Dear Kshitij:

You are welcome. I am glad you felt it comforting to type down your recent post. For as long as it is comforting, please type down your thoughts, anytime and at any length!

“I feel emotionally exhausted by having either intrusive or enraged thoughts“- the rage in the thoughts is especially exhausting because the intense anger (rage) prepares the body for physical action (the heart works harder, for one, in preparation to fight), and when there is no action, the preparation lasts so long, heart working hard for so long, that the person gets exhausted.

(I am adding the boldface feature selectively to the quotes): “I had felt this intense grief when I was facing the issue with scholarship and it has remained within me, refusing to fade away. Never in my life I had felt such an intense pain, such an intense grief (not even during the time I was in the worst of my health…)… Hurt because the entire situation was uncalled for, it was because a bureaucrat found it satisfying for their  whimsical reasons to keep my application pending…. that officer deliberately withheld my file”-

– Reads like you believe that it was not a mistake on the part of the particular bureaucrat/ officer, but a deliberate attempt to hurt you, and that the officer found it satisfying to hurt you. What do you base this belief on?

In the above paragraph, you mentioned these emotions: intense grief, intense pain, and hurt, but you didn’t mention anger. Unexpressed, unresolved anger is powerful emotion, it adds intensity to other difficult emotions and make them last.

“I felt a darkness around me… I lost all hopes… whenever I get into a spiral of intrusive thoughts, I imagine myself depressed, I imagine myself isolated, drowned in misery and weeping on my condition“- I am getting in touch with my own lifetime, unexpressed anger, Kshitij, this is why in this post, I am focusing on your unexpressed anger. I am thinking that if you find a non-harmful way to express your anger directly, the anger will not intensify other difficult emotions as well as depression, and make them last for a long time. Maybe you can type down your anger in your next post..? (I intend to express my anger in my next post in my own thread, doing for myself what I am suggesting that you do).

“Now about my problem with father. I think that my relation with him did not make me think that I can never succeed because I could not succeed in having a good relation with him; I gave up on that long ago. I think his problematic behavior ended up showing in my self esteem, in my self worth (remember I mentioned externalization of self worth?)… During the scholarship issue or even before it happened, I think I attached my self worth with this opportunity... my self worth took a great hit and that contributed to my problems as well as my anxiety that went out of my control. I think that is one area where my father’s past behavior definitely impacted me because it had already damaged my self-esteem as a child”-

– What I understand from this paragraph is that currently, and for some time, you no longer hope that your father approves of you: you no longer see your father as a source of self-esteem. You see academic and professional success as a source of self-esteem. Now I understand better why the scholarship application issue was so devastating to you. The officer who mishandled your application, was just about to remove your hoped-for source of self-esteem, which is what your father already did via his sermons.

anita