Dear joanna:

More accurately, I get tired every day. That is natural, to get tired. I used to feel exhausted, that is, very tired, extremely tired a whole lot in the past, especially when I was a child, a teenager, younger, because of the anxiety. The anxiety is exhausting. Because of the healing process, it has been many months that I feel less tired than I used to.

You asked: “Is this really so uncommon, accusing of bad intentions?” Yes, it is very uncommon for an individual to accuse others of bad intentions repeatedly “hundreds or thousands (of times) even, every day sometimes”. It probably seems natural and normal to you (words you used) because, like you wrote, you got so used to it. Your brain was formed with your mother being the main force in your life, with her accusations as.. the unfortunate normal.

By “This is why it is important…” I did not mean that I don’t want to advise you for some reason, not at all. I do want to keep communicating with you, absolutely. What I meant was to encourage you to take on your healing process with you being the one to decide, the one in power to decide what is true and what is not true. For example, I might get carried away with the similarities between your mother and mine and suggest to you that your mother is like mine in ways she is not. In that case, I hope you question what I wrote and decide for yourself that what I wrote is not true. Same in regard to what anyone says to you- do not accept it as the truth- evaluate and decide for yourself.

I am glad that you are not sorry anymore that you don’t have the kind of job your mother wanted you to have, looking like your mother wanted you to look, and so on. And I am glad you feel stronger, eyes opened, more confident.

You wrote: “I will never let go of the fact that my father is dead and that he didn’t save me from this life… so he (the man) is still my hope. I can’t let him go… I need so much for him to be my hero… I can’t help feeling it… (he) never was a hero I wanted him to be, he just has those features my father had, he is distant, cold like him so he seems like a safe place so much.”

We only know what we experience. We don’t know what we didn’t experience. You experienced your mother as aggressive, accusing, torturing, really. In comparison, your father was the safe place because he was not aggressive to you, he didn’t do to you the harmful things that she did. Now as an adult, you know the same you did as a child: safety is with the person who is not aggressive and is distant and cold, like your father.

The experience you didn’t have as a child is having a parent who is not aggressive and is attentive to you in loving ways. And so, you don’t expect this kind of experience. You… don’t know it exists.

You wrote that you may see this man again, “I don’t know what must happen so that I would finally be over him”- what must happen, I think, is that you experience what you haven’t experienced so far, and that is a non aggressive person who is attentive to you in loving ways. Then you will know it exists and once you know it exists, you will want to experience it.

Some people get this new experience in quality psychotherapy where for the first time they get treated non-aggressively and attentively in loving ways (professionally, of course). Following this experience, over time, they are able to detect such individuals who are also not aggressive and lovingly attentive and be drawn to such, forming a relationship with such an individual.

It is about somehow experiencing what you didn’t experience before.

anita