P.S. You can try that exercise (breathing deeply and slowly while having one hand on your heart, the other on your belly) even throughout the day, perhaps while you’re listening to a sermon by you favorite pastor. Maybe that would help to connect the soothing, calming effect with a soothing figure – if you believe you’re not strong enough to give that soothing to yourself.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Tee.

Dear Felix,

And in regards to my parents, they weren’t looking at the world like it’s a bad dark place, they just didn’t care about me.

Right – and because they didn’t care about you, your outlook on the world is that it’s a cruel, cold and unforgiving place. But since you did receive love from your grandparents, you’re now not depressed and suicidal, you haven’t collapsed, but are keeping on keeping on… Still, due to your worldview it’s very difficult for you, you feel exhausted, you feel like an overstressed engine that might break at any moment.

And emotionally, you feel lonely, you “crave intimacy and closeness like drug addicts and alcoholics crave their vices.” You feel on the verge in every aspect, saying things like “I might die”, because you feel that your current condition is not really sustainable. You hope it will be better, but at the same time, you say:

“I don’t know how [to love myself], considering I hate my self quite a bit, but I will learn.”

Do you really want to learn how to love yourself?

There is a filter that is skewing my perception of the world and my parents had some part to play in it because they ignored me and didn’t show love, and didn’t help me to build my future, but I’m not a little boy anymore. I want to stand up on my own. I am being my own parent right now, I am trying to look past the filter, I am trying to be a little bit more open minded.

The little boy is still inside of you. When you say “I’m not a little boy anymore, I want to stand up on my own”, you’re disregarding his needs and going into the Protector mode, which tells you that you can heal and thrive without tending to that little boy. Without tending to his pain. Without being a loving, compassionate parent to him – rather than a strict boot-camp coach that is pushing him to achieve and “keep fighting until you die.”

You’ve been a boot-camp coach to yourself, you’ve been pushing yourself to the limits, you’ve been “struggling, but not giving up”. It does seem you’re being a little gentler with yourself recently, such as what you mentioned in your points 1-3. That’s a good development – keep that up.

However, true healing will require some deeper work, the kind of work where you can be a compassionate, not a boot-camp parent to yourself. Where you can meet that boy, comfort him and tell him that he isn’t alone. That’s when you’ll start truly loving yourself…

I’ve been telling you all this before, don’t know if it will reach you now. But that’s the only path to self-love that I know works, and it works long-term. It’s a deep, transformational healing.

Oh okay, get it. Yeah the punctuation can be a tricky thing 🙂

Dear Felix,

good to read from you!

I know there are decent companies out there and I will NEVER work for another evil company again. No amount of money will make me do that.

It’s good to hear you’re not compromising your core values. For a moment, when reading your previous post, I thought you decided to accept a high-paying job in some company you despise. But you haven’t – you stick to your principles. That’s great.

I do like technology and I enjoy studying so I can take these exams. I am not studying and hating every second of it. Not at all.

This is also good. You’re not hating the field you’re in, in fact you like it. So there’s no need to look for something else. IT is a huge field and everyone needs IT services, so I believe you should be able settle in a decent company (or even a school or a public institution – are you eligible for that being a foreign citizen?) and earn decent money, to have a decent living.

Every company cares about profit, but there’s a difference between a company that also cares about its employees and one which exploits its employees for a bottom line. I hope you can find a company or institution where you’ll earn decent  money and feel respected rather than exploited.

If I don’t take care of myself, if I don’t get paid enough money, if I don’t study my a%% off, I’ll be in trouble. That’s the world we live in and not my perception of the world. … The world is unforgiving.

It’s true to a point – America is pretty hard-core capitalism and it’s probably harder to make it there than in Sweden or some more socially sensitive Western country. And it’s not socialism like the former USSR, which was in my opinion not a good system at all. In fact, it was a much worse system than free initiative and entrepreneurship that you get in capitalism. However, it could be that workers’ conditions are harder in the USA (I know there’s almost no paid maternity leave for example), so perhaps that’s one of the reasons you’re experiencing more of the “unforgiving world” than you would in some other country. I can’t really tell because I don’t live in the USA.

I get it and I appreciate your breakdown of the personality thing. I am not sure I fully understand it, but I get it. And you’re probably right. But I live in this terrible reality (terrible in a sense of the reality of capitalism, competition, greed, etc.) and I don’t know what else to do.

Try to understand that there are decent companies, who do care abut their employees. That America is not just soulless, greedy, cut-throat capitalism. Open yourself up to that possibility. I know it’s hard for you because you base your conclusions on your so-far experiences, and your negative experiences go far back into your childhood and youth, where you didn’t get help from your parents and were left to tend for yourself.

Your experience of the world started forming very early when you were a young child, when you experienced your parents as cold, brutal and lacking compassion for you. This was a base for later experiencing the world exactly the same: cold, brutal and unforgiving. The way you experienced your parents defined how you later experienced the world. Can you accept that notion?

Your experience of the world is colored by your experience of your parents. It’s as if you’re looking everything through a filter that distorts and skews the image, because it magnifies certain (negative) experiences, and leaves out other (positive) experiences. You get a distorted image, because of that filter. If you’d remove the filter, the image of the world would change.

I know the Universe doesn’t conspire against anyone, even though it feels like it sometimes, but what the hell is this? Why am going through all this? When does it end?

This is the result of the filter. It skews your perception. It feels horrible. You’re only experiencing negative things. It feels like the universe is conspiring against you, it feels like the universe is cold, harsh and lacks compassion (like your parents). It doesn’t give you any good news, it doesn’t give you a break. If you’d remove the filter, it would give you a different image.

I have pain in the kidneys. I am sure it’s nothing serious, but it’s still bothering me.

It’s most probably nothing physical. The adrenal glands are above the kidneys, and they produce adrenaline and cortisol – hormones of stress. They’re produced when we’re in the fight-or-flight, i.e. survival mode. You’ve been operating in this mode for quite a while…

I am struggling, but I am not giving up. I will never give up. I just wish that there was some, just a little tiny bit, of good news. Just anything that’s positive would help me. But it’s mostly been the other way around. 

What I’ve been trying to say is that you’re struggling against the skewed image of the world. If you’d remove the filter, you wouldn’t need to struggle that much.

What do you think? Can you accept that you might need to remove the filter, so you can experience a better, more positive reality?

Dear Anita,

I think that I understand your concern, you are concerned that parts of my replies to Ik09 have caused her harm. I greatly appreciate your motivation (and I greatly appreciate your participation in the forums).

Yes, my concern was that insisting that lk09 engages in histrionic behavior isn’t helpful and that it might cause her harm, e.g. that she might feel accused of something she isn’t doing, or that she might start questioning herself and thinking what if indeed she’s creating drama as a way to seek attention.

Because of everything she’s written so far on her threads, my impression was that she isn’t a drama queen, and that this was an incident where she felt harassed and attacked, and she was desperate to the point of “wanting to die”. That’s why she made those gestures.

I believe she didn’t do it on purpose, she even said she doesn’t remember what was going on in her head (I remember the actions of my body but I don’t remember what was going in my mind and what I was thinking regarding the action.) It seems it was an affective moment where her emotions took over and her rational brain switched off for a while. People can react like that when overwhelmed with strong emotions – they might do something stupid. That’s why it didn’t seem to me like something she would have planned in advance, but rather something that happened in the heat of the moment, as a result of her feeling desperate.

Because I am in the habit of reading your replies to OPs- if you state your thoughts and concerns to the OP in the ways that I suggested in my previous post to you, I will consider and take your input to heart.

You suggested I should have phrased my post with these words: ”I do not believe that you engage in histrionic behavior’, addressing lk09, and not you. But even if I have phrased it like that, it would be clear that I am expressing disagreement with an assumption that you made. Wouldn’t it feel equally hurtful to you, even if I didn’t address the post to you?

I will no longer address you or reply to you on any thread in which you are not the original poster. Take good care of yourself, and I wish you well.

Dear Anita, this seems like an overreaction – you appear offended and you don’t want to communicate with me any more unless I start my own thread. It seems there’s a wound there that I hit, where you feel rejected or wronged in some way. It wasn’t my intention to do that. But it appears it did cause you pain and a defensive reaction.

Dear Anita,

I am not sure lk09 engages in histrionic behavior, only because she had a couple of episodes where she felt so harassed and bullied by her sister and parents, that she reacted in desperation and made those self-harming gestures. She described those two incidents in her letter to her boyfriend, and the way I see it, it was an act of desperation, when she felt bullied and not understood, like an animal pushed into a corner.

This is what preceded those episodes:

No matter what I do is never good enough and then listening complaints and how bad I am and how i shall never have anyone in my life and how I shall always be alone in my life, How acc. to my own blood, I am planning day and night another dramatic stint to disturb other people’s lives and how I enjoy the mental trauma others go through by fighting.

A few days back, I was constantly being shouted on, non stop complaints- about how I am perfectly useless and how I cannot do anything. It caught on to me and that is the last I remember. I remember the actions of my body but I don’t remember what was going in my mind and what I was thinking regarding the action.

Then one day again same thing happened. Sister started it, then mum took over…this time I was crying and on the floor begging them to shut up, I remember hearing maa say “You don’t even die, just bring disgrace to us” she said it in anger to make me stop but I ran towards the terrace, Aum caught me in the way and pushed me so that i stop. I sat there and cried and asked them all to go and leave me alone. But nobody left, they kept saying things, I started hitting the back of my head on the wooden swing in my drawing room.

She was shouted on, told that she was useless, that she was a disgrace, and that she’ll always stay alone. And that she’s “planning day and night another dramatic stint to disturb other people’s lives and how I enjoy the mental trauma others go through by fighting.” This is what her narcissistic sister accused her of, and narcissistic people are masters in accusing people and pretending they’re the victims while they are in fact the abusers.

You say:

It is interesting that your sister, although unlike you, she was not given away- she too felt alone and suffered from lack of attention (this is why she tried to be the center of attention).

Her sister was/is narcissistic and didn’t tolerate anyone else to be the center of attention. She needed to be the center of attention at all times. She was bullying and demanding, but her parents allowed it, because she had protection of the grandfather, who was Alpha and Omega in the family. So I don’t think her sister felt alone and suffered from lack of attention – rather, she was spoiled and as soon as the attention was not on her, she would act up.

I believe that in those two incidents, lk09 reacted in desperation, and that she didn’t seek attention by creating drama – it was what her sister unjustly accused her of.

Dear Javier,

thanks for sharing some more about your childhood. So the first five years of your life you spent growing up with a father who was violent and a bully, who used to severely punish you and your siblings for even the slightest transgression. You were so afraid of him that you would wet yourself anticipating his beating. In addition, he was beating your mother too and was threatening to kill her (She was the victim of physical and mental abuse by my “father”, harassed, endured death threats, and then was left alone as my father left her for his mistress.)

During that time, your mother tried to protect you, but she was weaker and would got beaten up too, I guess. She, you and your siblings were victims of domestic violence. Did your mother ever asked for help from social services? It appears she was enduring your father’s abuse, and might have endured his abuse even further, had he not left for another woman.

So when you say:

She always put her kids first. My mother never neglected us, we took her for granted and did her wrong.

it’s not completely true, because she didn’t leave your father. She allowed the severe abuse to last for 5 years. Perhaps she had no other choice, nowhere to go (her parents had deceased by that time), your father was maybe threatening to kill her if she turned to anyone for help…

But the fact is that you as a little child were exposed to domestic violence, in which both you and your mother and your siblings were victims. The difference being that you couldn’t do anything about it, but your mother could have, at least in theory, since she was the adult. You felt completely helpless and terrified because there was no one to protect you.

Your mother allowed severe punishments, or she couldn’t prevent them from happening, and the result is that you have severe trauma starting from very early in life. Apart from fearing for your life, you feared probably even more for your mother’s life, because your survival depended on her. She didn’t ensure you the conditions for healthy growth, but allowed (due to her own difficult background and personal weaknesses I don’t want to speculate about) that you and your siblings grow up in an abusive home.

Children from such homes often grow up to be drug addicts and act out in various ways. You were no exception. But it wasn’t your fault – it was the consequence of being raised in an abusive, violent home, suffering and witnessing abuse on a daily basis, and fearing for your own life as well as the life of your mother.

The first 5 years of your life determined your later trajectory. Everything that happened later is a consequence of those 5 years.

One year after your father left, your mother found a man who loved her enough not to beat her, but not enough to marry her. She settled for a relationship of being a mistress, because she probably didn’t think she deserved better? You say your mother was happy. Well, she might have been happy in the beginning, when this man was promising her to leave his wife. But as the time passed by, I don’t think your mother was truly happy. She was probably hoping he’d leave his wife and children, but he never did it. Maybe he was giving her false hopes and you saw him through,  you saw he was lying and manipulating her (I realized he will never leave his wife and kids).

You wanted to protect your mother from pain and disappointment, you told her to leave him but she wouldn’t, so you stopped speaking to her. Perhaps you were influenced by other people telling bad things about her – that she was a homewrecker? Maybe you felt embarrassed because your peers were saying these things? If so – if you wanted to protect yourself from embarrassment – that’s completely understandable, because in our teens we’re very susceptible to what our peers think about us. If your mother was a source of embarrassment for you, it’s no wonder you “rebelled” against her.

You say that your mother broke off the relationship because of you, and that it broke her “into thousand pieces”. That it killed her and you never saw her happy again.

Well, although you may not see it, Javier, your mother hasn’t treated you well, neither did she treat herself well. She first got involved with a bully, your father, who was abusing her and the kids for full 5 years, and it stopped only because he decided to leave for his mistress. Then, she got involved with a married man. She didn’t think how that would affect that man’s marriage and his children. Her need for a relationship and to feel loved by a man was more important to her than the well-being of those children. She put herself first, rather than those children.

In her marriage with your father, she didn’t leave, she didn’t make the abuse stop. She didn’t put you, her children, first. She put the relationship first, although it was a horrible one.

It seems to me that your mother, due to her own weaknesses and perhaps a difficult background and the conditions in which she grew up – had a need for a relationship, for man’s presence, even if that relationship was abusive or unsatisfactory. In her marriage she was physically and mentally abused, in her relationship with the married man she was probably emotionally manipulated, lied to, promised things that would never happen etc. She never had the courage to break it off, although she certainly wasn’t happy in that relationship either. But she didn’t know better, perhaps felt she didn’t deserve better.

What I am trying to say is that your mother in fact put herself first before her children. She didn’t see clearly how her marriage was affecting you, and later, how her illegitimate relationship was affecting her lover’s children. This doesn’t make her a villain, but she’s no saint either. She had personal weaknesses and deficiencies and didn’t know better.

How does this what I’ve just said affect you?

P.S. And I want to stress this: it’s not your fault that your boyfriend wants to leave you. He is incapable of a committed relationship and is struggling with his own issues. The fact that he isn’t committed to you has nothing to do with you being unlovable or undeserving of love.

Similarly, it wasn’t your fault if your mother behaved in a way which made you felt unwanted and rejected. Perhaps she was busy, stressed, didn’t get emotional nurturance from her own mother – there could be numerous reasons. But it’s not your fault. There’s nothing wrong with you. You deserve to be loved fully and completely!