Continued, Dear Charlotte:   

Reading what you shared in your first, Nov 29, 2013, more than 4.5 years before your last thread (July 2018), it’s striking how consistently your early experiences match the patterns you’ve been struggling with in relationships.

Even at 21, you described feeling emotionally numb, disconnected from yourself, unsure of who you were, and easily shaped by the people around you. You wrote about feeling “false and unreal,” adapting to whoever you were with, and not knowing your own values — all signs of a self that was not supported or mirrored in childhood.

You also spoke about filling inner emptiness through relationships or eating disorders, repressing anger and feeling responsible for your parents’ emotions (“I feel bad about staying so sad because my parents have been suffering because of this.”).

These are the same themes that later showed up in your romantic life: losing your sense of self, not knowing your needs, merging with partners, feeling guilty for having boundaries, and swinging between closeness and distance.

Your posts across the years tell one coherent story: you’ve been trying to navigate life without ever having been taught how to stay connected to yourself, and you’ve been doing the best you can with the tools you were given.

Growing up, it’s clear to me that you suffered Emotional Neglect (the lack of mirroring, etc.)
In regard to emotional over-involvement by a parent: it’s when the parent uses the child for emotional support (role reversal). Examples: (1) A mother cries to her 10‑year‑old about her marriage problems, (2) A parent says, “You’re the only one I can talk to.”, (3) A parent vents about work stress to the child instead of another adult, (4) “I don’t know what I’d do without you — you’re my rock.”

And as a result, the child becomes the parent’s emotional caretaker and learns to suppress their own needs.
Emotional overinvolvement can also happen when the parent takes the child’s emotions personally. For example, saying something like “It hurts me when you’re upset.”, “When you’re sad, it ruins my whole day.”, or “Why are you angry at me? I’m doing everything for you.”, and the child learns that expressing emotions harms others, so they shut down or numb out.

Emotional overinvolvement also happens when the parent expects emotional closeness the child can’t give.
Example, saying, “Why don’t you want to spend time with me anymore?”, as well as the parent treating the child’s independence as rejection. Example, “Why do you want to go out with friends instead of staying with me?”. The child learns that autonomy causes conflict, so they avoid boundaries in adulthood.

It happens when the parent is emotionally fused with the child. Examples- The parent needs the child to agree with their opinions or the parent becomes upset if the child has different feelings, expecting the child to mirror their moods. As a result, the child never develops a separate identity and later “merges” with partners.

Emotional overinvolvement doesn’t look like “abuse” in the traditional sense — it often looks like closeness, concern, or even love. But it quietly erodes a child’s ability to develop a stable inner world.

You didn’t describe specific behaviors from your parents, but based on what you did share, it’s clear that you grew up in an environment where your emotions were not mirrored, your boundaries were not respected, you had to abandon yourself so to adapt to your parent or parents, you felt responsible for their feelings, you weren’t supported in developing a sense of self and you learned to suppress anger and needs. You became emotionally disconnected from yourself

I started a new thread yesterday, partly as a result of your threads, Charlotte. Like I said, it’d be a miracle of you respond after all these years 🌿 ✨ 🌼 🌟

🤍 Anita

Good morning, Confused:

You wrote yesterday: “I realized we’ve posted in 20+ pages, wow”- actually, we posted in 32 pages (#13-45), WOW.

About Harry, he first posted on June 27, 2024 (page 9). Re-reading his posts this morning, he sounds eerily similar to you, Confused. At times I thought I was reading your words.

There were many similarities, but I’ll mention just one in this post:

Harry: “I’ve never really looked into my past as a child as a reason for how I feel. To be honest with you I can’t name specific times I’ve felt that way. I was kicked out of my house a lot by my mum, I suppose my dad had left the house abruptly a couple times and stayed away. I was bullied pretty badly in school and tried to just brush it off, which worked at the time.”

Confused: “The relationship with my mother was very chaotic, violence and arguing constantly, throwing some awkward affection here and there, then rinse and repeat. I can’t remember if I was dissociating when I was a kid, definitely trying to escape in imaginary worlds and games though… How does my body relate this relationship to the one with my mother? I can’t comprehend that; I saw no similarities there.”

Neither Harry nor you, Confused, connected your respective childhoods to your emotional patterns in adulthood. Both of you minimized and dismissed the impact of your childhoods; neither of you saw it as relevant.

Neither one of you has processed his childhood wounds, including the chaotic history with your respective mothers.

I addressed this point to Harry back in the summer of 2024, and to you, in this thread (eerily, in the summer of 2025).

Anita to Confused: “Your childhood experience is not only relevant but extremely relevant to what you described. You mentioned a childhood of violence, chaos, unpredictable affection and emotional instability- This is the exact environment that creates disorganized attachment, hypervigilance, fear of abandonment and dissociation (emotional shutdown under stress) as a coping mechanism.”

🤍 Anita

Yes. ,Confused. July 20th is when Larry posted last. And what he expressed fits a lot with what you did. The similarities are indeed uncanny.

I do hope 🙏 you get “untangled”.

No one is worth you suffering being tangled.

🤍 🙌 Anita

Dear Alessa:

I appreciate 🙏 your optimism and nuance. I think that I understand why feeling empathy for your bio is indeed part of your healing ✨️ journey.

I think that you’re doing a great 👍 job healing!

Anger growing up- I remember it vividly when I was a teenager. It was so difficult to hold it in. I think it vibrated through me in the form of tics.

I was SO ANGRY 😠 😡 👿

Thank you for being here, Alessa, and thank you for being you 🤍 💙 🤍

🤍🙏✨️👍 Anita

* I no longer hate her

Oh, I just read your recent post, Thomas. I understand. You can imagine reading the words of a song not knowing it’s a song, thinking these are your words 😢

😏🙏 🤍✨️🎵 Anita

Dear Thomas:

I asked AI about your post above and to my relief, was told that you paraphrased or quoted from the song “Alone Again (Naturally)” by Gilbert O’Sullivan. I had no idea; I thought those were your words and was concerned.

Are you expressing how you feel through the song or..?

Anita

Continued:

Here are examples of what it looks like when a parent fails to mirror a child’s feelings:

(1) Child: crying because a toy broke, Parent: “Stop crying. It’s just a toy. You’re being dramatic.”

(2) Child: scared of the dark, Parent: “There’s nothing to be scared of. Don’t be silly.”

(3) Child: angry because a sibling took something, Parent: “You’re overreacting. Share nicely.”

(4) Child: sad after being left out at school, Parent: “You’re fine. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

The child learns: “My feelings don’t make sense.”, “My emotions are wrong or too much.”, “I shouldn’t trust what I feel.”, “I need to hide my emotions to be accepted.”

This is how emotional numbness begins.

Examples of when a parent doesn’t help a child understand their inner world:

(1) Child: melting down after school, Parent: “What is wrong with you today? Stop acting out.”

(2) Child: says “I don’t know” when asked what’s wrong, Parent: “Well, figure it out. I can’t help you if you don’t talk.”

(3) Child: nervous before a performance, Parent: “There’s nothing to be nervous about. Just do it.”

(4) Child: angry and yelling, Parent: “Go to your room until you can behave.”

The child learns: “My inner world is confusing and I’m alone with it.”, “My feelings are problems, not signals.”, “I shouldn’t explore what I feel.”, “Strong emotions are dangerous.”

This leads to emotional disconnection and difficulty knowing one’s needs.

Examples of a parent who doesn’t respect a child’s boundaries:

(1) Child: doesn’t want to hug a relative, Parent: “Don’t be rude. Go hug them right now.”

(2) Child: says “stop” during tickling, Parent: “Oh come on, you’re having fun!” (keeps going)

(3) Child: wants to play alone, Parent: “No, you’re being antisocial. Go play with your cousin.”

(4) Child: doesn’t want to share a toy yet, Parent: “You have to share. Give it to them now.”

The child learns: “My ‘no’ doesn’t matter.”, “My body and space aren’t mine.”, “I must please others to be accepted.”, “I shouldn’t have boundaries.”

This is how adults end up losing themselves in relationships.

When a child grows up with unmirrored feelings → they can’t identify emotions; no help understanding their inner world → they feel confused and overwhelmed; disrespected boundaries → they lose their sense of self…they become adults who don’t know what they feel, don’t know what they want, feel guilty for having needs, panic when someone gets close, abandon their own boundaries, feel shame for saying “no”, etc.

This is exactly the pattern you described Charlotte, and I can very much relate to it.

(To be continued)