Dear Divya:

There is no easy or simple solution to your predicament. You obviously had a severely abusive, negative childhood. Your FORMATIVE years, those childhood years, are when the brain forms and neurological pathways, connections between neurons in the brain are formed. You don’t “grow out” of those pathways because your body grows and because you age. These pathways can be changed through a long term process involving insight, skills and certain choices you make during the process. Neuro-pathways can be changed. There are millions connections between billions of brain cells in one brain.

What I believe is happening with you is that you are troubled by what happened to you in childhood. There are conflicts, unresolved. The child that you were and still are, the child in you that you cannot live without, is probably held hostage in the past, imprisoned in false beliefs you formed then. Those false beliefs are making you miserable (because they are not true). When you get together with a person, the child part of you wants HELP. No wonder she wants help. Desperately.

You will need to help yourself and you will need others’ help. The person that gave you the feedback sounds reasonable and perceptive. Yet, you probably need help of a GOOD psychotherapist. With that kind of help you will travel back to your childhood- with the therapist who will guide you to not just visit the way you have done so far, but in a different way, in a way that you will be able to SEE things you haven’t seen before, not at all in the same way or the same clarity and conviction of seeing. And over time you will be able to free that child in you from the prison she is in.

Then you could be that whimsical, funny and amusing person, at least at times. Right now, this person, you, needs help.

As you hopefully get the therapy help that you need, try when you meet some others to not ask them for help (you will focus your need for help on the therapist… or maybe here on this forum0 and free those interactions a bit from your need for help. See what happens. Experiment with it.

anita