Thank you for taking the time and interest in my thread.

Anita, I was aware of these things for the most part when writing this post but wasn’t sure what I should do about them.

Thank you for your suggestions and for pinpointing every detail one by one, it made me see things even more clear.

Maybe you’ve got that pattern going on with your friends and acquaintances too – perhaps you’re showing a particular “front” to them, e.g. of a busy person, or a successful person, while you’re not really sharing your deeper thoughts and feelings, perhaps your doubts and struggles too. This might be why you attract a certain type of friends, which later turn out to be not the best influence on you.

That is a very good point, TeaK.

And yes, now I can see what exactly the pattern is and that is, as you said “They were trying to protect you from family problems, and now you’re trying to protect them from your own problems, by not telling them the truth of how you’re feeling”.

I believe I should focus on:

– being more open with my problems, not trying to hide them on every occasion possible – talk about my emotions;

– starting to gradually and consistently communicating with other people.

Thank you again, these things seem simple but sometimes a person can’t see them while imprisoned within its own patterns/habits.

Dear anita, thank you for taking a deep dive into my posts.

You elaborated greatly on the part about the feel of being useful, how I was kept away from problems in the bubble. That indeed seems to be a root cause.
That’s why I always felt a strong need to prove myself to others.

So it seems to me that’s a fear of rejection.
Now that I think about it I might have cut some friendships before or never dived deep into any because of this fear…

I think I’d need to nose around this theme some more in the near future.

Thank you for understanding my problem anita, and some useful insights.

Another topic: when your mother asked you if you wanted her to sign you up to an art school and you told her No, she accepted your No. She wasn’t aware that you were afraid to be criticized for your art. She also didn’t realize and/ or didn’t stop your grandmother from criticizing you. This means that she was not close-enough to you. If she was close-enough to you, she would have noticed your fear. If you felt her closeness, you would have told her that you were afraid.s

Yeah, you’re right I suppose. Also, that was happening during the hard and stressful period in my family. They tried really hard to keep me away from the “bad stuff”. I noticed that, as far as I can remember, and wanted to not cause any trouble and just have some quiet time.

You weren’t close with your grandmother, trying to escape her criticism by being a “good boy”- you put quotation marks there because you were faking being good just so to escape her criticism. You were not your authentic self with her.

Yes, and still to this day, I feel the same. I live on good terms, the times of quarreling and blaming each other are long gone.
I feel a similar way about my mom but she seems to understand more I think. But I’m not quite authentic with her too.
I just can’t break the ice. This feeling (fear?) is so strong I can’t fathom it, whenever they ask me how was the day going, what’s up etc. I sometimes tend to lie and say everything’s ok. Although I’m more open to conversation with my mom maybe.

Besides that, in situations where some “romantic” opportunity was emerging and things were getting more intimate or close, I quickly caved in. I was falling back, making excuses that “it’s not the time for this” or “I shouldn’t be doing this” – several times.

It’s like it was a fear of being close to someone, it seems – like you mentioned – I never really been close with anyone. That’s a huge issue for me. I have no idea how to break this ice either.

Your grandmother who criticized you- she too was criticized by others. It is very common for people who were criticized a lot- to criticize others.

Good point, I was reading some psychology book that touched the subject of “passing mental illnesses” through generations. It’s a pattern that repeats, I can see similar behaviors in other family members that I see very rarely. I feel like it needs to be severed that’s why, until I won’t figure it out myself, I don’t want to pass it onto others.

I don’t know how to put this but in order to build myself anew, I must be aware of various distractions and keep myself on guard from them…

That’s why not so long ago I decided to cut ties with some people that I used to know for long periods of time. I know that probably in the upcoming months I will start to feel lonely (and it’s Christmas coming along with New Year’s Eve) and try to find ways to cope. But I’ve had periods of time of loneliness in my life before so maybe that’s why I managed to make that tough choice. Still, it happened so suddenly never expected it to be this way.

But I’m well aware that I need to make sacrifices in order to take care of myself. At least that’s what I believe is right, am I wrong?

What I’m sure of is… I just can’t afford to starve my soul as I did in the past.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Inquisitive Soul.