Dear Kibou,

sure, take your time, and next time I won’t shoot another post before you reply to me.

Dear Felix,

thanks for your reply, it was good to read from you again.

it’s always like that, the topic is always about them but not me (even with my close friends)… but right now im starting to learn to be more assertive.

Due to he never talks about his emotions, i think it affected me that i have a very weak communications skills and im introverted…i have a very weak communications skills and im introverted…

Regarding your lack of assertiveness and good communication skills, I think it’s mostly because you’re shy and you fear embarrassment (i.e. you have low self-esteem), that’s why you are reluctant to talk to people. A part of it is due to your mother, who sees you as weak and “a reason to worry”, which is pretty bad for your self-confidence. And a part of it due to your father, who is strict and probably you fear his judgment. If he doesn’t have a sense of humor, if he’s a little like a soldier – very disciplined but never shows emotions and vulnerability – then no wonder you would fear him and afraid to be yourself around him.

Around your mother you feel more free to be yourself, to show your weaknesses, but around your father, you need to be on guard. You can’t be spontaneous, you have to pretend. All that contributes to your feeling that you’re judged when in company of others, and you can’t relax and be yourself even with your close friends. Is that the case?

But he can do business successfully without being communicative because he has a leadership trait and high sense of responsibility… making most people respected him.

He’s probably good at giving commands and telling people what to do. Again, like a soldier, or a commander. His employees respect him because he’s probably a just employer, he gives them fair pay and they don’t feel exploited. However, I don’t think they like him too much. I believe they rather fear him. It’s fear and respect combined.

Yes my mom has made me feel weak and unconfident, she even said that when i get married later on i’ll have a room in our new house (the new house is going to built soon). I dont really mind living with them, as i dont have to think about the foods and chores later on…. and also i think if i live alone with my wife later on… with only the two of us, isnt the house going to be so lonely? Do u think with my mother’s personality, could it cause a conflict with my future wife later on? (idk if i’m thinking too far regarding this, as i havent even find myself a girlfriend).

If you want to have a successful relationship, you’d need to first develop self-confidence and self-esteem. That means you’d need to learn to love yourself and have trust in yourself and your own abilities. Your mother has raised you to be weak and dependent on her, to believe that you’re incapable to take care of yourself. She treats you like a baby. You’d first need to separate from that kind of thinking, which you also adopted.  You cannot see yourself as weak and incapable if you want to have a healthy relationship.

One way to feel more confident about yourself is to take on some duties in your home – perhaps some chores, or work in the garden – something where you can feel useful and which can give you a sense of accomplishment. You’re not a lazy, incompetent kid –  you’re a capable and resourceful smart young man. Try to see yourself like that, and do accordingly.

Make  yourself useful in some small way, so you can feel that sense of success and accomplishment. Never mind if you’re not perfect immediately – allow yourself to make mistakes. But try it, keep doing it, and with time, you’ll get better at it. It will give you a tremendous boost to your self-confidence.

I think this is the first step and a precondition for thinking about marriage and starting a family. When you feel more self-confident and stronger, you’ll be in a different space mentally and will be able to make a decision whether to live in your parents’ house or somewhere else. But for now, do everything you can to boost your self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment. This will make you less dependent on your parents too and capable of making your own decisions.

Dear Nar,

good to hear from you again! I am very glad your intrusive images have stopped. First there was a change of image, which was a good sign, and now it’s gone completely. Fantastic! It has to be related to your healing and better understanding of your childhood and how you were hurt without even being aware of it. You embraced that little girl, and I believe it resulted in those intrusive images to stop.

Although we all acknowledge our parents were hurt in one way or another by their own parents and that’s why they were hurting us, I think we are still playing the blaming game. I realised this problem is so deep and goes so far back, that healing through loving an inner child and cutting out a parent that hurt that child is only a partial healing ….because our parents are not to blame, we are all to blame. We as humanity.

When we truly heal, it doesn’t mean we necessarily cut out the parent that hurt us. Rather, we can relate to them differently, having compassion and open heart, but also protecting our boundaries. We heal our side of the relationship, we’re ready and  open for a more sincere contact, but if the parent is stuck in their own wounds, blaming us, then we can’t really establish a deeper contact. But it depends on the parent, not on us.

The goal of the inner child healing is not to blame the parents, but to forgive them. We are all wounded children, with the difference that some of us decide to work on it, heal it and take responsibility for our lives, while many others take the easier route of blaming others. Misery propagates because people who refuse to work on themselves keep blaming others for their misery. Entire nations and ethnic groups blame each other. That’s what brings tragedy and war. But those who decide to stop blaming and take responsibility for their lives are the ones who bring humanity forward, who contribute to peace and healing.

I wish you too a nice, hopefully less restricted summer, and lots of positive emotions too!

Dear Javier,

it might be related to your fear of dying when you were a small child, living in an abusive home. We hyperventilate when we’re in  shock. I remember hyperventilating after a car accident, which thankfully ended up well, but it was terrifying. When that happens to you, put one hand on your heart and the other on your belly, and try to breathe slowly, telling yourself soothing things like “it’s ok, it will pass”, or even soothing sounds that you would tell to a baby when they are upset, like “sshhh, it’s okay, you’re safe”.

Try to comfort yourself like a caring parent would comfort a baby. Do you think you can do that?

Dear lk09,

I am glad you didn’t actually need my “rescue” and can filter things that you don’t think apply to you. I wasn’t sure, so I thought I better chip in… well, it ended how it ended.

I don’t really feel guilty, but I was and am willing to consider how I might have still hurt Anita unintentionally. You say you don’t see it – glad about that. If Anita feels like talking about it, I am very open to it – better to talk things through if possible…

I care about you too, lk09, you’re an amazing young woman and you deserve all the happiness in the world. Take care and keep us posted!

Dear lk09,

I am so glad you’re feeling better and have opened up more to your friends, being vulnerable, sharing your insecurities. Also, that you’re writing inspiring stories. I’ll be happy to read your blog once you upload it.

I saw the posts, you both left each other.

How do you believe I “left” Anita? Can you please share your view, because I don’t see what I did wrong in either addressing the issue of histrionic behavior, or treating her. I don’t see how I should have posted in a way not to offend her.

I believe Anita’s contribution here is incredibly valuable, and this forum wouldn’t be the same without her. It’s like 99,99% of her contributions are super helpful, only this one might not have been so much. That’s why I reacted. But she took it personally, she felt bad about it, and wished me farewell soon after. I truly don’t see my mistake here, but please tell me how you see it.

I enjoyed communicating with you too, lk09, and hope to hear more from you, not only when you’re “so utterly lost that I can comprehend my own thoughts” but otherwise too 🙂

Wish you well too!

Dear Javier,

While reading your post, I got the “sense” of relief and your reasoning enlightened me. But, seconds later, the negative thoughts and guilt and all the self-hate came back again.

I understand your reaction – even if we understand something rationally and it sounds true to us, and we accept it as true, it still doesn’t mean we can suddenly stop our negative thoughts and feelings. That’s because those thoughts and feelings stem from an earlier phase, when we were little children, sometimes even before we could talk. The inner child in us is hurt but it also blames himself for causing pain to his parents.

The first thing you could do is to start having compassion for the little boy that you were many years ago, who endured all that abuse. Start having compassion for yourself as a helpless, innocent child. It was absolutely not your fault that your father was a bully and was terrorizing your mother, and that he later brutally punished you for the slightest mistake. Try to have compassion for that little boy who just wanted to be loved but couldn’t, because he was living in such terror. His mother wanted to love him but she couldn’t protect him from his abusive father. She wasn’t able to protect him. Try to have compassion for that boy who had to endure beating and terror for full 5 years. Do you think you can do it?

 I just want to see her happy, and like everybody else, she deserves to be happy.

Everybody deserves to be happy, but we cannot make our parents happy if their unhappiness is caused by their own wounds. I could never make my mother happy, no matter what I’ve tried and how perfect of a child I was. Your mother’s unhappiness isn’t caused by you – it is primarily caused by her. She endured an abusive marriage and probably would have endured it further, had your father not left. She endured a relationship in which she was a mistress for 10 years, in which she certainly wasn’t happy but it was still better for her than to be alone.

She might be blaming you for depriving her of her happiness, but is her, with her own weaknesses and childhood wounds – who deprived herself of true happiness and settled for breadcrumbs. She accepted and tolerated men who didn’t really love her or respect her. It has nothing to do with you. It was she who was creating her own unhappiness.

That’s why you can only work on your side of the relationship with your mother, but you cannot make her happy. You can have compassion for her, understand her, help her, however you cannot heal her wounds. Your task is to heal your own wounds, and be able to relate to her from that healthy place, from which you can offer more both to yourself and to her.

Dear Anita,

I reacted to you repeatedly suggesting that lk09 engages in histrionic behavior. lk09 replied to your first post, she explained that she doesn’t feel like she’s creating drama to seek attention. However, you continued to postulate that indeed, she is seeking attention. I felt the need to react to that assumption of yours, because I believe it is not helpful to suggest that a member is engaging in a behavior they’re most probably not engaging in.

I don’t have anything against you, I think you’re doing an excellent job on this forum, so my reaction isn’t personal against you, but rather, to give another perspective to lk09 who might feel accused of something she isn’t doing.

When you point to another member who replies as being wrong, it creates a negative feeling in the other member, and it may put the OP in the position of siding with one member against another. Overall, it promotes a negative/ unsafe atmosphere in the forums. We are here to learn and hopefully to help just a little, we are not here to disagree or argue.

It appears you feel personally accused of being wrong and it created a negative feeling in you, and also you have a feeling that lk09 might “side with me” because of that. This is your projection, I must say. As I said, I reacted because I felt your perspective in this particular issue might not be helpful to lk09.

Indeed, I agree we should try to help each other, and I felt that insisting on the notion that lk09 seeks attention through drama isn’t helpful.

If you want to have a conversation with me, you are welcome to start your own thread, where you will be the OP, and I will be glad to address you there.

I don’t have the need to address you in a separate thread. I only had the need to react in this particular issue, for the reasons I’ve just explained.

In my very next post I will address the OP with something that occurred to me as a result of reading your most recent post.

Alright, I am looking forward to reading your post.