Dear Dandan:

You shared that you grew up in a small town with parents who were loving and caring, and “so sensitive”-  too sensitive, they “get scared easily”.

Your father reads like a good man, working hard in a bank so to take care of you and your sisters, and see to it that that you got a good education from a good school. It was not his fault that he was so sensitive/ too scared, not wanting you to “do anything much mischievous or dangerous” and get hurt as a result.

“I derive energy and vibes from the people around me”, you wrote. As a child and onward, the people around you were your parents, and you derived/ obtained your fear from your fearful parents.

“I hate being alone most of the times”, but you are also afraid of being with people who are “dull company” because when around dull people, you “automatically feel low and depressed”.

“I get all the energy from people around me, who are more positive and enthusiastic, self sufficient and bold”- such people are very different from your parents who were negative and subdued, not at all bold.

“I feel always low for no reason.. I am mostly low and depressed, for no reason”- when you were a young child, like all young children, you fiercely loved your parents, and you fiercely wanted them to be happy. When you saw your mother being depressed (“My mom.. feels low most of the time”), you felt so badly for her, that you felt low most of the time too, like her.

For you to feel happy and enthusiastic, confident and bold, you needed your parents to feel/ be those things first. If they were happy and bold etc., then you wouldn’t worry about them. But knowing that they are unhappy and subdued.. you’d feel too guilty to be happy and bold yourself, wouldn’t you?

“My mom too is like me. She feels low most of the time”- it is not that (1) you and your mother are two separate individuals and it so happens that the two of you are alike, or that (2) the low feeling was carried on from her genes to yours. What happened, way more likely, is that you were very sad to see her sad, and you felt too guilty to be happy yourself. You needed her to be happy first, before you could allow yourself to be happy.

“If I am with a dull company, I automatically feel low and depressed” – this is what happened to you as a child and onward, growing up in the company of your dull, depressed mother: you automatically felt depressed yourself.

Maybe part of your fear and negative thinking about the offers to work and live in Germany was that you felt too guilty to live a better life than your parents’ lives, too guilty to allow yourself to be happy and bold while your parents are unhappy and subdued still. I imagine that you’d feel like a bad son, and a bad person, if you turned your back to your parents, and chosen a happy, bold life for yourself.

About your recent ex-girlfriend, you wrote: “I am thinking a lot about her. Imagining the happy moments and how happy we would be, like literally new scenes keep running in my mind”- but you’d feel too guilty to be happy in real life, would you?

In your earlier thread, you wrote about her: “When I break up with her.. I value her and miss her. But when I start talking to her back, I get the stress and bad feelings… This cycle has been going on”-

– the stress and bad feelings may be the guilt I am talking about, and this guilt is feeding the pattern you mentioned.

“I am a weak person and now I am even weaker”- if I am correct  in my understanding so far, I suggest that you think of yourself as a very loving son: you have loved your parents so much, for so long (three decades so far), that you refuse to be happy before they are. Such a strong, fierce  love makes you not a weak person, but a strong person. Only a strong person is capable of such a strong love.

See this strength within you, acknowledge it, and you will be able to use this amazing strength for you (and no longer against you), and you will make better and better choices, and know peace and love.

You are welcome to reply to me anytime, if you would like.

anita