Dear Gaia:

It is true that your cringiness is a personal, inner problem, that you feel it whenever you are around others, even with people you like, even giving  your crush a kiss on the cheek made you cringe..

– but it is not that you were born cringy. What happened is that your mother really was insufferable, she would have made anyone cringe! There are such people you know.

My mother made me cringe. I never thought of the verb cringe to describe it (I learned the word from you), but yes, she made me cringe big time. I remember she held my had one time and it was like every cell of my body was running away in all directions, away from her hand, from her touch.

To this day I move away from touch, I cringe still. But I say to myself sometimes, if my hand is being held, I say: this is not my mother holding my hand, and the cringe goes away.

A mother is very, very powerful in her child’s life and when she  makes her child cringe, that cringe stays, like glue, sticky.

Do you relate to what I am saying here?

anita