Dear Sara,

I am so sorry you have to live with so much criticism from your mother. And I assume it’s been always like that, your mother criticizing and judging you no matter what you do. In her eyes, you’re never good enough. I know the feeling since my mother was/is very judgmental too. And I too suffered from an eating disorder for quite a long time. My ED served several purposes, but the main purpose was to soothe the pain (at least temporarily) that I was always feeling as my default state: the pain of being unlovable (or so I thought) and not good enough.

My stomach, my arms, my thighs, I can’t look in the mirror without crying and wanting to purge and binge

You feel pain because of how you look (I felt it too), however the real pain is deeper – it’s the pain of being unlovable, the pain of not being loved by your mother. That’s the pain the ED is trying to soothe. Only it never can, of course, because it only makes it worse.

What truly helped me was to work with my wounded inner child and have compassion for that little girl who was judged so harshly and unjustly. But the first step is to develop a positive, compassionate voice within, to counter-balance the voice of the inner critic. Because I am sure you have a very harsh inner critic, which is berating you all the time.

So if you can find a voice inside of you, which is compassionate and accepting of that little girl, rather than judging and condemning – that would be a really important step. Tara Brach has good meditations on radical self-acceptance – you can check that out.

Self compassion has always been difficult for me. It is easy for me to be empathetic and compassionate to my friends and patients but be much more critical of myself.

I understand, it was hard for me too. But it helped when I could give compassion to the little girl that I was. This helped to develop self-compassion for the adult me as well.

There has been other cases of harassment from strangers much older than me which is so weird that this is normal in my cultural community. I honestly have religious/cultural trauma because of it. I am so uncomfortable in my conservative neighborhood.

If you’ve experienced sexual harassment, and you live in a conservative community, with conservative views on sexuality, that can all play a role in your relationship with your body, and consequently, your relationship with food. If you think it’s related, and you’d like to share some more, please do.

Hi Felix,

I’ve known to many guys who have been destroyed by women and who had lost their lives because of these women.

It seems that one of those guys is you, Felix. Your mother left you and your father for a richer man. She’s the first woman who betrayed you:

My mom divorced my dad as soon as I was born and found someone who had status and money (considering it was USSR). So that’s why I don’t fully trust my mom even though she is a very good person, she still put her own ambitions over her husband and son a the time.

In spite of your mistrust of women, you managed to find a good wife, who loved you for who you are. She wasn’t materialistic and didn’t leave you for another man’s money or status. You divorced for other reasons. But your original wound, inflicted by your mother, is still there, and it’s speaking from you now. If you don’t deal with it, it’s going to be hard for you, Felix.

Hi Felix,

I want a relationship, badly, but I know how toxic my thinking can get and I understand I will never have a relationship if I continue with this type of thinking, but I am also right in many things I say and believe. How can I find the middle ground? Or am I just too far gone? I simply do not trust women. I barely trust my own mother at this point.

You’re right, you have a very strong opinion about women, and it’s going to be hard to find a decent woman, believing they are so few and far between. You say you ex wife didn’t care about your height or your money, but simply about you. At that time, what was your view on women?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Tee.

Dear Kate,

it appears you were at first happy with your boyfriend, but then you found out some things about his family that involved a lot of problems, debts and court cases, and you got unsure about the relationship. You asked your brother and cousins for their opinion and they too believed it was going to be difficult. You were thinking to break up with him, but couldn’t decide, so you stayed in the relationship:

All this made me very insecure about our future. I was very confused and discussed it with my brother and cousins. Their take was that it will be difficult. I kept thinking about what to do but I couldn’t take a decision.

Some time later you started chatting with a very good friend of yours, whom you at first didn’t have any feelings for, but they’ve developed over time, as you spent entire days chatting with him. You got attached to him and would feel bad if you didn’t talk for a day. You didn’t say anything about your feelings to him but you continued chatting with him, until he finally proposed in November. You broke up with your boyfriend in December, and on the same day confessed to D that you like him.

Now you feel bad that you might have actually cheated on your ex-boyfriend, and you’re scared of the idea. Well, you had an intense online relationship with your friend D, for whom you’ve developed feelings. It’s not a sin to develop feelings, people have crushes on other people, even while married, but the question is what we do with those feelings.

Since you’ve continued chatting with D, knowing you’re developing feelings and getting more and more attached, I believe that’s when it became an emotional affair. A super honest and sort of “enlightened” approach would have been that you stopped yourself, admitted to yourself what’s happening, and then decided whether to either stop chatting with D (stop the emotional affair) or to break up with your then boyfriend. That would have been a super fair approach.

Whenever I think of myself being in the same place as my ex-bf was, it concerns me. Had my bf had feelings for someone else, it would have really hurt me and wouldn’t, for sure, have known how to deal with that.

It’s good that you recognize that it might have hurt your boyfriend, had he known you had feelings for someone else. But don’t beat yourself up now – you said it was all happening fast, you were confused and it happened how it happened. Try to forgive yourself and draw a lesson from it.

Actually, an additional problem that I see here is that you had doubts already in the beginning, i.e. when it turned out that your then bf has a problematic family background. You started distancing yourself from him already then, and this probably made your getting close to D even easier, specially if you expressed your doubts about your boyfriend to D (you said D knew about your situation with your then bf). Talking about relationship problems with a male friend usually doesn’t help and can easily lead to an emotional affair.

So next time if you have doubts, it would be important to clarify them with yourself first, and then talk to someone neutral. Your brother and relatives is a good choice, a coach or counselor would be an even better choice if there are deeper issues you want to address. But talking to a male friend or acquaintance about your current relationship is not the best choice.

Dear DaveF,

it appears the major thing that keeps you in the relationship is your feeling of guilt, which she is amplifying by desperate begging, telling you you’ll regret it, telling you you can’t leave her, insulting you, and the pressure you feel from her family too. You’re made to be the bad guy, and she sees herself as the victim. You’re afraid of yet another confrontation and being condemned by her.

On top of that, you say you fear to be on your own again, and it seems it’s a theme for you, because when your ex broke up with you, you were “desperate to be in a relationship at the time”. Also, there’s a practical problem that you’re renting a house together. If you break up, are you afraid that she’d be in an unfavorable situation financially/existentially?

At the moment, it appears that your feeling of guilt is stronger than your fear of loneliness. You feel trapped in the relationship and “feel like crying every time I see her in the house”. It appears you feel helpless because you can’t bear her accusations, and I think it’s probably because there’s a part of you that believes those accusations. A part of you that believes you’re guilty of something.

Does this sound true to you?

Dear Felix,

you’re welcome, I am glad you’re feeling a bit better.

i keep doing something which i will regret it (like posting on social media). Like if i post it or not.. both choices will make me feel regret.

Yes, as I told you in my previous post:

“You have a tendency to condemn yourself no matter what you do. You’ll always find some reason to condemn yourself and regret that you have or haven’t posted, and beat yourself up about it.”

You’re very afraid of other people’s judgment. Your mother judged you for being weak and for making her worry. How do you think your father judges you?

In any case, you have this belief that no matter what you do, you will be judged. As I said, once you develop more self-esteem, you’ll be able to worry less about what others think and express yourself more freely without fear of their judgment.

I cant take off this regret that i used to brag about myself in the past…

I also did stupid things on social media in the past, for which I was embarrassed. But I’ve forgiven myself, because I didn’t know better. We develop (hopefully) and grow over time, we change and become more mature than we were in the past. It’s a positive thing that you’re now aware of some of your past actions, which you did when you didn’t know better. That shows that you’ve grown as a person, and it’s a great thing.

What you can do if you really feel embarrassed about your past activity on social media is to delete your old account and create a new one. You can even take a pause from social media for a while. This will also signal to people that you’ve changed, that something significantly changed about you.

How do you feel about that? About taking a break from social media and then re-emerging with a new account, as a new person, with more self-confidence and less need to impress?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Tee.

Dear miyoid,

I didn’t know those details about your sister, e.g. that she’s 11 years older and that she went to boarding school when you were little, so you practically didn’t live together. Also, that she suffered abuse by both of your parents. Was it physical abuse?

This all paints a different picture. When you said she was narcissistic, I thought she was spoiled and got what she wanted. But that’s probably not true – it seems she didn’t get much, even though she may be better at asking for it.

Anyway, I made some wrong assumptions. I thought your mother was overburdened by having to take care of 2 small children, and this is what made you feel rejected, causing your fear of abandonment. But it seems it was more complicated than that, and that it was your mother’s character (i.e. her own wounds) that made her abandon you, both physically and emotionally (you said you were “emotionally and physically abandoned by both of my parents several times“).

Probably now these same wounds make her “adore” cats but not love her partner enough to take his needs into consideration. It’s good you’re aware of that mechanism and that you made her aware of it too, even though she might not be willing to change…

I guess I should try to neutralize myself and try to get a better grasp of what I might need.

I don’t know what you think of the exercise I suggested in my previous post – to make a list of your needs (e.g. your relationship needs), and see if you can say I need this, and I deserve it. Are you able to say that you deserve it? How does it feel?