Dear Elie,

I’ve always wanted to feel understood but I never got that, due to my parents being more goal driven and emotionally unaware.

My parents aswell as my brother is trying to accomplish more with their careers, however even though all of us are safe and stable, my brother’s constantly trying for a job and he’s breaking apart.

It appears your parents worried mostly about material security while you were growing up. They focused on providing that for you and your brother, and didn’t pay too much attention to how you and your brother feel. Were they working a lot and didn’t have time to tend to your emotional needs? Or they disregarded your emotional needs, sending the message that emotions aren’t important, that material and professional success is what’s important in life, and that’s what defines a person? Perhaps their philosophy was to choose a profession that is the most lucrative, and to disregard the calling of the heart and what one loves doing?

If so (and this is just an assumption, I don’t know if it’s true), then what you wrote about your brother: my brother’s constantly trying for a job and he’s breaking apart” could mean that your brother is very much trying to follow your parents’ philosophy (follow the money, disregard your heart), but it seems he’s breaking, he can’t really do it. And you have compassion for him because you feel the same – not understood by your parents, who have those materialistic expectations on both of you.

Am I assuming this right?