Dear triss,

I am sorry that your marriage isn’t the way you imagined it to be, and that your husband is treating you badly. It’s good you’ve moved out to get some space and some perspective. He is accusing of being selfish and not having any plans, and you actually agree with him:

I do feel selfish – I have no idea what I’m doing, my life is scattered around – and it’s hard to keep up daily appearances.

Would you care to elaborate on this? How do you believe you’re selfish, and how is your life scattered around?

Dear Ilyana,

The manic phase was good in that I wasn’t in pain, but bad in that it represents instability. Deep down I find manic phases fun and exciting, and they’re way better than depression. But they come with poor decision making, which often has negative consequences for my life. They almost inevitably lead to a crash afterwards. What I want is to be stable.

I see how a manic phase can be exciting, that’s why I mentioned it earlier. I do understand that from the standpoint of “stability” it’s not good for you and you don’t like it, but otherwise “deep down” you like it, because you’re elated, you’re excited, you’re feeling intensely, you’re in love, you’re hoping, dreaming, soaring the skies like a bird who’s free…. You didn’t have any of that in your childhood, did you? You were afraid, lonely, felt miserable, and your mother was full of hatred and resentment towards your father. Even if your personality were cheerful and happy, you couldn’t express that around your mother – I guess she would have guilt-tripped you for being anything but miserable around her.

In your entire childhood, you didn’t have much chance to express normal child’s emotions like elation, excitement, joy, happiness, laughter… you were surrounded with negativity, hatred, resentment, bitterness, criticism and condemnation. You probably felt guilty for even wanting to be happy sometimes. Am I guessing this right?

If so, no wonder that you miss those natural human emotions that give meaning to life. No wonder you don’t want to remain “stable” in your depression. You said your manic episodes stopped when you gave birth to your son. Perhaps that’s when you felt you needed to “grow up” and get stable, which for you meant to become depressed, to be deprived of those exciting emotions that you craved so much? Perhaps a part of your resentment towards your son is that by becoming a mother, you felt you needed to sacrifice your manic episodes – whereas they were the only times you felt alive?

About your husband, you said:

We have been waiting for ten years to go back to a happy place we were in for only 3 years.

What was different in those first three years?

Dear Ben,

It seems that even minor stress can invade every corner of my mind and reduce me to a cowering, trembling lump. I received a couple of voicemails about financial matters that I’m worried about, and not only could I not listen to them, I couldn’t even look at my phone or have it near me. I do the same thing with paper mail- I’ll often throw it away, unopened. I can’t bring myself to look at it, and then I can’t look at myself. I’m so ashamed of my cowardice.

It’s because you feel helpless – you don’t know how to handle life’s challenges, or this particular (financial) challenge, and you feel overwhelmed. You feel you don’t have the resources or the capacity to solve problems. That’s why you’re afraid to face those problems – because you’re at a loss of what to do.

I feel like a scared kid, not a grown man, and I hate it.

Yes, and it’s because the scared kid is still living inside of you – that’s your wounded inner child. All children start out feeling helpless and scared, but with proper support, guidance and encouragement, they develop self-confidence and courage, they learn to trust themselves and their abilities. If you’ve never received that kind of encouragement, if your parents hardly ever played with you, or helped you learn new skills, no wonder you’d be missing those skills. A child cannot develop self-esteem and self-confidence in a vacuum – it needs constant parental engagement. If the engagement wasn’t there, the self-esteem is also missing.

I’m supposed to be able to solve problems with grace

You can only solve problems with grace if you have enough self-esteem and self-confidence – if you don’t feel helpless in face of problems. If you lacked parental engagement and support, which is necessary for many of our skills to develop, including our problem solving skills, you would be at a loss. Another reason could be that your parents didn’t have good problem solving skills either – they didn’t speak about their problems for many years, and then they suddenly divorced, after just one argument. That’s a bad role model for problem solving skills…

I can’t even say No

A part of the problem could be your fear of confrontation, which is related to your parents’ sudden divorce after just one confrontation. As I said earlier, it could be that in your mind, you see confrontation as dangerous and something that causes irreparable damage.

All these present-day problems and limitations are caused by the emotional neglect that seems to have happened in your childhood. Try to understand that there is a child, a little boy inside of you, who didn’t get his emotional and developmental needs met properly. As a result, you’re lacking some skills now.

Like anita said, the first thing would be to stop blaming yourself because it’s like blaming a child for being inadequate. The child within you needs compassion and understanding before all.

He can get that from your adult part, who can serve as a positive, loving parent to your inner child. The task would be to develop this positive, parental inner voice, as the antidote to the harsh inner critic who’s shaming and condemning the boy all the time.

Do you think you can do that? To have that positive, compassionate voice as the counterbalance to the inner critic?

Dear Murtaza,

i laugh when i want to cry, i laugh when i feel bothered

If you laugh when you feel bothered, or you laugh when you feel sad, it could be because when you expressed “negative” emotions such as anger or sadness in your childhood, they were unacceptable to your parents, and you might have been punished or faced some other repercussions. You couldn’t express your negative emotions freely, therefore you chose to suppress them and instead cover them up with an “acceptable” emotion, such as laughter, feigning to be happy, or indifferent, or not bothered.

i have a really low emotional intelligence… emotion is like a mystery to me

In order to have emotional intelligence, we first need to know how we feel, so that we could recognize how the other person feels and e.g. have empathy for them. If you needed to suppress your own emotions and got disconnected from them – for the reasons I mentioned above – it can easily lead to lack of emotional intelligence.

i don’t even know how to deal with anxiety, i ignore it, try to re sure myeslf, doesn’t work, the only thing that works is sleep, otherwise the pain in my stomach never goes away, 

The pain in your stomach can be from your anxiety, and if I understood well, you’re anxious most of the time when you’re awake. Anxiety as a default program can be caused by not having received proper soothing and comfort as a baby and child. For example, if you were left alone to cry in your crib, and nobody came to pick you up, that would be one reason. Or if you were punished for crying, for example.

i have a really low self esteem,

If you were criticized and condemned often as a child, that could have caused it. Any kind of parental rejection, or even lack of care and attention, leads the child to conclude that there’s something wrong with them, even fundamentally wrong. That they are unlovable and unworthy.

for the sake of just knowing, what would be the price to heal? how can i heal ? what method/things i should do? and do they work actually or just for some people ?

We as children have certain core emotional needs – such as to be loved, nurtured, accepted, appreciated, validated, to feel special to our parents, etc. If those core needs weren’t met and instead we were emotionally wounded – that’s where our adult emotional problems and anxiety stem from. In order to heal, we’d need to meet those unmet core emotional needs, and the best to do it is in therapy.

You would have to get in touch with your suppressed emotions, but first realize that they are acceptable, that you are allowed to have them. And then you’d need to work in therapy to release them, and to receive what you haven’t received in childhood – love,  compassion, understanding, validation etc. If you’d like to know some more, I’d be happy to answer.

Dear Javier,

I see it similarly to Sarah – that although it was a heavy experience and so much pain and sorrow has come out from your mother, it was also cathartic in a way. She finally opened her heart and shared how empty and alone she felt all these years. And also, that it started much before you were born – she said she felt empty, lonely and dead inside almost all of her life. That’s why she probably needed someone by her side, even if that someone was abusive to her and her children. Her fear of loneliness was stronger…

My heart goes out to your mother, she’s been through a lot. I hope this confession and unburdening will do her good, and that she can forgive herself. It seems like a good idea that she’ll be living with your brother’s family for a while, and be able to find some comfort and joy in her grandchildren.

We cried for hours and I’ve never felt so devastated, my heart cries for all the years and pains that my mother has gone through. I know I’m not responsible, but I feel the pain and can’t stop the hurt and sorrow I feel because of my mother.

I believe it’s like when a child sees their mother cry – they start crying too, because they feel helpless, they’re afraid, they don’t know what’s going to happen next. A small child cannot console their mother but cries and breaks down with her… And since you’re pretty much identified with your own inner child, you don’t have the capacity yet to provide consolation either to yourself or to your mother. I think that’s why you too were crying inconsolably…

It just reminded me about myself, and that her inner child is also broken. It reminded me that she has also been a child once, that has most probably been neglected and hurt. When I saw her, I didn’t see my mother, I saw a hurt child, that was lost and alone, that felt unloved and rejected by everyone and by the whole world.

You too had a very similar experience: a hurt child, that was lost and alone, that felt unloved and rejected by everyone and by the whole world. Maybe this can help you to stop blaming yourself, and to find compassion for yourself, for your own inner child?

Dear Murtaza,

I was trying to point out how our reality and our truth is created, because it means it’s not set in stone, but can be changed. But if you prefer to stay in your reality, that’s your choice, you have the right to do so.

truth is relative, really try living in my mind, without any joy of anything, without a motivation to change, with only few goals (easy way/being not human), , then you can advice me and i can take such advice in account,

I understand you don’t have either joy or motivation to change. I’ve tried to explain why you might lack the motivation to change – because it protects you from pain that you may face when dealing with past trauma. I’ve explained that your lack of motivation to change is a defense mechanism. But I also respect that you want to stay in it, at least for the time being.

Moreover, it seems you’re quite passionate about staying in it:

i promised myself two things, one is that i do everything by my rules and way, two is that the only trying im gonna do to improve anything would be death,

So when you say you’re not passionate about anything, not true: you are passionate about staying in your protective shell. Which I respect, although it’s a pity.

i gotta say, you remind me of something i lost, people, norimes.

Yes, people cannot enter your protective shell… but that’s the price to pay…

Dear Murtaza,

to answer your question, i do think that i might did this whole thing to escape feeling bad,

okay, so you see (or potentially acknowledge) that you’re not created differently, in a way that guarantees misery, but that you’ve come up with a belief system which tells you you’re a victim of bad programming. When it’s much more likely that you are a victim of bad upbringing…

but this whole thing is based on truths, mostly, unless i get sneaky and use my own definitions

It is based on the truth of life as you experienced it. But did you know that the child’s neocortex (the thinking part of the brain) starts developing only at the age of 2, when we start speaking. Before that time, the child cannot think rationally, it can only absorb impulses and sensations from the environment, and can only feel: pleasant vs unpleasant, expanding vs contracting, warm vs cold, anxiety vs calm. Mom’s face smiling vs mom’s face sad/angry. Mom caressing me vs mom hitting me.

For the entire 2 years the child just feels and absorbs like a sponge, and only later it starts giving meaning to the experience. So if a child is born into a violent home, his basic experience of life is that of anguish, anxiety, coldness, harshness, terror. Such child starts thinking that the entire world is a hostile and dangerous place. He/she bases his conclusions on his personal experience, which he sees as the entire truth.

So when you say, it’s the truth – yes, it’s your truth. And it started first in your bones and tissues, not in your mind. It started with negative bodily and emotional experiences, and only after that you made a conclusion, with your rational mind, about yourself and the world.

im not just emotion (your claim that i did this whole thing for the only one goal), there is a mind that think and value things (truth),

Definitely, you’re not just emotions. But I’ve just explained, and it’s backed by neuroscience, how it all starts with emotions and bodily sensations, with the so-called “felt sense”. We build our “truth” i.e. our perception of reality based on those very visceral experiences. Luckily, it’s possible to change those early emotional/bodily imprints, so that they don’t define our adult lives. That’s what healing is all about….

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Tee.

Dear Ben,

I am glad you realized that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with you, and that it was your upbringing that resulted in certain limitations that you may have – limitations that can be fixed though.

My stress and fear are still here, as are all of my oddities and inhibitions.

What are you afraid of most at present? What do you feel most inhibited about?

It’s hard to pin down exactly what I’m searching for. I know that there’s more in my past that can explain my present. But explaining it and actually fixing it are two different things.

True, they are two different things, but if you know what caused a certain pattern of behavior, it will be easier to transform it. For example, you mentioned your fear of confrontation. It might have been caused (and you might already be guessing it) by your parents never having had a confrontation, and then once they did have one, it resulted in a divorce. Conclusion: confrontation is dangerous and leads to irreparable damage. Just as an example…

I’m having an anxious morning today, and it has brought with it a strong dose of “nothing can fix you”. I should pause until this mood passes.

That’s a very good attitude – you have a lot of self-awareness to know that “nothing can fix you” is not the entire truth. It’s a reaction of the anxious part, but there’s more to you than the anxious part. So when you ask “What do I do now?”, my first suggestion is to keep practicing what you’re already doing: pause and take a break when the inner critic starts judging you. Don’t trust the inner critic, don’t identify with him. Step back and tell yourself “there’s more to the story than this”. So keep things in perspective, don’t judge yourself – would be my first suggestion.