Anyone, Feb 8, 2014 (age 28): “I realize the fact that I need to be on my own first (emotionally). Nobody can take care of me if I don’t take care of me. I know this is not the right time to think and plan to settle with someone because I’m too weak and not yet healed completely. But it scares me to even think of having to share the roof with another person; in other words – to trust any other person.”

Feb 10, 2014: “My mom is weak emotionally. And she is worried how will I spend my life alone; for sure, she will prompt me to get married to some guy; and I’m not at all ready… I told her that I would need her to be at my place… (but she won’t) because what will she say to society”.

April 29, 2014: “My parents live in another city in India, they are around 65 yrs old now. My elder brother is there too… We live in a joint family, each floor for each family. It’s getting difficult for mom n dad to take the staircase (3rd floor) (there’s no lift)… It’s pretty hot (40-48*C in summer) and 10 months in a year it’s hot.”

July 12, 2014: “It’s about my mom n dad who are not so compatible at 65 years of age… My dad… does what he feels like, doesn’t consider and understand what another person needs or likes… My brother is short-tempered too… Dad is a person who just doesn’t understand. He… has never taken (mom) for a movie nor a gift in 30 years of marriage. And now, when he shouts at mom and dominates her, I can’t take it and freaks me out… I also feel that respect is earned and can’t be forced, so mom needs to change her responses towards dad… About mom… I would like to show her a way to suffer less”

Nov 9-12, 2015: “As of now, my state of mind is- I know I want to be loved by someone in a relation. Will it ever happen? Or will I wake up every day alone? Will I ever get a worthy person to share my life? 🙁 I live alone, and I got nobody to listen to me or hug me.. It’s tough!..

“Thank you, Anita, for being there! Kisses and hugs! Well, I want a man who would be caring, respectful, has similar likes so that we enjoy doing things together… You’re right Anita. Failure in the past has made me believe and think that it’s wrong to need love. I have got used to provide everything by myself so much that it feels wrong to be needing love. And so, I consider it as a weakness because I know I cannot live without it. I feel like begging to the person in relation.

“Probably if it is the right person, I won’t get that feeling. For now, it’s getting difficult to focus on my career and goals. When you get hit at heart, your mind stops working. I feel low or stressed most of the times. I came to spend few days with my family. It feels better here but I know what it will be like the moment I go back.”

Jan 7, 2019 (age 33): “My parents are 70 years old and face verbal abuse from my elder brother who lives with them… For his own reasons, he blames them for his life (he got divorced twice and now finding it difficult to remarry). He used to physically and verbally abuse his ex-wives… While my dad ignores his behavior, my mom gets hurt deeply but also doesn’t stand up firmly to say that this kind of behavior will not be acceptable. She has tolerated a lot; brother has often blamed her for the decisions that turned out wrong… I don’t know how to resolve this situation!!! Don’t want my parents to die an abusive death…

“Currently, my mother shouts back at my dad and they both quarrel like cats and dogs. And another situation is where every one of them is frustrated with each other. My brother often says that he wants to leave the city; I have tried to ask him to take the plunge (he wants to too, but he doesn’t take a decision) because when he is not around at home, the environment is peaceful and calm.”

* Across all your posts, Anyone, you’ve shown a long‑standing pattern of emotional exhaustion, loneliness, fear of intimacy, and a deep longing for safety. You had to be ‘strong’ for far too long without ever feeling supported yourself.

From your earliest writing, you talked about needing to be emotionally self‑reliant, being afraid to trust someone enough to share a home and feeling “too weak” or “not healed.” That doesn’t come out of nowhere — it’s the voice of someone who grew up without emotional safety.

You carried responsibilities no child should carry, worrying about your mother’s pain, your parents’ marriage and the overall family environment. You stepped into the role of the ‘fixer,’ a role that overwhelmed you.

You also expressed deep loneliness — fearing you’d be alone forever, longing for love, feeling guilty for wanting it, and struggling to function when emotionally hurt. You want connection, but you don’t trust it, which is a painful contradiction.

You felt responsible for everyone’s wellbeing except your own. You tried to protect your mother, manage your father’s behavior, calm your brother, and keep the family from falling apart, all while having no one to support you.

Your family environment was emotionally chaotic and unpredictable:

1. Your father was emotionally unavailable and dismissive- you described him as unsupportive, dominating, inconsiderate, withholding affection, and shouting at your mother. Growing up with a father like this teaches a child: ‘My feelings don’t matter.’, ‘Love is unpredictable.’, ‘Men can hurt you emotionally.’ ‘I must stay small to avoid conflict.’ This connects directly to your adult fear of trusting men.

2. Your mother was emotionally weak and unable to protect herself- She tolerated mistreatment, didn’t set boundaries, and worried about society’s judgment. This teaches a child: ‘Women must endure pain quietly.’,
‘I must take care of my mother because she can’t take care of herself., ‘My needs come second.’ This is why you felt guilty for needing love — you learned that needing things is “too much.”

When a child grows up in a home where the adults are overwhelmed, unstable, or emotionally unavailable, the child quickly learns that their own needs create more stress for the people around them who are already overstressed as is, thinking along the lines of ‘If I need something, it will burden the people I love.’, ‘My needs will make things worse.’ ‘It’s safer and more loving to not need anything.’

3. No one in the family protected each other- your father created problems and ignored others’ pain, your mother tolerated everything, your brother added more chaos, and you tried to fix it all. This dynamic created hyper‑responsibility, emotional burnout, fear of intimacy, difficulty trusting others, loneliness, and a longing for safe connection.

You grew up without emotional safety — so you never learned what it feels like.

Your adult struggles make perfect sense given your childhood. You feared relationships because you never saw a healthy one. You’ve felt guilty wanting love because you were taught to suppress your needs. You’ve felt responsible for everyone’s emotions because you grew up managing chaos. You felt alone because you never had emotional support. You doubted your worth because you never received consistent affection.

Growing up, you were not protected from adult burdens. From a young age, you were pulled into adult problems: your parents’ marriage, your mother’s emotional pain. You became the emotional caretaker — the ‘responsible one.’ A child in that role learns: ‘My needs don’t matter. I must take care of everyone else.’

You’ve been exhausted because you’ve carried your family’s emotional weight for decades. You never got to be ‘just a daughter.’, or ‘just a child’.

In simple terms: you grew up in a home where love was inconsistent, conflict was constant, emotional needs were ignored, you had to be the strong one, and no one protected you.

So, as an adult, you’ve longed for love but feared it. You’ve wanted connection but didn’t trust it. You wanted support but only knew how to give it, not to receive it. Your childhood shaped you into someone who appeared strong on the outside but has been deeply lonely on the inside.

It’d be a miracle to read from you again, Anyone ✨🌈 🌟

🤍 Anita

Dear Robbi:

Thank you, Robi 🙏.

A 2-hour walk is a long walk, I’m impressed 🙌. And congrats for finding a part-time online job!

* Oh, no, it’s not cold here. There were cold winters in the past, but his one has been the warmest.

I’m glad the coaching session went well and I’m curious about the lots that came up during the coaching session, particularly what these 2 sentences mean (if you care to explain, you don’t have to, of course 🙂):

“Me and my girlfriend are mirroring each other so perfectly. She’s triggering the f*ck out of me exactly where it hurts the most.”?

🤍 Anita

Good morning, Confused:

You wrote yesterday: “But it wasn’t like that in the beginning. It never got sexual, it was just deep and intellectual talks/bonding, the type I long for. The thing is, I pulled back when the meeting was about to happen, so I think that means something. Because I value her and I like her a lot as a person, her character is special and I wouldn’t like to lose her.”-

Maybe you’ve been afraid (since shortly before the first in real-life 3-days visit, and since then) to lose her as a non-sexual female person in your life, a deep and intellectual person, the type you long for. It could be that the sexual factor led to your emotional shutdown.

🤍 Anita

I figure for men, especially young men, sexting, or anything sexual is very powerful, even deeper than emotional.

Given that it was a LDR and that you spent IRL only 3 days, I’d say, yes, it could be infatuation, yes.

Why do you cry about the thought of losing her forever?

Could be, likely is (says I), 🤔 the re-awakening of real loss in childhood, before you ever met her (online).

🤔🤍📱 Anita

* I want to reread

* to bring on

Dear Alessa:

You are very welcome and thank you for your empathy and kindness 😊

Yesterday, on my walk with Bogart, after submitting the long message to you in this thread, I planned on writing more to you about a victim’s empathy for his/ her perpetrator of abuse, a topic you brought again today.

Imagine, Alessa, a court trial where a person is judged to have severely abused a child and then empathy is expressed in the courthouse- in the presence of the child- for both the perpetrator and the child.

That would be so wrong. In the context of abuse, it is the victim alone who deserves empathy. The perpetrator deserves none.

The perpetrator deserves empathy for the time before and separated from the abuse, a time when he or she was truly a victim.

And so, I do feel empathy for my mother in regard to the times she was a victim, before she abused me and others, but I don’t dwell on it because I have been her victim for many years.

In the context of me and her, I am the one who deserves empathy, not her.

I too feel the abuse in my body every hour of every day in the form of somatic tension, holding my breath and tics, both motor and vocal. So, you see, I am not free from her abuse. Freer than before, but not free.

I deserve my own empathy. The perpetrator does not deserve my empathy.

I hope that other people who have not been her victims 🙏 have empathy for her. I pray for her to experience as little physical and mental pain as possible.

I was focused on her most of my life, like you, I loved her and hated her at the same time. And I felt so much empathy for her, I often drowned in it. Empathy for her hindered my healing.

And so, whenever I feel empathy for her, I don’t fight it, on one hand, but I avoid drowning in it by redirecting my empathy from going her wat to going my way.

In the context of my mother and me, neither her nor me felt empathy for me. Time to change that 😌

🤍🙏✨️ Anita

Dear Robi:

I tend to send posts that are too long and have too much in them, and I think I did that with you many times.

I understand your girlfriend’s concern that you’ll move back to Warsaw only for a few months.

I wonder how your coaching session go?

I think that staying in one place for long makes you feel trapped like you did in the storage room and in your parents’ workplace and in that vacationing house 🏠

You need space, a place where you feel safe to be and become, express and explore.. to maximize the computer screen of your soul (referring to you minimizing it when in the storage room).

None of this is your fault, Robi, you were not offered the minimal a child needs.

🤍 Anita