Dear Tortured Soul:

I think that most, if not all families are dysfunctional which makes the whole world as dysfunctional as it is.

“What’s done is done” but what’s done, is kept being done to us for as long as we don’t understand well enough what it is that was done. For example: a parent yells at a young child repeatedly through the years: you are useless, you can’t do anything right! The child believes his parent is wonderful and can’t be wrong. Many years later, the child is an adult, the parent is dead, but the child still believes his parents was wonderful and couldn’t have been wrong, and the same words (italicized) keep replaying in the now-adult’s brain, causing him the same old, same old anxiety and depression in daily life.

“If I kept reliving the trauma of my childhood, it would not serve me”- not unless you learn. In the above example, it would mean that the adult needs to learn that his parent could have been wrong, and could have been not so wonderful, maybe even cruel. It is then that the adult can consider: maybe I was not useless, maybe I can do things right, maybe I am capable after all!

But I do understand that this kind of learning is a painful process. I am still learning myself.

You are welcome, thank you for your appreciation, and if you want to post again, here on your thread, or start a new thread with a new topic, please do, and I will be glad to reply to you again.

anita