Dear humour,

My mother has grown weak with age but she has returned to her usual strong self. She just wants to see me happy.

It’s good to hear your mother has gotten stronger again and “can do without you”, i.e. doesn’t depend on your help. My mother also always said she wants me to be happy, however she criticized me a lot while I was growing up and didn’t have faith in me. So she kind of ruined my capacity to be happy… It took me many years to regain it…

And it’s always like that with childhood trauma – it ruins or severely limits our capacity for happiness. For example, we may feel confused and incapable of knowing what’s good for us. We don’t trust ourselves. I was like that. It came from my mother’s criticism of me, and then later I made some wrong choices, which left me feeling I can’t trust my judgment and I don’t know what is good for me.

It seems that you too have a similar belief about yourself:

I may be falling behind in life, not sure of the choices I have made, little afraid to make choices for the future. Everyone around me seems to be making a lot of progress. I don’t think I have failed but I feel I have not lived upto my true potential.

It seems you too believe that you can’t trust your judgment and that you’re afraid of making choices in the future. Another belief that I see in your words is “I am falling behind, I am worse than others”, which usually boils down to “I am a failure.” I had this belief for a long time too.

My false core beliefs are mostly the consequence of my mother’s heavy criticism, and then my father not protecting me from it, not standing up for me. So I was alone mostly, no one giving me encouragement and support, and no one telling me that I was lovable and worthy. I adopted the belief that I was faulty to my core. And also worthless.

I wonder what your family dynamics was. You did share a little about your family, mostly that yours wasn’t a happy and “normal” family. And that you tried everything to make them happy, but failed. What was your relationship with your mother, i.e. your father when you were a child? Because it defines what messages and false beliefs we adopt about ourselves.