Dear Ashmitha:

“a healthy marriage and healthy environment for my children is very important to me”- yes it is, but you did not experience yet a healthy marriage/ a healthy home environment. You can imagine how it looks like, how it sounds like and how it feels like, but it is yet something to experience for the first time.

What you experienced instead is this: “as a child, I always put myself in the middle of my parents’ fights. Whenever my dad gave my mom trouble, I would be the first to go up to him and tell him to leave her alone. My mother was afraid for my safety, since he was drunk.. He would threaten my mom a lot, and hold knives to scare her.. I would go to the kitchen, get my own knife, and stand up to him and ask him what his problem was. I just remember protecting my mom a lot as a child. I saw myself as stronger woman than she was… she was a fearful person”-

– your mother was The Victim, your father, when drunk, was The Villain, and you were The Child Hero.

How does it feel for a child to be the hero, to courageously protect one parent from the other?

It felt good when your mother praised you for protecting her, because you had a purpose, you were making a difference, and because she trusted you to be strong and capable (“My mom still talks about how she never worries about me because I take care of myself”).

Because of her praise and trust, you felt confident enough to appear very confident then and now  (“I appear as a very confident and relaxed person to my friends and partners”).

That confidence in your capability carried on to the context of school where you excelled (“I was consistently at the top of my class, won several awards and had a great relationship with my teachers and peers”), and it carried on to the context of higher education and employment (“I am confident in my academics.. professors and employers describe me as intellectual and advanced for my level. I am confident in who I am as a person, I think I have a good relationship with myself.”)

But there was a price to pay for being The Child Hero that you were: “I appear as a very confident and relaxed person to my friends and partners, but I think I am definitely insecure”.

How is it possible for a hero to feel insecure?

“I think I have a hard time fully trusting people and letting them in because I’m scared they will disappoint me, like my dad did… I think I truly only trust myself”- as a child, you didn’t trust your father, but you didn’t trust your mother either, that’s why you can only trust yourself.

When a child cannot trust either parents, a child feels insecure.

No matter how many times you protected your fearful, weak mother (“I just remember protecting my mom a lot as a child”), she never rose to the occasion and protected herself, or you, from your father. “My mother was afraid for my safety, since he was drunk”- she was afraid for your safety, but she didn’t protect you.

“I have a great relationship with my mom.. My dad and I are close as well and I still love him… When he is sober, I enjoy being around him. But when he is drunk, I hate him.. I love my family a lot”- there is love, but there is also hate, which is intense anger. When you confronted your father, as a child, you were energized by fear and by anger, anger at him for getting drunk and for harassing your mother and you. You may have been angry at your mother too, for being fearful and weak, for not standing up to your father, for not protecting herself and you, and for not being the strong mother that you needed.

As The Child Hero,  you were considered (1) a child who does not need protection because she can protect herself (“My mom still talks about how she never worries about me because I take care of myself“), and (2) a child who has no feelings that need to be attended to (“There wasn’t much time to talk about my feelings.. home was chaotic and there were more important things to worry about than my feelings”).

But you did need protection and you did have feelings that needed to be attended to. Without protection and attention, you closed off emotionally, pushing down much of your uncomfortable emotions to below the surface, away from your awareness (“I have been closed-off emotionally since I was young”).

You wrote about your boyfriend: “Our values are aligned… he would make a great father and kind husband.. I 100% think he is a good person”, but something is missing: “I go through periods of feeling happy and content with my partner to feeling like something is missing”.

Something is always missing in a relationship, but I think that the something-is-missing that you are referring to is your awareness of your pushed down/ repressed feelings.

“I feel like something is missing at times. When we are together, I am quite content with him. When we are apart, I sometimes question if he is the one I should marry”-

– it is not uncommon for a woman to question if a man is the one she should marry, but I think that your questioning is motivated by fear and anger brewing under the surface of your awareness.

Fear and anger make it easy for you to leave relationships (“I am fine with leaving a relationship if something isn’t working”). Fear and anger motivate you to look for that “something is missing”/ “something isn’t working”, including considering that different interests in sports and music are enough of a a reason to leave the relationship.

“Feeling emotionally connected to my partner is necessary for me to feel romance and security in him. I know I am a deep person”- you will need to bring more of your emotions from deep inside up to the surface, back to your awareness. It is then that you will (1) feel more connected to yourself, (2) feel confident in your ability to evaluate and choose a compatible partner,  (3) appear and feel confident otherwise, and (4) able to feel connected to a compatible partner.

When I shared with you that responding to your scary childhood experience was emotionally intense for me, you wrote: “Please don’t feel obligated to respond if this is triggering to you.. I don’t want you to put yourself in an emotionally difficult situation. I am just so used to it that I have emotionally detached from it and it is easy for me to share. Sorry if it was too explicit”-

– you rushed to protect me (thank you!), similar to you rushing to protect your mother. You also shared that you are emotionally detached from the explicit details of your scary, personal story (it is as if it happened to someone else, isn’t it?). It is this emotional detachment that I referred to when I mentioned your emotions being pushed down, being repressed.

(I use the two words, feelings and emotions, interchangeably, as having the same meaning)

Dear Ashmitha, I think that you need to be a different kind of hero, at this point in your life- a hero courageous enough to take on the difficult, gradual task of feeling what you don’t want to feel…

anita