Dear Tee,

“She didn’t force you into it, but you went for it because of her: because you used up all your savings to pay for her upkeep. So you needed the extra money. And she convinced you to try trading.” Right… but she didn’t actually manipulate me into try trading though… She introduced trading to me, and she suggested that we start trading and because I’ve always wanted to make some money by working or something while in college, I agreed to her suggestion to see how far it would get.

“So it wasn’t a professional broker, but some guy she found? And he didn’t bear any responsibility for losing your money?” It was as professional as we could find. The guy has a lot of persons financing his trading and he has been relatively successful, but yeah, the guy is a pain: he refuses to take responsibility for losing the money cause “trading is a very risky investment and it has ups and downs which we cannot control” and then we just stopped working with him and started saving again to try out other trading groups.

“Don’t underestimate the influence your father had on you and forming your beliefs. What he put you through was indoctrination, and it left its traces (just think of being forced to sit with the adults at 5 years old, listening to their “wisdom”,  instead of being allowed to play).”  Oh trust me when I say this, my father’s beliefs do not control me, they have just made me aware and more cautious. They ended up being right about B and so I will respect their beliefs, but I am still going to do my own thing, based on my own evaluation. I will not allow their opinion/judgment to cloud my own. I will still acknowledge their beliefs and consider it in various situations, but the final decision will be mine alone.

“Yesterday I came across an article about gaslighting, and was amazed to see that it describes almost to the tee the tactics used by B” Thank you. I will come back to this whenever I feel like someone is gaslighting me. I will learn from my mistake.

Paradoxy