Dear Stepan Pavlas:

My first question for you was “what do you believe other people in your life are thinking about you: your parents, peers in school, the girl you shared about, others?”- you didn’t answer my question. You didn’t write what it is that you thinks that others are thinking about you, )an example would be: my mother thinks I have a good heart).

Instead you shared that you’ve been having long hair for five years, you are used to it, and you don’t wonder what other people think about your long hair; you shared that you adapt well to different individuals, that you try to get along with everyone, that you prefer peace with everyone, that “do not like disputes, conflict or unrest”, but you don’t do anything and everything so to avoid conflict, and when it is necessary, you defend your personal space. You wrote: “even before I started having these psychological problems, I wasn’t very interested in people.. I didn’t find any reason to socialize… I look for my own, and when I feel the need to get involved, I do”.

My second question t you was to explain a sentence you wrote earlier regarding the word love: “from what I have experienced, I can not assign that feeling to anything else, or anyone else”. You explained that “there never been such a thing I could match the same feeling too. Not a single thing or person”, that is, you never felt loved by anyone. So you didn’t love back anyone.. until you met this girl, but you doubt the nature of that love, not sure about it perhaps (“why cannot it be true that it could be something deeper? Can it be blind love..?”), but it was or is something specie because “we match to each other”.

What I understand from what you shared in your recent post is that you didn’t experience love in your home of origin, or if you experienced it, it was long ago and you forgot how it feels. Maybe your parents tell you that they love you, or show their love in actions, but you don’t feel their love for you, and you don’t feel love for them.

It fits with what you wrote in your original post regarding the girl: you realized that you missed her, told her about it, and “she felt the same way. I began to wonder what it was, and we both agreed that it was probably love. We really discussed it too much”- you’ve been so removed, at 13, from the experience of love, of mutual love, that it took you time to figure out what it was that you felt for her and she felt back for you. You had to discuss it a lot, too much, as if it was a foreign, peculiar and unfamiliar concept- to-love-and-be-loved-in-return.

It fits with what you shared earlier about your relationships with your parents: “we don’t talk much together.. I don’t feel that bond like I love them… I don’t have some sort of deep relationship with them… maybe I don’t want to talk to them… I’d  rather be alone. I don’t feel around them like I have that emotional support.. with my ‘girlfriend’ ..I feel more understood and safe”.

My further input this morning: I am guessing that your parents expressed to you somehow that they don’t like you, that they don’t approve of you, or that you are not okay in their book, not worthy of their attention. Maybe they expressed that they like you like a Thing, not like a Person, like someone that’s just there, not someone that thinks and feels.

Maybe they didn’t like anything that was childish about you, like when you cried, maybe they expressed disapproval of you when you cried, saying something like don’t-be-a-child! Or if you ran around like a child, they were angry and said something like don’t run around , sit down like an adult! Maybe this is why you hate being called a kid.

What do you think?

anita