* Dear Mark: you are welcome to jump in, as far as I am concerned, into communications I have with Original Posters. This is a public forum. I read your posts here, and a few other threads, and I believe your input is excellent. Thank you for it.

Dear joanna:

I re-read all your posts on the thread. You stated your core conflict, core problem yourself, here are your words:

“my father used to ignore me… he just kept ignoring me… He didn’t even see me.”

This led you to “when it comes to people with bad influence I always seek their attention, and see them as a challenge. To change them, to make them see me, to make them care.. Which I never do. And then I suffer…. don’t know how to stop suffering. How to let go and not feel hurt so much”

Regarding your ex boyfriend: “when I met this guy he reminded me of my father so much, felt so familiar, so nice and safe. And then when I failed to make him love me… I failed again… what is wrong with me… I can’t forgive myself I couldn’t make him love me… I always want to punish myself, why am I like that, why I can’t be a person he wants”

My input: that “familiar, so nice and safe” feeling you referred to is what you need most. This is your most desperate need: to feel safe. As a child you needed to feel safe so badly, that you imagined that .. if only your father saw you and liked you, then you would be safe. If only you deserved his attention, if only you proved yourself worthy of his attention, then you will feel safe. That hope kept you going, it had to. Something had to keep you going.

You are stuck in that hope, to earn the attention of an inattentive person. This is the trap you referred to in your posts.

What hurts so much is that experience of the child that was you, the child who is still in you, still hurting because her father doesn’t see her. You keep blaming yourself, tortured not only by not being seen, but by believing you are being and doing wrong, and therefore being responsible for not being seen and liked.

I was wondering, where was your mother in this childhood dynamic. Did she notice you? Did she notice that you tried so desperately to make your father see you?

anita