Dear Anonymous:

You are welcome. No, I am not a psychotherapist. My healing process started when I attended my first quality psychotherapy, 2011-13. I see healing and learning as synonyms, so I keep learning/ healing here, on tiny buddha, many hours per day, every day,  since May 2015. In 2015, I decided to  no longer read books, studies, articles etc., online or otherwise, and learn strictly from my communication with members. (I look up words definitions online and use Wikipedia to familiarize myself with some terms and topics, that’s all that I read outside the forums here). Over time, with persistent intention, attention, dedication and so many, many hours,  I got pretty good at understanding the human experience of emotion, behavior and thinking- how these very closely associated items continuously interact, forming our human experience from childhood on.

“So you are saying, if I find peace in the fact that I couldn’t make that big of difference in my family life as a child, I will be at peace..”- yes, and I agree, it is indeed “much easier said than done”.

Let’s look at the CBT exercise. I’ll pick only one (for now) of the evidence that you listed in support of your I’m-not-good-enough core belief and ask you a question about it:

“didn’t love girly things as a child”- I touched on the topic, but I ask you for your understanding at this point: why is it that you didn’t love girly things and instead you loved boyish things?

(We can attend the other items later, one thing at a time).

anita