am really having an embarrassing problem with concentration and retaining information. I am currently in massage therapy school and I have a problem retaining info. When the instructor demonstrates something, and then the class has to do what she just did, I draw a total blank, it's like the info just skims right over me. For example, she was demonstrating a draping procedure, and for me, it just wasn't sinking in. It was a simple procedure, but I just "blanked out". And the more she showed me the more "blank" I became. She then went thru the procedure step by step as if I was a child while the class stood there and watched. I was completely mortified and just wanted to die right there. It was embarrassing because I was coming off as thick, or slow, and believe me, I'm anything but that! I seem to have memory "black outs". This seems to be a pattern, and I've had other experiences of being shown how to do something over and over, not being able to follow, and being humiliated because people are watching me. I seem to be experiencing a lot of "pressure" when I am comprehending, although at first, no one is pressuring me. I understand the information, but it just isn't sinking in.

This is what the author of trans4mind.com shared:

1. Knowing that this is the way you are wired up, accept it as neither right nor wrong - just as what is for you. Love yourself, and let yourself be where you are with it. It is in no way a lessening of your intelligence or competence. It just means that you learn in your own way, and knowing what way that is will help you create ways of learning that are right for you. We all process information differently, and once we know which way we do it, we can relax and work with it. Explore ways that work for you to learn, and when in a student role, let the teacher know what works for you so he or she can understand and offer it to you in an honoring way. Speak your truth to them calmly without any judgment of yourself.
2. So - in regards to this, let go of the need to judge yourself. Increase, instead, your susceptibility to having love and honoring behavior extended to you by others - and this comes about as a reflection of the love and honoring YOU offer yourself. The first is simply a mirror for how you love yourself. As you live in the vibrational frequency of loving and honoring yourself, this then, is what you create in your world and experiences, because it is what you ARE - and like attracts like. To embody vision and acceptance, we must first admit the perfection of our own life. (go over this one a bit... it's key.)
   
   
3. Increase your tendency to just let things happen rather then make them happen. Move into a state of "allowing" rather then exerting pressure (that is, I think, the pressure that you are feeling due to a fear of being embarrassed and humiliated. This fear of being humiliated needs to be explored and released - it is shame based, and fear based - not love based. And if you have had ADHD stuff going on and not knowing it, then it makes sense that you would not have understood, and others would not have understood, how you need to take in info - and after many experiences of feeling not like others or embarrassed or not good enough in regards to this, it is natural that you would have fear up about being embarrassed again. Acceptance and appreciation of yourself is the antidote.... Gratitude for who you are.
4. Strengthen your life force energy in general. You do this, again, by loving yourself and not putting pressure or stress on yourself. Use the breath - tune into your Chi, or life force energy, and allow it to expand. Be gentle, not rigid with yourself. When one is rigid, or in shame, fear, etc., it constrains the flow of life force energy - constricts it. That is what is meant with the phrase go with the flow. Life force is flow. It is self love, first and foremost.

The bottom line is this, Shame is a big fat liar.  You are lovable just the way you are.  Love and accept yourself, your warts and all and the universe will reflect that back to you.  Just like the Olympics that succeed with only one arm, or leg - if we have problems in this area of learning, we can overcome it.  There is nothing to be ashamed of, we are intelligent, we just process information differently, we need to find what works for us.  When we transform fear into love, we have overcome the challenge that we have set forth in our lifetime on loving and accepting ourselves just the way we are.

I remember sitting across from my therapist.  I could not pin-point the feeling I have experienced for pretty much all my life.
I had this really painful feeling sitting in my stomach whenever I thought I would be "found out".  I was hiding Shameful feelings of being Dumb, Forgetful, Klutzy and Inferior. 

Shame manifests itself from either teachers, caregivers, kids at school when we are humiliated and embarrassed from something that we did, said or maybe the way that we look.  As I learned, it also manifests from your earliest days of being a child when we are made to feel bad.  The only logical way to process and survive is to blame ourselves because our caregivers are our gods, we have no way of understanding that we aren't bad, so we take those shameful feelings in and blame ourselves to survive our environment. 
One of the events in my life that deepened my Shame was when I started a new Middle School.  I was in sixth grade and I made friends with a group of girls that I invited over to my house.  Days later when I called one of the girls she told me that she could not be friends with me because if she was, the other girls wouldn't be friends with her.  Ever since that day, I found myself feeling and acting shameful which left me isolated and targeted to be bullied and made fun of throughout Middle School.  I now can look back as an adult and understand that those kids didn't understand why I was different, they couldn't even process it at that time, they were being kids.  My parents were going through a divorce.  My Addict Mother had custody of us and my Father was a Raging Narc. My Mother had us shopping for school clothes at the Salvation Army and would get food from the Church.  I went from living in a Upper-Middle class home with Mom and Dad, to living in poverty with abuse and neglect from all angles.  My Father would embarrass me when he had visitation rights by saying "stock up" when we were eating over a family members house, or out to eat with him implying that we had no food at my Mom's house.  If I would bump into something my Dad would say "Are you sure you are alright, can you see, is there something wrong with you and laugh condescendingly about me being a Klutz, calling me Dizzy and implying that I was a complete mess.

THREE WAYS TO OVERCOME SHAME

1. Talk about your shameful feelings to a safe friend, family member, counselor or therapist. Once you get it out in the open it is no longer hidden and slowely you heal from exposing those feelings.

2. Write about your shame.  Uncover the truth, learn about shame, the more you know about what shame is, you understand it isn't yours and develope new ways of cognitive thinking to combat it.

3. Commit to your well-being, be gentle with yourself but also challenge yourself to transform into a more positive person by doing affirmations, getting with a counselor or therapist and replacing negative thoughts with the truth. Truth always brings light, it kills the fungus of the deception you are a shameful person.  The truth is you are a worthwhile, lovable and valuable human being.  There are many blessings of lifes challenges even if they look ugly on the outside!

Non-Threatening Behavior

Talking and acting so that your partner feels safe and comfortable doing and saying things.

Respect

Listening to your partner non-judgmentally.
Being emotionally affirming and understanding.
Valuing opinions.

Trust and Support

Accepting responsibility for self.
Acknowledging past use of violence and or emotionally abusive behavior, changing the behavior.
Acknowledging infidelity, change the behavior.
Admitting being wrong, when appropriate.
Communicating openly and truthfully, acknowledging past abuse, seeking help for abusive relationship patterns.

Shared Responsibility

Mutually agreeing on a fair distribution of work.
Making family decisions together.

1. What will I absolutely not tolerate even if every other person on this planet turned their back on me?
2. What actions or words make me feel really uncomfortable?
3. What actions, words or my own thoughts can I rid that will improve my life?

Boundaries are placed by us to protect our individuality and keep us feeling joy in our lives.  Boundaries are for our emotional, physical and spiritual well-being.  They give us self confidence, improved self-esteem and come from a place of empowerment and self-love.

Growing up with a Narcissist parent basically had given me the illusion that I didn't have a right to my own thoughts, feelings and preferences.  My only duty was to give attention and supply which led my true self to go on silent and allow inappropriate, outlandish, abusive words and actions into my space.

THESE ARE SOME OF MY PERSONAL BOUNDARIES

• I only allow others to speak respectfully towards me.  If I perceive that someone is speaking disrespectfully, I will stand up for myself and tell them that I don’t appreciate the way that they are speaking to me and if they want to communicate, it needs to be respectful.
• I only allow men that I have got to know and develop a friendship and intimacy with in my personal and physical space.  For example, depending on the situation I may allow a kiss on the first or second date, but I will not tolerate him putting his hands all over me in an aggressive way.
  
• I only allow my partner to be sexual with me, meaning I need to be in a committed relationship before sexual contact is made.  In order for me to be in a committed relationship I need to feel my partner is an emotionally, physically and spirituality present man and feel we are truly friends who respect and enjoy being together.
• I only allow people in my life who take responsibility for themselves.  I only allow people I trust to borrow money if it is a true emergency which I have good discernment about.  I no longer feel obligated to continue on with relationships that are not serving my highest good in terms of not wanting to hurt the other person’s feelings. 
• I will only allow advice from others that I know have my best interests at heart. These are people that I respect and know are healthy.  I attract people who only give advice when asked and are supportive of my decisions, goals and visions.
  
  

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