Dear Dave:

Good to read back from you! The leaves are indeed changing, not too cold yet but cold enough in the evenings to start the fire and sit by the fire stove. Good to read that you are taking dating slowly and lightly, not rushing.

“sometimes it can be lonely… also I struggle to relax“- I think that I suggested to you before that what we feel as children, we tend to feel as adults. It takes work and lots of patience to work through difficult childhood emotional experiences so to make them less powerful in our current adult lives.

Here is a small sample of your difficult childhood emotional experiences: “I could not bare to upset her.. I felt responsible often for my mother’s happiness as a child”, “(My father got) very angry at normal child-like things, such as dropping something… (I) walked on egg-shells around him so as not to make him angry” (June 2021).

We want to forget those long gone experiences and we should.. unless we keep re-living them. Going to the gym, meeting with friends, these are very helpful, but working through difficult childhood emotional experiences is quite necessary if we want to change how we feel long-term. Not an easy task, I need to do more of it myself these very days. If you find it useful to exchange such work here, on your thread, me and you, let me know. If not- I am fine with it, it’s an idea that just popped into my mind.

anita