Dear me myself and I,

The things that you’ve described so far occurring in your life has convoluted and conditioned your brain into a constant fight/flight/freeze mode. From living with to separating from your mother to being stalked to the situation with housing, your brain is constantly searching for anything that can negatively affect you. The excessive stress and anxiety has conditioned your paranoia which is trapping your mind in a negative state.

First and foremost, find a way to calm your anxiety. If you can, look for counseling that will walk you through exercises that will calm your anxiety. If that’s not possible right now, then look for activities that you can that will calm your racing thoughts and heart. Is art still that thing? Can art help you enter into an neutral state that is neither happy nor sad, but just being? Because if it does, then continue it because that’s similar to what meditation does. Keep doing it then remember that feeling. Keep a strong hold on that feeling so when your mind is restless and racing with negative thoughts, which will affect your mood, remember that feeling. Envision that feeling and then try to bring that feeling into and out of your anxious reality. Make that feeling your priority.

Your anxiety cloud your thoughts so when you feel that it is overreacting, the best thing to do is to take deep breaths and calm your racing heart.

The thing with your mother is terrible, but seeing as you can’t depend on her for help, it’s best to ignore any issues with her until you have time and energy to sort it out. Unless she is still in your life, it is best to put any issues with her in a box for now and leave it for later. It’s important to deal with what you can first before tackling issues that you can leave for later. Also, to tackle any emotional issues regarding people, it is best to do so with a clear mind.

Good luck.

Dear Reina,

Your father’s overprotective actions come from his own general anxiety. Now, what most parents don’t seem to realize is that the anxiety that they feel when interacting with their children does get transmitted to their children since children tend to tune in to the unvoiced, underlying emotions in their parents. Even if your father doesn’t express his anxiety, it doesn’t mean you can’t feel it. And a child tend to adopt their parent’s anxiety as their own when they see/feel it’s something that is a common part of their parent. After all, you are learning about one part of the world through your parent’s perspective. So couple that anxiety with restricting your movements to which you didn’t care to obey, you get a dynamic that is you wanting to do what any kids would want to do at your age, but doing it behind your father’s back because he didn’t trust you to be responsible for yourself. The thing is, your situation before was ripe with anxiety from your father’s actions to your actions.

Now that the situation has changed and you don’t have to do things behind your father’s back anymore; your anxiety (half generated by your father’s anxiety and half not wanting to get into trouble before) that had colored your situation before your father allowed some freedom of movement, has nowhere to go now. Before, you might have been anxious but you were in a situation that, if your father knew you went behind his back, could get you into trouble. So that anxiety seemed normal, it was normal to be somewhat anxious most of the time. But now you don’t have an outlet for the anxiety anymore. Before, you could be anxious about your father finding out what you did. Now, there’s not much to be anxious about, but you are anxious because you were conditioned to be anxious. Even if your father is lax now, you were conditioned to his overprotective before so you were used to be limited in your actions and the perception that he (might) know things.

In conclusion, you’ve developed anxiety and that anxiety is taking the form of your father watching your movement.

Dear LeeAnn

Certified or not, any counselor working with a certain method using distinctive tools must attend training, the question should be are they doing EDMR with you in mind or are they simply trying to test out this method of recalling memory and its dissociation to see if it might work for you? Not every trauma works well with the EDMR method nor does it work for certain people.

Also, ask yourself if your sessions in therapy is focus on working through your crucial concerns at the moment, since those concerns are what is first and foremost hindering some of your daily life. Are you working through strategy that addresses the loneliness you feel? How about role play on how to speak with your son? If you feel that you aren’t addressing any of your needs, talk to your counselor. It is their job to address your needs first before diving into what they think you can do since it’s your mental health that you are addressing, which you would know best, not your counselor.

Regression, addressing your trauma, in therapy does not work if you are not given tools to empower and validate yourself.

Dear madxx,

What you’ve described of your current boyfriend’s relationship with his mother are signs of a codependent parent-child relationship.

Now, I don’t have much knowledge of your boyfriend to be too sure, but moving back home, planning on a nursing degree then finally sleeping in the same bed? That’s definitely him, your boyfriend, giving into his mother’s needs; needs that was probably generated by the fear of something that came out in a grotesque manner after his father’s death and your boyfriend being an adult who actually left the home, leaving her alone. And now that the mother actually need help with daily life, she is taking full advantage of her son who came back home to help her to reenact whatever she taught him during his years of living with her, which no child forget easily. And now, they’re practically glued at the hip.

You can tell your boyfriend all of this, that this codependent relationship with his mother is unhealthy for the both of them, but he might not listen to you He is probably not too aware that this relationship is unhealthy because for him, it’s a normal relationship with his mother. This relationship has not deviated from what was happening during his childhood so through his perspective, his relationship is totally normal. This relationship is what he was taught and you can’t undo something like that so easily. Though you can tell him that it’s best to see a family or grief counselor, but whether he’ll listen is up for debate.

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/co-dependency

So now, you have the option of continuing a romantic relationship with your boyfriend, codependent parent-child relationship and all. But, be warn, he might put his mother’s needs before yours in the future. Codependent is not the name for no reason. Or you can leave. You can pose an ultimatum before deciding whether you’ll leave. You can sit down and discuss with your boyfriend your feelings about the whole situation and see if he is willing to acknowledge the situation as it is, codependency and all, to which he will work with you to come to a compromise or any solutions.

Whatever you decide to do, do it with your well being in mind. After all, you can’t always be sitting around waiting for someone to come to their senses.

You know, people tend to forget this simple fact, but change is a constant of life. But it’s not very obvious until something hit you in the face that you’ve realized that thing(s) had changed, you just weren’t aware of it happening. Yet it still happen. From 10 to 20 to 30, life was never the same from then to now, it only seemed to suddenly change then reverted back to ‘everyday’. Rather the illusion of ‘everyday’ is only disrupted by the changing date. Even then, it is merely the perception of the date changing and not the people.

So what’s changed? What used to work that’s not working now?

Look over your life from a few years back. What have you been doing that is similar from one day to the next when suddenly something had changed? Yet when had the change suddenly reverted back to ‘everyday’? Then examined your feelings. How are you different from the you a year, two years, three years ago to the current you? What are your feelings about your current life compare to the past? What is different? What is good and bad? What are your current thoughts as compare to the past? What used to make you happy yet is now a neutral feeling? What used to make you feel bad yet there is a curiosity to explore that?

Who are you?

Or it might be that there is something in the past that is coming back in a new form. Form like self, -worth, -esteem, -confidence, -respect is something that people have to learn to build for themselves over and over again. Why? Because life is never a linear sequence but a chaotic web. People can never see the end of the road until it is the end; the line you’ve chosen to walk on the web is ever connected to other lines so there will always be some kind of tangle and knot in the line. Maybe you’ve decided to turned left or right at some points that you’ve walked a different road then you intended before. And maybe you’ve come back to the same knot on that new road you’ve chosen.

Just because you’ve released a past that was painful does not mean that you won’t encountered a new problem on a new stage, but old pattern of past hurt. So your integrity and identity is now under the microscope, yet your fragile heart might not be able to hold together under the new circumstances and you grow stagnate. You slow down and life starts to feel like a constant battle to just autopilot from day to day. Then it start building on each other to the point you don’t know what happened until you’ve seemingly fallen into a pit. So to build the proverbial ladder, you’ll have to ask a lot of questions and be patient. You’ll have to face what is your neglected child, your voice/intuition/heart at its most basic. That child will try to tell you what is it that you’re neglecting to be honest about, whether it’s about yourself or your situation in life. Or it’ll help you identify what is is you’re missing at the current moment.

If these introspection into your psyche is new, it would be best to employ the assistance of someone who has experience in helping people identify their current self, the good and bad. But make no mistake, this is not about fixing your emotions. It is about acknowledging and validating your emotions and the thoughts that comes with those emotions. Regardless of how depressing these emotions are, if you didn’t have them, would you have the opportunity to understand its counterpart? Of course, getting to know yourself emotionally is never an easy thing to do, but as an mammal that has the habit of reflecting on their emotions, it is something that is all too natural to do.

Good luck.

Dear Brianne,

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this guy is clearly stringing you along and you are choosing to be an active participant.

From the time you regained contact to the point of the physical relationship, he told you out right that he didn’t want an intimate, exclusive relationship. You conceded to that, but still chose to keep in contact with him. Then as he kicked things up, you started to dive deeper into this ‘friends with benefits’ relationship. You chose to fall even when your intuition warned you that it would end badly. And it probably became a game for him, a game to see how long you’ll stay as long as he continued to deliver words of sweet nothings to you on a basis that would keep you hook. As you continued to let yourself stay hook, you eventually put him on a pedestal of ‘in due course, a boyfriend’ but remember, he told you from the beginning that he did not want a serious relationship and you agreed to those terms. And the terms is friends with benefits with no serious commitment in the future.

So the best course of action right now would be to end this ‘friends with benefits’ relationship since you clearly desire a serious relationship, but this ‘friend’ is not going to be the one who will commit to it. He does not really care for you, he cares about this fishing game. He has chosen to look at this relationship with you as a way to pass time because you chose to let him see you, the other person, as someone available and waiting for him to commit or at least text you back to let you know that he is still thinking of you, if only for a few minutes. You let yourself wait for him, wait for him to finally come around, but how long will he make you wait? And how long will you be waiting?

The thing is, you didn’t advocate for yourself, you didn’t advocate for what you want, which is a serious relationship with this person who you knew briefly a few years back. But people change and you can only know the present person. No matter what you might think, you are not responsible for anyone’s actions, but your own. You also need to set down boundaries. When you set down boundaries for what you will or will not do, will the voice that tells you ‘that’s as good as it gets’ will be irrelevant, will seem illogical and very unkind to the present you. And you’ll be able to tell that voice that you don’t have to obediently do what it tells you to do because you will not cross your own boundaries. You’ve set down those boundaries for yourself as an act of self care and you will not cross them nor let anyone else cross them.

You need to find ways to put value into yourself than the relationship with this person who only remember to text you when he deign it not a waste of his time. You need to learn to care for yourself first and foremost than to look for someone to ‘take care’ of your heart for you.

Good luck.

Dear Bluesses,

There’s some things that are unclear about your relationship and some things to clarify.

First, how is your communications with each other? A relationship requires that all involved parties voice out their thoughts and feelings about their situation together, which it seems like you were bottling up some things before so if that hasn’t led you to explode until now, that’s both good and bad. Good in that you are finally expressing your thoughts, your partner might have unconsciously sense your inner fury though, but bad in that the language in which you are expressing them might put your partner on the defensive which makes you go on the defensive. When frustrated, people’s language tend to sound accusatory rather than neutral or compassionate. Think of how you are communicating with each other right now, are you two listening to each other or are you accusing each other of something? Though you do have to keep in mind your husband’s anger issues.

Words matter: “You” vs. “I”

Your husband was incorrect about the stress being non-transferable. Emotions are very contagious, especially when you are female and when most of society expect females to be socialized caretakers. So that stress that your husband is letting out? That is being transferred to you in some form which will stress you out, regardless of whether you want to feel it or not. But that your husband refuses to acknowledge that seeing him stress stresses you out, that’s a red flag. In other word, he is refusing to take responsibility for bringing in the stress into your relationship. Even if he is the one feeling it, it doesn’t mean that you don’t see it. He’s obviously telling you about it, and if that doesn’t stress you out or leave a bad taste, then that would be weird. So yeah, you’re implicitly involved with his stress.

You don’t mention much of how he is manipulative, but if he is manipulating you in anyway, then it is recommended that you spend some time and space away from your husband to sort out your thoughts and feelings. By staying with your husband while you try to process your emotions, he will sway you emotionally to his logic. So if you can, go stay with a friend or your family who you can recruit to act as a sound board for you as you let out your thoughts, the good and bad. Make sure to write it down, it’ll help to clear your mind, but also let you see the bigger picture. And it’ll help you decide what to do with your relationship.

Above all, value your health first and foremost. Your husband might be your husband, but that doesn’t mean staying in a relationship that causes damage to your overall health. You have a serious responsibility to yourself to see to it that you take care of yourself because only when you are healthy can you give your attention and energy into caring for another person. But if the person you want to care about is actually dragging you down, then it’s not worth it because in the end, he doesn’t value himself nor does he value you to care if you’re suffering from his actions and emotions. Also, he might be going through counseling, but if he really wanted to change, you would already be seeing him actually try and not just going through his day as per usual with all the anger and rage.

Keep in mind all of these things as you think about all the pros and cons about your relationship and if it is still a relationship you want to keep fighting for until you can’t help, but feel too tire to care.

Take care.

Dear Roary,

Life is pointless because you were expecting to find meaning in your life eventually. Only you constantly crashed against the wall called reality as you continue to face the horror that is the world you live in. Maybe you were simply following others’ script of ‘what to do to achieve happiness’ only it’s not the script for you. Or maybe you chose a road that you thought would lead you to a bit of happiness only to find it was a dead end. So yeah, life is pointless. You haven’t given it any points.

So, what’s not fulfilling you? Your job? Then quit and look for one in an environment that fits your need. Your relationship? Do you want to enter a romantic relationship or is your current one not working out? Lack of friendship? Relationships are a number game, you have to go through a lot of people to find one that you can actually connect with a deeper level than shallow acquaintance. You also need to commit to working at them. Are you bore? Look for a new hobby. If you need help understanding what fulfill you, I recommend the book Find Your Why by Simon Sinek. It’s a good starting point.

But you also need to give your mind a break from thinking. A decade of depression tends to make the mind over think and over analyze every details of every situations so it becomes a looping spiral of negativity that you don’t realize that you’re re-enforcing with every thoughts. And if you can, look for counseling that can help you with identifying the areas that you are having issues in. Not every depression is caused by neurochemical misalignment nor is it caused by a drama from your childhood or a later trauma in adult life. But when you feel unfulfilled in one area, it usually start to expand from there to other areas due to the domino effect.

When you do think and it’s about how you’re a failure, take a step back and try to trace those thoughts of yours. See where they are coming from without reacting to them. Identify them then let yourself move on. When you react to those negative thoughts, you are giving them power because they become an enemy to fight against so they become a force of power against you. Take away that force and it merely become thoughts that is cautioning you about something because of fear but in the end is merely thoughts. It’s like opening the door to an an unexpected guest that you slowly but surely guide out the back door.

There are also issues with self esteem and self worth. If you are not doing things that will feed them, then you will have empty holes called self esteem and self worth. Depression eats at your image of what makes you a person so you usually don’t even try to fill in the space set aside for self esteem and self worth. When that happens, they are sitting there collecting dust until you don’t see them anymore. So can you still see your self esteem and self worth or it is floating somewhere in space?

Of course, it’s not easy to have good thoughts every single moment of every single day. There will always be negative thoughts, but there will also be positive thoughts, you just have to allow yourself to have them. If you need reminders, write them down and tape it up. TinyBuddha is always brimming with good quotes. Or maybe you’re more of a picture person. Allocate a few minutes a day to look at pictures that makes you feel good or content or okay. YouTube has videos of baby goats jumping around. Listen to a song you like. Take a walk. Eat your favorite snack. Keep re-enforcing these things. Focus on them without letting your mind think. Thinking get in the way of feeling, especially when you just want to feel okay.

Remember, life is pointless when you don’t give it points.