Dear Alice:

You are welcome. “I feel and often am so lazy… left to my own devices, I would struggle to get things done. I seem to go through peaks of great activity and then troughs when everything seems pointless… I am easily discouraged and often tired. The kind of tired where sleep and food does not help… my parents.. either directly compared me to others and said how I was lacking or kind of implied it so I KNOW that is true”-

– The facts are that your parents thought that you were not lacking when you were not at all lacking. They were wrong. You know now that not everything that people think is true to reality. Imagine your parents thinking on the matter was wrong.

“How can I argue with the facts?”- you did argue with what your parents presented to you as the facts: you tried to show them that you are not lacking. You tried hard, in so many ways, for so long, and you failed to change their minds and hearts about you. No wonder you got so very tired.

You are still trying to show that you are not lacking when you are in those “peaks of great activity”, tidying your house, for example. Thing is, you are in the habit of trying and failing, so you get discouraged and exhausted, and you figure that trying is pointless.

You may wonder how do I know that you are not lacking, and that your parents’ “facts” were wrong? My answer: if you were truly lacking, you wouldn’t have felt hurt  that your parents know what is true. You felt hurt because what they implied was not true.

“In addition I.. have been rejected over and over in my life by romantic partners, best friends, etc. so there is something in me or a behaviour or series of behaviours i do that I cannot yet see objectively or identify that pushes people away so they leave”-

I am sure this is true, just as there were series of behaviors on my part that pushed people away. But here is my point: those behaviors that push people away, are not the behaviors that pushed your parents away. They rejected you before those behaviors developed.

“the belief of ‘people always leave’ is also true as it has happened in my life over and over. I don’t know how to deal or move past beliefs which are true”-

Imagine the following (it is a crude imagery, but fitting): a flower, beautiful, wonderful fragrance in the garden; a sick animal approaches and vomits on the flower. The vomit dries out but the stink remains. Flowers nearby bend away from the smelly flower. Animals that walk by, move away from the stinky flower.

Back to you: remove the stink of your parents untruths, and you will see that you were beautiful all along.

“I still feel the same inside. Where do you suggest I go now to start?”-

– go to a mirror in your house, look into the eyes of the woman in the mirror and ask yourself out loud: is it possible that I am not lacking, is it possible? But don’t try to answer this question, just hold the question in your awareness.

Post again anytime.

anita