my light casts a shadow inside me?

[Questioner]

i dont know where to start

I think you did a great job of introducing yourself.

Thanks for joining the forum, lightworker. I'm glad to read that the conversation has been helpful for you, even before you posted.

(In case you missed my two standard disclaimers: My user name is to honor the late Don Elkins; and please only accept and use from me what resonates with you, setting aside anything else.)

In my own experience, and some other people's experience, the drive to get the attention to others comes from inadequate parental and adult attention during childhood. The child is unable to conceive or comprehend the concept that the adults they rely on are untrustworthy, unsound, inadequate caretakers.

Trying to find some cause and effect, the child can start supposing - at a mostly emotional, unconscious level - that the inadequacy of caring must be because of something defective in the child. This in turn can launch a search to be somehow so extraordinarily attention-getting that it's impossible to be overlooked.

This creates its own problems. It overlooks the possibility that the lack of attention happened because the other people's OWN problems made them inattentive. It also then creates impositions on other people who are not part of the original problem. These normally healthy people would have responded well enough to a simple smile or hello, but can get scared away by the whole fancy show... which was never needed.

If these remarks do not apply to you, please set them aside. If you think they might be fruitful for you to consider, this forum can provide moral support and assistance in that inquiry.

Given the similarities in our backgrounds, I strongly suspect that you have very weak boundaries between your own mind and other people. Sadly, I can say know well that there are few things as intrusive as an emotionally unstable, psychologically immature mother who subjects her child to cult indoctrination.

As with me, you may come out of that experience with a lot of confusion about what you actually think and feel for yourself.

Throughout much of my life, people would carelessly say things like "What you want to do is..." or "You don't feel that..." In response, I would do whatever twisting I had to to line up with their apparent proclamation of revealed truth.

It was a huge step up for me to be able to say, "Wait a minute, what I want, think and feel is something for you to ASK me about not TELL to me."

Fairy Farm Girl here has some excellent advice about freedom from psychic chords that got "plugged in" to you, or left holes in your own identity.

Once you have gained the integrity of your own self, I imagine that, like me, you will find it very important to consider whether the darkness, manipulativeness, whatever is loathsome or unlovable... has ANYTHING to do with you at all. My hunch is that the majority of those uncomfortable feelings are not actually yours.

Time to discard all this garbage from other people into a dumpster labeled "RETURN TO SENDER," a dumpster well outside the perimeter of your own mind.

You can also throw away all the disrespect of your own feelings, the judgment for no reason that how you feel should be mocked as "silly" or unworthy. Feelings just happen, the important thing is what you do in response to them. Ra has a lot to say about how to embrace those feelings so they can dissolve. Let the waves roll past you.

I see that you are doing all you can to clean up your personal environment as part of this remodeling project. Remember that when a construction site is vandalized, the shame is on the ones who polluted someone else's property. That is what happened to your mind.

Do not be harsh to yourself, just clear out the debris and build a protective fence. Nobody else has the right to decide what thoughts, feelings, or desires you SHOULD have. Even Ra merely points out opportunities to proceed with our evolution. If we don't take them, we'll simply have a longer and harder path of learning and growth. But it's still our own choice.

Once you get comfortable with handling your own feelings well, I think you won't have as much desire to escape them. You are learning an important life skill that was not modeled or taught to you in childhood. Be gentle as you would yourself be kind to a beginner in anything.

FFG is also a great help about healthy living, such as good nutrition and a detoxified environment. I encourage you to get a good health check up, if you can, from both standard medicine and some kind of holistic alternative that feels good for you - could be acupuncture, Ayurvedic, homeopathic, etc.

There could be something out of balance, medically or in terms of energy flow, that is destabilizing your body's ability to support your mind. I recommend you find out if that is the case BEFORE you start trying to apply psychological labels on yourself.

You can easily find an online edition of the DSM, but it does not tell you which symptoms may be your body reacting to ill health or to a toxic situation.

Welcome and I sincerely hope you will use this forum as much as you like, to explore, learn, and share... even if all you have to share is a big ? we can still give you a hug for having those questions. We might even have a few answers.