Dear Felix,

I am glad that you’re aware of the two parts inside of you – one that is overthinking and keeps you stuck in a loop, and the other who wants to make progress and advance.

I even tried learning to draw cartoons on weekends to feel some achievement. And yeah it felt good.

That’s great, I am happy for you! Just keep trying out new things, things that are fun and that you enjoy. Keep stretching yourself and your limits, every day a little bit. It doesn’t have to be some big accomplishment, but small things.

The only thing i can do right now is by not posting anything on instagram, i even track my record to feel calmer….. i’ve achieved 18 days without posting and every time i see that record i feel very calm.

Even that is an achievement, Felix. You haven’t been posting for 18 days, you’re sort of exercising your willpower not to post. It’s like flexing a muscle 🙂 And it makes you feel good and calm… it’s a good strategy, I believe.

Actually the past mistakes that i’m only thinking right now is about that instagram stories, i used to post stuffs that end up embarrassing myself…. i did that only to attract that girl (the girl who confesses to me but told me not to wait for her)…. and now after failing to get her….. my brain feels that i did something wrong….. that im embarrassing myself to 300 people who viewed my instagram stories only to get her attention…. and in the end, it didnt work out with her. Like i lost on both sides.

There are two parts activated in you when you reflect upon this story: one is the healthy part who sees that your behavior (bragging) wasn’t the best, since it was motivated by an unmet need for love and approval, specially for being liked by that girl. It’s a self-reflective part, who says “this was inappropriate but I didn’t know better at the time. So I forgive myself. From now on, I’ll try to do better.” This is the part who wants to make progress, learn from his mistakes, and grow as a person. This is also the part who wants to draw cartoons, I believe 🙂

And then there’s another part, who uses whatever “unsettled problem” you have to keep you stuck in a mental loop, obsessively thinking about it. As I said, I believe this part is protecting you from potential failure, by preventing you from trying anything new. It’s an internal saboteur.

When you hear its voice, you can notice to yourself: “Ah, this is the protector. He’d like me to stay stuck because he’s afraid I am a failure. He thinks he’s protecting me, but he’s in fact holding me back. When I listen to him, I am paralyzed and unable to move on. I am accusing myself all the time and my thoughts drive me crazy. I don’t want that any more. I want to advance and thrive, I want to try out new things. Therefore I am choosing not to listen to this paralyzing voice at this moment. I am choosing to experience something new. I am making a space in my mind and heart for a new experience. I am open to a new experience.”

This is just a suggestion, you can use your own words of course. If you feel like trying it, let me know how it went…

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

Dear Javier,

I am sorry about your mother. You said earlier she is blaming herself, and that’s one of the reasons why she had a mental breakdown:

She’s feeling guilty and is blaming herself. I’m ruining her. I just want to hug her and ask for forgiveness and tell her how much I love her.

Did she tell you why she’s blaming herself? Because after all, she is responsible for allowing the domestic abuse to happen for the first 5 years of your life. She allowed it due to her own weaknesses, and the result is her deeply wounded son. I am not saying she is the only one to blame – far from that – but simply that there is a basis for that guilt, in my opinion.

If you see her entirely as a victim, and yourself as a villain who ruined her life, you’re not helping yourself, neither are you helping your mother. Can you accept that you’re not responsible for your mother’s unhappiness, and that it started much earlier than you were even born?

And I think this is so beautiful and a testament to your healing:

Now, I say that “home is within me; it is all the places, people, and memories I have made across the world.”

You can now see it from a different perspective, appreciating what you had and the deep connections you’ve made, rather than mourning what you’ve “lost”. Truly precious…

Dear Jack,

I accept they’re sleeping together, I accept they’re going out on dates, and there’s nothing I can nor will do about it, because at the end of the day, it’s her choice whether she wants to leave him or not.

I’m actually half-expecting they’ll stick together, and she’ll probably tell me to back off – which I will.

Other than all that, there’s nothing else I can do.

You seem to leave all the decisions to her – whether she wants to stay with her boyfriend and break it off with you, whether she decides to keep cheating on him once he leaves, or whatever other arrangement she may choose. It’s all on her, and “there’s nothing else you can do”.

In reality, you could do a lot of things, specially since you say you’re just playing it cool, but in fact it’s hard for you. Which means you do have feelings for her, you’re not just looking for something casual, even if that’s what you told her.

One problem, as I see it, is that you don’t want to appear vulnerable, so you’re pretending it’s fine with you, whatever she chooses. But what would happen if you’d actually show that it’s not the same for you? What would happen if you’d tell her to choose between the two of you, or you can’t be with her?

So what on Earth does she want?

What do you want, Jack?

Dear Ben,

my relationship with my parents is/was confusing.

Perhaps a part of the confusion is that they never fought, at least not in front of you, but once they had a fight, it resulted in a nasty divorce:

My parents divorced, loudly and hatefully, when I was a child. It’s something I’ve never faced down or fully processed.

The first time I saw them fight, it resulted in divorce. I don’t know what to make of any of this.

It seems you didn’t really form an emotional bond with either of your parents. It’s not a child’s fault, but the parents’ fault. It’s like you observe your parents from the outside, almost like two strangers, but don’t have any emotions towards them. You’re not angry or resentful – that’s not the reason why you never reached out to your father (or vice versa) or didn’t go to his funeral. Rather, it seems like the lack of emotional bonding.

Your father felt like a stranger to you. He probably showed minimal interest in you, he was physically present but emotionally absent. You said he drank a lot of beer – so he was probably a drunk already then, but a functional drunk – he went to work every day. But beyond that, he seems not to have been involved much in family life, nor in your upbringing. He had a relationship with the bottle, it seems, and there didn’t remain any interest in you.

Your mother was passive aggressive, you say. She didn’t dare to challenge his drinking openly, but would do “mean things” to him while he fell asleep drunk in front of the TV. If you never saw them fight, it means your mother must have suppressed her anger for 14 years, until she couldn’t any more. Maybe she disassociated from her pain, but she disassociated from you too? Maybe that’s why you couldn’t form a bond with her either?

When did she become religious fundamentalist? After the divorce? Because it seems that a “righteous” person wouldn’t tolerate a drunk and useless husband, unless she was taught to be obedient and look away?

As anita says, it seems there was a lot of emptiness, a lot of emotional neglect going on. Would you say this is true? Emotional neglect can be as devastating as emotional abuse (“sin” of omission vs commission…). Perhaps that’s why you’re confused, because there was no direct abuse, no one yelling at you and beating you up, and yet it felt abusive and hurtful, so much so that your “cup” was filled to 95% already in childhood. Does this sound true to you?

Dear Javier,

the neurotransmitter examination has basically proven that your stress level is very high, while the “feel good” hormones are very low. It’s good that you’ve been prescribed a medication and a dietary supplement to improve that. What about liver inflammation – will you be getting some medication for that?

I like how you sound in your reply to Sarah – much more positive than before:

But first and foremost, I’m working on myself, because I have felt dead inside for a long while, and it’s unbearable

You have felt dead inside, but it seems you’re open to changing that, to start on the healing journey, step by step.

I need to “heal” myself, I need to conquer all my fears and get rid of my demons. I’m not responsible for my mother’s pain and sorrows, but I can try to ease it.

Just take it slowly, you don’t need to conquer all your fears, at least not immediately. But you can be aware that some of your fears (of dying, of your mother dying) have to do with your childhood trauma, and so as you work on that, your fears will subside too.

Also, as I said, try to “unblend” from the helpless and desperate part (it seems you’ve managed to do it in your last two posts). Whenever your mind wants to go into the old program of “I feel dead inside. I feel useless and full of fears. Nothing makes sense. It’s all my fault.” — tell yourself that this is just one part of you. But it’s not the entirety of who you are. The other part wants to heal and get unstuck, wants to experience more than the dark hole that you’ve suffered from so far. And most importantly – this other part is capable of healing, of filling the dark hole with love, of feeling joy in life again!

We had a “coping” session, where all incidents from my childhood were addressed and all thoughts and feelings were noted down and listed. For each negative incident, I had to note down a positive incident. This session was to remind me that not everything from my past was negative and awful and to remind and feed my subconscious mind with positive memories.

It’s good that you remembered that not everything in your childhood was negative. Last time you posted, you said that because of that session (I believe you meant that one?), you’re stuck in the past and are missing everyone from the past – basically, that remembering good moments from your childhood only caused you more pain. But I hope that was just temporary, and that you can cherish those positive experiences without them causing an even bigger pain. Try to remember the positive experiences as truly positive and be grateful for them, rather than regretting that you’re not young any more, thereby annulling the positive experience and adding it to the negative “bunch”.

By this week, I will start doing breathing exercises and mindfullness.

That’s great. Start gently, don’t force yourself. And please post how it is going, or whenever you feel you need some encouragement. I too am praying and rooting for you.

Dear Carly,

to answer your question right off the bat: no, you haven’t ruined your life. You did make a mistake marrying your husband, but you don’t have children together, and so with some juggling, you can separate from him never to have to meet him again.

It appears you never had support from your parents, they didn’t believe you when you complained about being bullied and people spreading rumors about you. They invalidated you and your experience. And I guess it’s been happening your entire life. That’s why you were attracted to this man, who was “the only person who would listen to you”.

He sounds narcissistic, by the way, because you say he’s charismatic, he has a fake persona and easily manipulates people, and he’s selfish and controlling. Perhaps he was “love bombing” you in the beginning of your relationship – showering you with praise and attention? If so, that would be a typical narcissistic behavior.

It seems you first wanted to escape from your parents and ended up with your husband, and then you wanted to escape from your husband back to your parents, but they didn’t let you come back. It seems both your parents and your husband are abusive and don’t care about you. The only way to help yourself is not to seek their help but separate yourself from both and start your life anew.

I’ve been applying for jobs for over a year now and no one will get back to me. I’ve more than lost hope of ever getting out of this mess. I feel like no matter what I do, no matter how hard I reach for something, I’ll always be met with disappointment and failure.

You were indeed met with rejection and disappointment whenever you reached to your parents. That’s why you formed a belief that it can never be different for you, and perhaps that you are a failure too. The experience with you husband “proved” the same. But it’s a false belief, based on your so-far negative experiences.

The truth is that you deserve love and understanding and compassion and success in life, but you’d need to let go of the childhood programming and start loving and trusting yourself. You’re only 24, the whole life is in front of you, and you can make it a better, different experience than you had so far.

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

Dear Javier,

I am sorry that the stay in the clinic didn’t seem to have helped much.

How was your medical checkup? And the neurotransmitter measurement? What are the conclusions?

After my last session, I’m stuck in my past. I miss everything and everyone from when I was a kid. My family, my friends, my classmates, my teachers, my relatives, the good times. I miss being young and full of life.

What did you do in the session? It appears you went back to your childhood, but somehow remember it only in positive terms, even though you suffered pretty much as a child. But it seems you remember only the good times, and forget about the bad times, and this exacerbates your sense of loss…

What I think is one of the main problems is that you’re completely identified with the part that is helpless and feels guilty for everything. There are more parts of our personality, but you’re completely identified with that one part. In order for therapy and healing to work, you’d need to “unblend” from that part. You’d need to step back and realize that this helpless and guilty part is not the entirety of who you are. You’d need to access your true self, which is beyond this helpless, guilty part that you’re stuck in.

One quality of our true self is the ability to witness and observe all of our thoughts and feelings, and all of our parts – without judgment. So if you can observe the helpless and guilty part, but not identify with it, that would be an important step in your healing.

One of the ways to develop and strengthen the witnessing part is to stay in the present moment, breathe slowly and follow your breath as it goes in and out of your nostrils – in short, methods used in mindfulness meditation. Would you be willing to explore that more?