Dear miyoid,

I’ve checked the beginning of this thread, page 1, and there was a quote Anita pasted about something you said in June 2019:

“I’ve had a childhood where I simply didn’t receive any love from my dad and mom’s love was a bit unpredictable, exists and then disappears… emotionally and physically abandoned by both of my parents several times. I was left to live with one parent and then left with another when they’ve got divorced. I always felt the need to depend on someone but I couldn’t find anyone so I have always kept my feelings to myself” (June 2019).

Your mother’s love was unpredictable, and your were emotionally and physically abandoned by your parents several times. That’s what caused your fear of abandonment. You say you don’t see the connection between your choice of boyfriends and your mother, but reading your words from June 2019, the connection is very clear.

Your mother’s love was unpredictable, exists and then disappears – same as the love of your present boyfriend. You never know when he’s going to have an episode, when he’s going to want to leave you, when he can be there for you, etc. And he’s abandoned you not just emotionally (with his inconsistent behavior), but also physically – he moved out and doesn’t live with you any more.

My mom loved us like any other mother would do. But I know that she’s seen children as something that would hold people back. Therefore, she never wanted us (me and my sister) to be mothers. And I don’t think that we would ever have children.

Your mother doesn’t want you and your sister to have children, which is because she didn’t like having children. Children are something that was holding her back. That’s one reason why you feel rejected and unwanted. You felt you were an obstacle and a nuisance to your mother. You believe you prevented her from being happy, from leaving your father earlier, from making her own decisions. That’s how the child blames themselves for their parent’s weaknesses.

In earlier threads you spoke about your mother ignoring her own problems in her marriage for a long time and enduring the harassment of your narcissistic father, who even forbid her to visit her own father. She only left him after her father died and she didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.

It’s not your fault that your mother was unhappy – she was unhappy because she couldn’t stand up for herself, and she allowed your father to harass and control her. Probably she also tolerated him not helping with the children or the household, leaving everything on her shoulders (She was working hard and trying to raise us, do all the responsibilities at home as well. Maybe that’s why she didn’t have much time.)

I believe you said earlier your mother had a full-time job. And also, that your father was rather stingy and didn’t want to spend on the family, but only on himself. I imagine your father wouldn’t allow to pay for help in the household to unburden your mother, and he wouldn’t help her himself. So your mother was left alone with all those responsibilities, which clearly made her frustrated and also made her see you, her children, as a burden. But none of that was your fault. Rather, it was the fault of your parents – your selfish and self-centered father, and your submissive, enduring mother.

You said that when you later complained about your problems, she would downplay them, she didn’t think your problems were problems at all, because she endured much harsher things. She minimized your pain, as being nothing compared to hers. She didn’t see you, didn’t understand you. And I believe it’s because she refused to deal with her own pain, that’s why she didn’t have compassion neither for herself nor for you. Now she has compassion for cats and abused animals, while probably still having no compassion for herself or you.

I just want to be understood, like the rest of the people.

You want to be understood – something  you never received either from your mother or your father. I also believe you want someone who is committed to you, who won’t abandon you, and who doesn’t see you as a burden. Your mother wasn’t really committed to you emotionally – she was physically, but she was burdened by you and your sister, and that’s why you felt unwanted and in danger of being abandoned.

Your boyfriend is the same – he cannot really commit to you and sees you as a burden. But he’s better than your mother in one thing: he’s able to see you and understand you. That’s why you’re holding on to him so badly…

Are you able to see the connection between your past and your present?

Dear Javier,

you’re welcome, I’m glad I can help.

I’m trying to break my negative thoughts by journaling and positive self-talk. But, it doesn’t help because I’m clueless and I’m very weak, both mentally and physically.

Journaling is fine, positive self-talk too, but it’s not enough because your negative thoughts are stronger. You say “I’m in overdrive with negative thoughts. I feel fear, anxiety, anger, and despair. I have too much negativity inside me, too much “poison””. Your physical suffering only adds to your emotional pain and suffering, and it’s a vicious cycle that you can’t seem to break free from.

You’re now considering psychoactive drugs: “Maybe the drugs will numb my pain and maybe the best scenario will trigger apathy.”

You used to take psychoactive drugs in your youth, and it didn’t really make things better, did it? It’s an escape and takes you further away from your authentic self. But people in chronic pain talk about cannabidiol (CBD) – it’s a drug that is not psychoactive, has no negative effects on your brain, and allegedly helps with numerous conditions. If your pain is really unbearable, I think a better route is something like CBD. But study it first – best if you check with a credible medical doctor. Find out whether it’s safe to use for post-covid treatment, what’s the best company to buy from, what’s the optimal dosage etc. In any case, I’d definitely stay clear of psychoactive drugs.

It’s good you’re listening to sermons. If you can take away anything from those sermons, let it be hope and faith that things can change. And that you too can change and lead a happy, fulfilling life.

But in order to heal, I think you’ll need to take a look at your childhood and how it contributed to where you’re now in life. How it contributed to your fears, anxiety, anger and despair – those things that you’re suffering from right now.

You said you didn’t like therapy and that it did you more harm than good: I realized that counseling made me unhappy and actually made matters worse. It just made me realize that I was a real mess and it just fueled an already depressed state. To relive my fears and regrets, inflicted more pain. 

Perhaps you didn’t have a good therapist? It appears you got re-traumatized by reminiscing about your past, instead of getting stabilized and started towards recovery.

I asked you two specific questions about your childhood. One was how long your father stayed with you and kept harassing your mother, and another was if you could think of the way your mother (or your father) made you feel unimportant and unworthy. You didn’t respond to either of those questions. I believe you’d need to address some of the key elements of your childhood, so you can process and heal it.

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

Dear miyoid,

It’s weird that everybody that I’ve cared for or tried to felt safe with has this one common thing. They all triggered my fear of abandonment sooner or later with their behavior.

It’s actually not weird – you’re attracted to people who trigger the fear of abandonment in you, because they remind you of your mother, who was the first person who triggered that fear in you. We’re always attracted to people who remind us of our parents, so we can finally get from them what we didn’t get from our parents. You’re hoping to get a sense of security and commitment – something you didn’t get with your mother.

If your mother wasn’t “committed” to you, if you felt she’d leave you while you’re asleep, it could be the reason that triggers the fear of abandonment. Your boyfriend isn’t committed to you either, he might leave you at any moment, in fact it seems he would like to leave you but worries about your reaction, and that’s why he checks upon you from time to time. Do you perhaps feel that your mother would have liked to leave you, but couldn’t because you were her daughter and she had an obligation towards you? Is such notion somewhere in the back of your mind?

If so, it would explain why you also get depressed and feel unlovable. The child reasons that if our parents don’t really love us and only take care of us because it’s their duty, then we must be unlovable and worthless. It must be our fault. And we live our lives with the notion that we’re unlovable… and it makes us want to disappear.

And from what my mom has told me, I’ve got up, realized that I’ve wet myself and then I’ve got angry with myself and ranted to myself asking over and over “What you’ve done!?”. I don’t remember how my mom treated me during the toilet training. I don’t remember any harsh treatment

Has your mother scolded you for other things (not necessarily related to toilet training) with words like “What have you done?!” Because it sounds like something you would hear from an adult and then repeat it to yourself when you feel you did something wrong.

And I was left alone with my unwanted hair.

It seems you felt abandoned in that matter too by your mother, even though your mother did it because she had a bad experience with your sister and didn’t want to force you to go through the same torture. You were envious of the girls who had their mother’s help during their teen years. In this instance, your mother doesn’t seem to have treated you badly, since she didn’t want to put you through unnecessary stress (waxing the armpits and the bikini zone is much more painful than shaving!). However, you still felt abandoned by her, and that’s probably because the abandonment happened much earlier, when you were a baby.

One of the reasons could be that she didn’t spend enough quality, bonding time with you as a baby. Perhaps she was always in a rush when feeding you, she didn’t play peek-a-boo with you, she didn’t have time for a bedtime story, or was in rush to read you one… all in all, that the emotional bonding didn’t really take place as it should have, and you felt rejected and abandoned by her. Do you think this might be the case?

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

Dear Javier,

I woke up now, after 1hour of sleep, gasping for air. Experienced rapid heartbeat, rapid breathing, and sweating. I’m in full panic mode, and I’m afraid I’m going to die.

it seems like a panic attack, and I believe the first thing to do would be to calm down your nervous system. I myself haven’t experienced panic attacks, but some members here have, and they’ve given very good advice on how to calm yourself down when you’re experiencing a panic attack. I don’t know if I can post a link to that thread, because last time I posted a link it took almost a day until the post was approved. But you can find it under the “Relationship Paranoia, Anxiety Overall” thread, page 2 (the thread was started on April 26, 2021).

I just realized I will not leave any legacy or leave a mark on this world that will have meant something when I’m long gone. That means, that when I die, I’ll be gone and forgotten.

I too had such thoughts in the past. I thought my life was in vain and that I was a failure. I felt worthless and unimportant. Like, it doesn’t matter if I live or die, it would be all the same. My life made no difference. After some digging, I’ve discovered it has to do with my lack of self-esteem and self-worth. Subconsciously, I didn’t feel important or special to my parents (and a part of it might have been because they left me at my granny’s when I was 1.5 years old and left me there for almost a year).

So I felt unimportant but wasn’t aware of it. As an adult, I felt like I needed to make some big contribution to the world. It made me fight for some “big causes” that later turned out to be a lie, after which I felt humiliated and like I should forever shut up. My self-worth was at the rock bottom.

I believe that your fear that you won’t have any legacy or leave a mark stems from the same feeling of lack of self-worth. On some level, you don’t feel important to your parents, specially to your mother, I guess. This feeling might have formed very early in your childhood. Do you have an idea what might have caused it? One reason could be e.g. that your mother stayed for so long with your father and didn’t protect you from his abuse. Or it can be something less obvious.

You did feel important while you were a lead engineer at a cruse ship, you said you even felt loved then. But if there’s a deeper sense of lack of self-worth, then even external recognition and praise cannot convince us that we’re really worthy. A part of us never really believes it, and we constantly seek validation and eventually experience rejection.

Try to look at your current situation as a wake-up call to start living in accordance with your authentic self. It’s rough at the moment, with lots of turbulence, but try to think of it a re-shuffling phase, after which you’ll be a better, more authentic, more self-confident person. You need to get through the storm to emerge renewed on the other side.

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

Dear Javier,

You started this thread expressing disappointment in yourself how bad of a son you are and how little love and attention you gave to your mother over the years. Then Anita remarked that your blaming yourself for your mother’s unhappy life might be misplaced: “redirect your empathy from your mother to you. As tragic as her life is, she failed you, not the other way around.”

You agreed with that, saying: You are most probably right. My mother still lives in the apartment I grew up in. Hence, so many memories and flashbacks. At the moment, I’m unfortunately stuck here. I have to work on shifting my perspective toward self-acceptance, with all my flaws and bad habits.

Here’s my take on what’s going on: A part of you agrees that you shouldn’t be blaming yourself for your mother’s unhappiness, and that you are the one who suffered too. Perhaps this part even resents your mother for not doing enough to leave the situation and protect you, your siblings and herself from your father? This part wants to emotionally separate from your mother and be an independent person, with your own needs and desires.

However, another part of you is terrified of that separation, because it believes you wouldn’t survive without your mother. You as a child were completely dependent on your mother, had no one else to count on for your survival (your father being a bully, you grandparents having passed away before you were born). So in the eyes of that little child, if you “separate” from your mother, it means death for you.

I’m really afraid my mother will be forgotten when she dies. Nobody will remember her, and it will be like she never existed. It frightens me, because, it will be like I never existed.

On one level, you’re afraid she’d die, because you – being dependent on her for your survival – would be endangered too. But what I believe is also going on is that one part of you wants to “forget” her, to live your life independently and free from her pain. That’s a part of you that wants to separate from her. It’s an older part of you.

But a younger part of you doesn’t want you to “forget” her because you believe you need her for your survival. This younger part doesn’t allow the older part to emotionally separate from your mother, and that’s why you started having these intrusive thoughts about your mother being “forgotten.” It’s like a battle between your older and your younger self.

Anyway, that’s my take on it. Do you think this might be what’s going on?

Dear miyoid,

it’s interesting what you’ve described about your sleeping habits as a teenager – you’d often stay up till the middle of the night, working on the computer, having fun, and then your mother would suddenly wake up, burst into your room and scold you for staying up so late.

It’s kind of a reverse of what was happening when you were a baby – your mother would put you to sleep and leave, and then you’d wake up soon after and went looking for her. This tells me that as a baby or a young child, you didn’t have a deep, peaceful sleep, and it’s maybe because your mother was in a rush and didn’t want to spend too much time putting you to sleep, just wanted to get over with. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons you felt rejected? Because of that, maybe you were afraid that she’d abandon you? You couldn’t sleep peacefully, deeply, but were anxious, and this contributed to your waking up soon after she’d put you to sleep?

If so, going to sleep for you might have caused anxiety and fear that your mother would abandon you. Perhaps that’s why when you were older, you’d rather stay up late, so you don’t have to experience your mother “abandoning” you. You felt safe when your mother was sleeping in the next room – that’s when you could relax, feel good, be creative, and enjoy.

Now you say something similar about your boyfriend: when he’s there with you, you feel safe, and when you feel safe, “I feel like I can make everything work.” When he’s not there, you feel like “wanting to disappear”. As Anita said, it’s probably related to your mother who rejected you on some level (e.g. didn’t enjoy time spent with you), which you made you feel undesirable and not wanting to live.

When you were a teenager and your mother came to your room in the middle of the night, upset that you’re up so late, it was, as you say, a normal parental reaction. She was rightfully worried and upset, there was nothing controlling or abusive in her reaction. But this entire habit of yours of staying up late might have been caused by the early sense of abandonment that you felt when she would put you to sleep in a rush, not spending enough time with you, and not appearing like she’s enjoying the time spent with you.

Do you think this might be true and relevant for your separation anxiety?

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

Dear Felix,

I’ve stopped commenting after a while because it was painful to read how much you’re suffering, and yet there was nothing that I (or anyone else here) could say that would help you alleviate your pain at least a little. In the last cycle that I interacted with you, I suggested a website with sustainable companies, because you complained about interviewing with all those soulless corporations. But you haven’t responded to that, and in your next post, you kept complaining about those companies who expect you to be a genius and demand so much from you:

I have 6 interviews in the next 4 work days and I am terrified to bomb every single one of them. I am not bad at what I do, but these companies are looking for geniuses. This is causing so much anxiety. I am feeling like I am literally going to have a breakdown and kill myself.

In spite of their high, impossible demands, and them being profit-oriented soulless corporations, which you despise, you still want to get hired by them:

But yeah, I do have a good plan. I’ll eventually get hired. I’ll eventually get my exams done. I’ll eventually start to feel better. But until then I have to survive somehow.

And now, it seems you’ve decided to do 18-24 months of additional training, so you can finally get hired at a company which you basically despise, and earn “crazy money” which you previously said you don’t care about?

This is how you’re working against yourself and your core values. You believe you have to, that you have no other choice. You believe you live in the “world that is unforgiving, cold, brutal, and much worse.” And so you need to do everything to survive in that brutal world, you need to adapt to it and play by its rules, even if it means you drop dead in the process.

I tried explaining that this whole belief – this whole idea that the world is brutal, cold and harsh – is your perception, and it’s the same how you see your parents: brutal, cold and harsh. If you would work on your childhood wounds, you could change your perception, and would be able to have a very different experience of life.

But you’re completely rejecting this possibility. You refuse to consider that you’re creating your own reality and fighting unnecessary battles.

I’ve realized in the meanwhile that you’re completely identified with one part of your personality, which is called the Protector. According to the Internal Family Systems theory, there are three main parts of our personality: one is the Inner child (which is our hurt and wounded part). Another is the Protector, which seeks to protect the inner child from pain but does it in an unhealthy and unbalanced way. And the third is the Firefighter, which is the part of us that gets addicted and soothes the pain with addiction and all kinds of acting out.

We’ve spoken about the inner child before, and you admitted that your inner child is sad and wants to be loved. But that was it, you quickly went back to your usual litany of how things are horrible but you’re not giving up. This is the Protector speaking – the fighter in you who’ll do anything – even sell your soul to the soulless corporations – just so you wouldn’t have to feel the pain of your wounded inner child. You’d rather choose a career path you despise rather than get in touch with your true self, and do things that would make you happy. This is how strong your fear is of meeting that inner child and feeling his pain.

I believe this Protector is also full of spite, trying to prove to your parents that you can do it, that you’re not weak:

It’s not about the money, it’s about proving to myself that I can, it’s about proving to others that I can

It’s about proving to your parents that you can make it, that you can play by their rules, worshiping the money gods, and win. But in the process lose your soul, and maybe your health too? Is that what you really want?