Dear Chelsea:

Glad you are back to your thread. Congratulations for moving out of your grandmother’s! I am so pleased to read this because I believe it is the right move for your well being. I understand why you feel proud of yourself for making and following through a decision that was difficult for you to make!

Also, congratulations for focusing on getting a routine of studying, exercising and eating healthy and in so doing, preparing for your studies a few weeks away.

As I understand it, you are receiving emotional support from your father (good!) but have no supportive friends at the moment? If so, maybe you will meet potentially supportive friends in the coming school year.

As to your question, I need to understand better:

You wrote: “I have these moments though where I feel empty on the inside”- what does the emptiness feel like? what are your thoughts during those moments?

You wrote: “there’s this inner conflict where I know that I’m not being my authentic self, I’m not giving it my all. It’s like I’ve created these boundaries for myself unintentionally.”- can you be more specific about the nature of the conflict? A conflict is something like: on one hand there is X and on the other there is Y. X and Y don’t fit well, or contradict. What is the X and the Y?

You wrote: “I want to work on, regaining that authenticity and removing those boundaries”- when is the last time you had the authenticity that you lost? What was that authenticity like and when/ how did you lose it?

And last, what are “those boundaries” you mentioned?

anita