Dear Scott:

You are welcome.

You wrote that you kicked the wall so “to get attention from (your) mother”- this means that in reality, you did not get enough attention from your mother. You “felt like (your) step father was taking her away from (you)” because in reality, much of your mother’s attention was aimed at your step father.

You wrote that you “felt like (you) had to protect my mother”- that means you were afraid to lose her. You wrote that you felt threatened and much pain by the thought of her having sex with your step father, especially when you were away from her. This means you were afraid to lose her, that there will not be a mother to come back home to.

Basically, you figured the step father was taking her away from you, was taking her attention away from you, and that was true. She was otherwise occupied, her attention was indeed spent a whole lot on him and not on you.

How do I know? Because a child’s feelings are reliable as indications of reality. (There are no prior experiences and therefore no inaccurate projections).

You wrote that you “remember crying often because of these thoughts, but I also remember having a serious fear of something happening to her”- for a boy, naturally needing his mother so desperately, the thought of losing her is very scary.

You wrote: “I was not sexually attracted to her, I just wanted attention and intimacy I assume.”-

Please pay attention to this sentence and to my input about this sentence. I believe indeed that you were not sexually attracted to your mother and that what you wanted was attention and intimacy. The word I want you to pay attention to is “assume”. As a child, you knew, you knew you wanted attention, you felt it intensely and clearly. You didn’t assume anything. As an adult you are assuming because you put away the clarity you had then so to survive your difficult childhood.

You wrote that you are curious as to how psychotherapy would work. If it is quality psychotherapy, a capable, empathetic, attentive therapist will give you the attention you so desperately needed and lacked as a child. He or she will give you the attention and empathy that you need to know clearly, once again, the reality of your childhood and the reality of your current life. You will place your distress, over time and work in therapy and outside of therapy, where it belongs, in your childhood. That distress will stop popping up unpredictably in your present and future life. You will be better able to evaluate people and situations so to operate for your benefit, for a better living.

Your distress is not a life sentence. Healing is possible for you.

anita