But focusing on doing things to avoid those patterns is still acting from them, no?

All I'm saying is don't set too much store in avoiding patterns when deciding what feels right.

Okay, so where this has ended up actually crosses a line for me.

Not your fault, not a problem (seriously) and it's useful for me to be able to articulate it and think it through out loud here.

I stated what feels right to me at the gut level. I stated that I'm not saying it's right for other people, but it is right for me. I wrote a relatively complicated reply to your assessment and advice - a reply that at the very least suggests that there is a context to how I experience and perceive the world that you, an internet stranger who has just run into one post and a handful of comments under a throwaway account, have no way to know about or understand given the limited information you have.

Your response is to continue to try to make your point. You ask a rhetorical question:

But focusing on doing things to avoid those patterns is still acting from them, no?

And you push your advice again:

All I'm saying is don't set too much store in avoiding patterns when deciding what feels right.

You truly don't have the first idea of what "feels right" means to me. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's actually to be expected. Because you lack information, because I am an internet stranger, because you don't have an accurate frame of reference for what that actually is for me in particular.

Because you are you and I am me and we're different people.

It's understandable to me that you would initially cross over from providing information resources (the frames of reference in your first comment, for example) into advice-giving. I feel like a lot of times, that can happen with people (in general) and they're not even aware of that distinction between description and conclusion (advice- telling someone else what they should or shouldn't do. And in this case, your move from one into the other was pretty gradiated rather than stark.

The line for me, though, is that when I replied with information from my own experience and life, suggesting that your perspective wasn't applicable for me in particular, you responded with an argument (the rhetorical question) and stronger-further unsolicited advice (the second part telling me what you think I should do).

I appreciate your engagement in this discussion and appreciate the descriptive concepts and reference points you offered in that first comment. Thank you so much for that. It was and is amazing and I am very grateful.

Please know, however, that I am not and have not been seeking advice on what I should or should do or how I should or shouldn't see this situation.