Dear Annie,

a while ago you said:

I just find myself having no emotional or mental energy to do anything. And with my chronic neck and shoulder pain had been really bothersome and it’s been making things difficult since. And I just get so frustrated with myself and my pain. It feels like whatever I do this chronic pain never goes away.

Chronic pain can be related to blocked emotions, e.g. chronic shoulder pain can be related to feeling that you need to hold “the weight of the world” on your shoulders. You said you feel responsible to solve your parents’ problems – so in a way this could give you the feeling that it’s you who need to carry the burden (while others have it easy, like your sister).

It could very well be that when you start working on your emotional wounds, the chronic pain would subside too.

As I understand, right now you’re pretty much unable to move to a place of your own, because 1) you don’t have a job, 2) due to covid, and 3) because you don’t want to share a place with an unknown person, whom you don’t trust.

So you’re pretty much confined to your parents’ apartment and sharing the room with your sister. So physically, you can’t move and be free. But mentally and emotionally, you might be able to “move” and feel freer. One thing I believe would help you is not to expect to get empathy and understanding from your parents. Because you try to communicate with them, and it falls on deaf ears. Recently you broke down in front of your mother because she didn’t show compassion for you, and the friend that you had complained to earlier didn’t either:

… yesterday it just topped it off and I had a break down and cried in front of her because the same day, I was venting to a friend about something else that was upsetting me and her response made me felt like my feelings were invalid and I don’t feel heard, like my feelings are being dismissed. I was really feeling distressed because it’s like no one in my life understands or tries to empathize with me.

Expecting compassion and understanding from your mother – when she seems unable to give it to you – is what hurts you again and again. It just breaks your heart and deepens the wound. You’d need to accept that she isn’t capable of giving you what you long for, and seek it elsewhere. In fact, the best would be to seek it in therapy, where you’ll not only receive attention and empathy, but also the possibility to heal the wound of rejection, which is affecting most of your relationships.

I think this would break the cycle of you having a need, expressing it to someone unable or unwilling to meet that need, and then you getting disappointed and hurt even more.