Hello Rahel,

I’m sorry you’ve had to go through such abuse. It really is no wonder that a lot of your problems, in my opinion, look like the problems of a child who’s lost and scared. This is the first thing I’d like you to really think about: it’s not you who’s somehow inherited certain behaviour from a father and would be difficult or rebellious or too talkative by nature. The behaviour is just a response to a prolonged state of fear and stress. If you would feel safe, loved and seen, you would behave more like who you really are, a precious woman who’s like no other.

Because you don’t have much trust in yourself, you’re kind of like blowing in the wind, at the mercy of others, desperately wanting to be seen and heard. So of course you’re going to cling onto anyone who shows interest and you’ll take things personally that other people say or do. The reason you rebel against advice is that you take the advice as criticism towards who you are at your core.

Everyone needs to feel like they are loved and seen and heard. That is absolutely a very normal need. You’re also not the first person, nor the last, who would then slightly overreact when trying to fulfil that need. You, like many other people, are unfortunately working against yourself in this quest. Your fundamental belief is that you are not worthy of love and care, so regardless of what happens in reality, it doesn’t really connect with you, unless it is other people treating your poorly, which is when you get the validation to your belief that you aren’t beautiful enough or good enough in what ever ways that you’ve rationalised this lack of love. This is important: the fact that you feel unloved has nothing to do with your characteristics as a human being. Love is for everyone, and everyone is worthy of it.

One thing that I really think you should do is to find a place where you can meditate, a place of silence. Find ways to silence that chatter in your mind that is constantly narrating what you are feeling, and making things worse. As an example, you feel lonely, which is a perfectly normal and valid feeling. But instead of seeking it as a feeling that comes and goes, you’ll grab onto it and start to create a story around why you’re lonely. So this verbal narration has to be separated from the actual feeling that you are feeling. It will only make things more complex when you start making assumptions on why other people behave towards you in certain ways. People behave the way they feel, just like you are behaving according to how you feel.

Another thing is to understand that you are not your mind. You are not all of your actions and thoughts either. There is more to you and this becomes more apparent in a meditative state. You have more strength and abilities that you are right now seeing, and you can’t see them because of the constant chatter in your head, telling you that you’re this and that. When you get a moment of peace from the chatter, things are starting to look much more simpler and a lot less complex. You’ll also hopefully experience being seen.

Please google “the outer child”. Read about it. It might make things more clear for you. It certainly did for myself. I used to be completely impulsive, self-destructive and a complete mess in relationships. Or rather, my behaviour was like that, because I felt so unloved and unsafe. After some self-care, my behaviour has changed. Actually, I was really talkative as well before, and would be way too direct about everything. Now I don’t feel that need anymore. So, I really can understand your behaviour and I can understand how you’d think that it is you who is somehow bad and not good enough. But that’s not the real truth behind it all, and the behaviour will change by itself, after you change your fundamental beliefs about yourself. Changing that required for me to cut through all the mind chatter and to really get deep at my core and to see myself for the person that I actually am. I don’t need others to see me or validate me anymore because I see myself and I accept myself.

Please feel free to ask if this came across in an unclear way. The concept is all clear to me, and actually, your behaviour is completely clear to me as well, but it’s not as easy to communicate it all clearly 🙂

You’ll find yourself and love. Don’t worry 🙂