Dear Ben,

I am glad you realized that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with you, and that it was your upbringing that resulted in certain limitations that you may have – limitations that can be fixed though.

My stress and fear are still here, as are all of my oddities and inhibitions.

What are you afraid of most at present? What do you feel most inhibited about?

It’s hard to pin down exactly what I’m searching for. I know that there’s more in my past that can explain my present. But explaining it and actually fixing it are two different things.

True, they are two different things, but if you know what caused a certain pattern of behavior, it will be easier to transform it. For example, you mentioned your fear of confrontation. It might have been caused (and you might already be guessing it) by your parents never having had a confrontation, and then once they did have one, it resulted in a divorce. Conclusion: confrontation is dangerous and leads to irreparable damage. Just as an example…

I’m having an anxious morning today, and it has brought with it a strong dose of “nothing can fix you”. I should pause until this mood passes.

That’s a very good attitude – you have a lot of self-awareness to know that “nothing can fix you” is not the entire truth. It’s a reaction of the anxious part, but there’s more to you than the anxious part. So when you ask “What do I do now?”, my first suggestion is to keep practicing what you’re already doing: pause and take a break when the inner critic starts judging you. Don’t trust the inner critic, don’t identify with him. Step back and tell yourself “there’s more to the story than this”. So keep things in perspective, don’t judge yourself – would be my first suggestion.