Dear Clara: I tried a few times to submit a How-are-you, Clara? Post on your newer thread, but it wouldn’t submit, so I am trying on your old thread: how are you, Clara?

anita

Dear Calm Moon:

I am sorry that you lost your little brother two years ago, the boy that you raised. It must be very painful for you..

You wrote about your manager: “too intrusive… She constantly wants to chat and complains a lot. It sucks energy out of me… her energy too controlling and non-negotiable. What’s strange is she seems to be open to ideas and listening, but in the end, she only pushes her ideas… She constantly messaged me throughout the days when I was on sick leave, asking me when I would come back… she constantly wrote to me and asked me to come in a very rude way. In the end, it was so crucial for me to come… I don’t know why I feel depressed and suffocated around her. She seems to be friendly. But many of her actions and words don’t align with me. When she’s absent, I can breathe again“-

– I can understand why her presence depresses and suffocates you, and why you can breathe again when you are not in her presence. I felt similarly regarding my mother when in her presence: she talked to me whenever she wanted to talk, no matter what I was doing. I was trying to do my homework, study for a test, read, focus on something else.. but she’d talk to me regardless, and often in an excited tone that agitated me.

She too was controlling and non-negotiable. She pushed her ideas on me; my ideas were of no value to her. She was very rude to me many times (beyond talking a lot no matter what I was doing). She was nice many times (to me and to others), but much of it was fake, a pretense. When her niceness was genuine, I was not able to appreciate because of the backlog of the too much rudeness and alarmingly consistent absence of consideration of what I may need, want, think and feel.

When she was at home, I was able to relax.

Intrusive is the right word. I once painted (following an art class), my mother’s hands intruding into my brain and messing with it. I was physically and mentally exhausted in my first two decades+ of life.

anita

I still remember you, Emily=> Jasmine, thinking of you fondly.

anita

Dear Zenith:

No real threat= nothing to fear. No?

anita

Dear Zenith:

“I want to cut this off. I  want to stop asking them when we go out. I want go out and make new friends“- this is a good plan. As I suggested before, you can have your husband take your daughter to her house sometimes, you don’t have to go there yourself.

“But I am unable to move on as I am scared she would blame me if i move on. She already blamed me for not texting. I am scared she would blame if I stop asking her or texting her…I am here scared like a little kid worried about her feelings.“- and what if she blames you.. what damage can her blaming/ her feelings cause you in real-life, objective terms (beyond how you feel about it)?

anita

Dear Jakub:

You shared that you (29) were born and raised in Eastern Europe. There, you were abused by close family members, and your mother was- is an alcoholic, “Classic parent-child reversal situation… used to look for her around pubs as a kid, to beg she comes home“. You moved to a country that’s not part of E. Europe at 15, with your parents, did well in school, and finished law school, living independently at 22. In the last few years, you quit a job you were dissatisfied with, went back to school, and joined one of the biggest law firms in the world. A week from now, you will be moving to a house where you will be living alone for the first time in your life, with plenty of living- space you didn’t have before, something you are looking forward to.

Since you quit your job, etc.: “I have felt like a scared child. The same innate, overwhelming fear I had of my abuser as a child, I now experience almost constantly in life… each day is marked by an impending feeling of doom“- the challenges of quitting a job, going back to school and working in a very challenging environment awakened or intensified the fear you had as a child, fear of your abuser or abusers with whom you were stuck for too long.

“I haven’t failed at anything and yet each day is marked by an impending feeling of doom“- you had zero chances of success, as a child, to stop the abuse, to get your parents to protect you, and to take care of your mother (“parent- child reversal situation“), so that she will finally take care of you. You failed at tasks that are impossible for a child.

“My whole life I’ve felt like the thoughts in my brain are somehow naughty or wrong, like somehow there’s something innately evil within me and it makes me second guess everything…“- you took responsibility for the evil that was perpetrated against you, as children naturally do, believing that the abusers were not acting on their evil intents, but reacting to the evil or wrongness within you.

“I can’t put energy into a relationship. But I need to somehow figure out how to give myself a sense of security that will help me keep going through tough times in life (such as this job right now)… .. How do I stop feeling like an abused little child that I’m not anymore, how do I become able to put more energy into the difficult job I’m trying to succeed at, and how do I become comfortable with being single for so long that perversely I find someone good to be with?! Everything seems so convoluted.“-

– Simplify the Complicated, Clarify the Confusion, Re-label yourself Good. A sense of security requires that you believe that there is a good person, a good child within you, so that you will finally take his side and give the wrongness back to where it belongs: with the abusers.

I imagine that you made some bad choices as an adult and that you had and have thoughts and feelings that you disapprove of, thinking that these are evidence that you are a bad person and have been a bad person from the start. But such choices can be learned from and corrected, and.. perverse or convoluted  thoughts and feelings are reactions to abuse, or just.. normal thoughts and feelings that you view negatively.

There are no good or bad thoughts and feelings because we don’t choose them and they do not help or harm others. Only behaviors (words we communicate and acts we perform) can help or harm, and therefore, be good or bad.

I was abused too as a child. I felt Wrong and Bad as well, and I had to re-label myself Good by going back to my childhood, so to speak, and giving the Bad back to where it belongs. I would like to communicate with you for some time, if you would like that.

anita

Dear Zenith: I’ll be back to you Sun.

anita

Dear CutieJ:

You are welcome. Your 9-days visit with her has ended, I am glad you made it home safely.

Beginning of visit: “I came to her place today. She picked me up at the airport” (Oct 2),

Ending of visit: “I worked late at the company to distract myself, and got on the bus to go back home. It was long and scary rides, as I’ve never been on a bus in this city or at this time. After I got off the bus, I ran between cars and bushes to walk back home” (Oct 11).

You arrived to her place, her city by plane and returned to your place, your city by bus? Was it a very long bus ride?

Did the two of you break up, or are you still in a relationship?

anita