Dear Jenny Lynn:

The following quotes are from your last two posts.

You wrote: “I am an unhappy person with a mostly good life”- that unhappiness is the feeling you had as a child, it is the same feeling. It has nothing to do with your current life circumstances (“I live and pay my own bills I have a good job for someone my age (24) … I have a car, more money, I graduated from college”) and has everything to do with how you felt then. It is sort of a .. base feeling, formed in childhood and it stays with you.

You wrote: “My family…  really don’t care about your feelings”- this is a key sentence, says it all. Your feelings are a huge part of who you are. The way you experience life has everything to do with your feelings. When your parents didn’t care about your feelings, didn’t notice, didn’t attend to, didn’t value your feelings, they didn’t notice you; they didn’t value you.

You wrote: “I don’t have a very close relationship with anyone in my family…I really don’t have a person that I can turn to in my family and be transparent with”- understandably.

You wrote: “I do have functioning depression…and now I feel burdened… I apply unnecessary pressures to myself… so much stress…I started craving ‘Boyfriends'”- when a child’s feelings go unnoticed for too long, unattended to, not valued, the child believes there is something wrong with her, that she is not worthy of the attention she so craves.

That craving still exists, the craving for boyfriends. I think that quality psychotherapy will be of great help to you. You can pay for it, since you work, but better idea perhaps, paying for your therapy can be a birthday gift that your mother/parents can give you, an accumulated 24 birthdays gift.

anita