Dear Mina:

Regarding your last comment about wearing a bulletproof vest, you wrote: “For me, the bulletproof vests are my… parents that protected me from the big bad world”- by babying you, they didn’t protect you. Without you being able to protect yourself, you are without that bulletproof vest. By babying you they are preventing you from access to that bullet proof vest.

Regarding # 1: “How can I develop these belief when all my life, I have been treated like a baby that won’t survive without its parents?”- there is only one way and that is you actually, in practical terms, taking care of yourself. Use any opportunity in your present daily life to take care of yourself, opportunities you missed before. No opportunity is too small.

This is an example of a very small opportunity that is not small at all: you are home and you feel chilly. The windows are open. Before, it didn’t occur to you that you could close the window and you did nothing. Now, close the windows. It will be a bit warmer for you. Practice more and more and over time, you will be moving to bigger and bigger ways of taking care of yourself.

As you do, you will develop confidence in your ability to care for yourself and your dependence on others will weaken.

anita