Dear Jun,

Thank you dearly for your sage advice. And I’m so sorry that you had to endure bullying, but I’m sure, like you said, it’s contributed to making you the thoughtful, caring, wonderful and brave person you are today!

Everything you wrote helps, especially the part about the brain being hard-wired to play on a self-entertaining loop unless we set boundaries. It helps to hear that others have gone through something similar.

As difficult as bringing up these feelings and memories has been, I think they may be playing a part in why I hold myself back and have such limiting beliefs. I am determined to use them to better understand what I was going through back then, why it’s beckoning me (aside from just being a distraction from my present life), and try to heal that section of my life that lives on in my subconscious. I was thinking that maybe I didn’t respond well to rejection back then, but here I am again today with the chance to take the path that I would have liked to take. To understand that not everything works out the way that we want it to, that not everyone will like us, and so we need to love and support ourselves so that we can be there for ourselves and act accordingly when hardships come up. So much easier without raging hormones (and the internet to support you!).

It’s very helpful to have the discussion with you and others who offered their help and opinions. Just writing out my feelings helps to solidify what I’m feeling and learning. So thank you!

Stay wonderful and brave yourself!

Hi Anita,

I really appreciate your reply-thank you so much!

Interesting about wet and dry memories- I had never heard of that!

My life has been great since leaving my hometown-lots is experiences and relationships, both positive and negative. I haven’t been in a relationship in 5 years and prior had been in a relationship for 10 years. I have done a lot of work since then and don’t feel I’m suffering from it ending anymore.

When I left this town for college far away, I was overjoyed, having spent 4 years in high school dying to get out. Looking back, I think my high school years were a lot more traumatic than I realized. I guess when we’re young we’re always moving forward and really are super resilient when it comes to hardships. Maybe that resiliency allowed me to just keep moving into new experiences and forgetting the past – life is good now, so why would I think of what I left behind kind of thing.

I realize as I’m going through these memories, I’m recreating them in my adult mind—in essence just making up fictitious memories, I think, which could be more harmful. My obsession doesn’t seem to be a good way to process difficult memories.

It’s all very interesting. Aside from the fear that something is wrong with me for attaching myself to this, I’m also concerned that I’m creating new traumas in my brain.

?