Dear Dandan,

I am glad you returned to the forum – welcome back!

With myself, I am mostly low and depressed, for no reason. My mom too is like me. She feels low most of the time. If she is surrounded by a dull environment, she feels low.

You’re depressed because you were raised by a depressed mother. A depressed mother cannot properly respond to your emotional needs, she cannot express joy that you exist, she cannot be happy about your little achievements, cannot encourage you to try out new things, cannot root for you in a sports match etc.

But beyond that, she cannot really be happy, and if a mother is unhappy, the child is unhappy too. The child always tries to make the mother happy, and if it doesn’t succeed, the child too becomes sad and depressed. He starts feeling hopeless too, because nothing works, and he blames himself for his mother’s unhappiness – he believes he’s not good enough to make her mother happy.

So if you feel depressed, have low energy, feel not good enough, and are a pessimist, often having negative thoughts – that can all be a consequence of having a depressed mother.

You’d need to restore the joy for life and the hope, and I think the best way would be to work with a therapist who could see you and mirror you and encourage you – to sort of act as a positive, nurturing mother figure. This way you could build up the capacity for joy and hope, which right now you don’t seem to have. And also, you’d need to learn to love yourself and realize that you’re good enough, and that it’s not your fault you couldn’t make your mother happy.

These are my thoughts for now – let me know how you feel about it, and whether it resonates.

Dear Boris1010,

good to hear from you again! I understand your struggle with the AA’s view of the higher power, specially in helping heal addiction. I’ve suffered from an eating disorder for quite a few years, and my belief in God helped me partially, but it wasn’t enough to stop my ED.  What did help me was healing my wounded inner child. Because addiction is there to soothe the pain, and the pain is always, without exception, the pain of the wounded inner child. If you heal that pain – which might or not involve higher power – you have a very high chance of healing addiction too.

You might want to check the Internal Family Systems therapy created by Richard Schwartz. It works with various parts of our personality: one is the wounded inner child (the most vulnerable part of our personality, which is in pain), the other is the protector part, whose role is to protect us from being hurt again (so we e.g. close our heart and don’t trust anyone, we pretend and aren’t authentic), and the third part is the so-called firefighter, which soothes our pain with various addictive behaviors.

In that model, you don’t even need a higher power. However, you’d need a healthy adult self, who’d be able to act as a loving, compassionate parent to your wounded inner child. For some people, God or higher power take the place of that loving, compassionate adult self. People then talk about divine father or divine mother, who replace our not so perfect and even abusive earthly parents.

Dear anonymous03,

hi, good to chat with you too! 🙂

So it would be better if she did actual research. 

The unfortunate thing is that they aren’t open to facts and science. Rather, they’re actively seeking information and sources that will confirm what they want to believe. And unfortunately, there are so many sources out there that will give them the false reasoning and false proofs they’re looking for.

What do I do when others won’t take care? It is a scary world. I am not afraid for myself. I am afraid of losing any more family.

I know, I was very afraid too, not so much for myself but for my husband, who has a chronic lung condition. And I thought that challenging those virus deniers among my friends and acquaintances would somehow help slow down the spread of the virus, and eventually help prevent my husband from catching it and possibly dying from it. That’s the bottom line of why I was so eagerly involved in those debates – the fear of losing a loved one. I wasn’t aware of it at first, but only later, after having looked deeper into it.

Eventually, I’ve realized that I can’t really make those people change their mind, and that I need to treat my fear differently – not by trying to change other people’s opinions and behaviors, but by soothing my wound of abandonment. Beside doing everything in my power to protect myself and my loved ones (same as what you’re doing), I need to have faith in God/the universe to protect us.

I am so afraid that I avoid praying and thanking God for looking after us, for the fear of jinxing it. Maybe I should wear my wooden bracelet at all times.

Just keep up your prayers and your faith – you won’t jinx anything. In such scary situations, people like us do need to keep their faith, because we need that extra soothing and a sense of protection from a higher power. And then, at the quickest possible opportunity, do get vaccinated, it will make a huge difference and a huge relief.

I am afraid of losing any more family.

Does it mean you lost some family members due to covid? If so, my deepest condolences. I will pray for your and your family’s protection and to get out of this nightmare as soon as possible.

Dear anonymous03,

I agree with you that “boys will be boys” is not an excuse, and if the guy is in a committed relationship, he shouldn’t allow such messages and such offers coming from other women. His allowing it for a while – until hopeful80 saw it – shows something about him and the way he saw their relationship (perhaps not very committed on his part). There might be other reasons for his behavior, e.g. him believing that really, as a guy, he has the right to behave like that and his girlfriend shouldn’t give him a hard time about it.

Anyway, there are more possible causes and I agree that the best would be to have an honest talk about it.

Dear hopeful80, now that I think about it, you seeing some red flags could be justified, so I think the best would be to talk openly about it and see where he stands on those issues and what his expectations are about the relationship.

Dear hopeful80,

I do all of the cooking, tidying up, watch his dog when he’s going to have a long work day, plan dates.

Does it mean you’ve moved to his place? If so, I think it’s way too early, because you’ve met him only in December, and now you’re already cleaning his flat and cooking for him, while he doesn’t show much appreciation for you any more. Regardless of the woman who sent him her nude photos, it seems to me you’re moving too fast.

While he acknowledges he has created this environment

In your eyes, what is he guilty of what exactly? Not deleting and blocking her as soon as she sent her first nude photo? You yourself said “what guy would say no” to receiving a nude female photo. Perhaps he was startled but it also flattered him a little, so he didn’t block her immediately. It could also be that after just 3 months of relationship – even though the two of you spent quite a lot of time together – he still wasn’t sure if he wants to spend the rest of his life with you, so perhaps he was open to at least in theory receiving other “offers”.

It might not have even been conscious in him, but just something in the back of his mind. And when you started accusing him of why he didn’t block her immediately, or why he engaged with her even for a moment, he might have felt that you’re expecting a level of commitment from him that he’s still unsure of. He might feel pressured into something he’s not yet ready for, or didn’t have enough time to decide.

As a result, he’s now not that affectionate any more, he doesn’t call you pet names, and he seems bored with you. There’s a resistance within him, I believe because he doesn’t know if he wants to go deeper into the relationship. This uncertainty might have been there before, but your reaction to those nude pictures might have exacerbated it.

Do you think this is a possible explanation of his behavior? Have you experienced in your past relationships that you’re often the one who is pushing for greater intimacy and closeness, while your partner is somewhat reserved and wants to back off?

Dear Elie,

However I’m still pushing through and still believing my efforts won’t go into waste and that maybe someday the table will turn around with me getting to know things better and becoming smarter and happier overtime.

The table will less likely to turn around by a pure strike of luck, but rather as you say, by you “getting to know things better and becoming smarter” – meaning by you better understanding yourself and how perhaps you’re suffering where you needn’t be suffering that much.

If you’d like some help in unpacking and better understanding your family dynamic, as well as your internal dynamic, please share some more about your situation, e.g who in your family is struggling with their career – is it your parents, your siblings, your adult children? What are the disappointments and heartbreak you’ve faced? What are you doing to advance your own career but you feel helpless?

Dear Elie,

I am sorry you’re going through a difficult time. You say that in spite of you trying, things aren’t improving, but rather, you’re facing disappointment after disappointment. One of the disappointments I guess is a recent breakup of your relationship, which you mentioned in your previous thread. In this thread you’re mentioning disappointments and struggle experienced by a loved one, or loved ones, about which you feel helpless to do anything.

It appears that both you and your family members are experiencing personal challenges at the moment, and it’s been hard for you balancing your work, family and studies.

If you’d like to share a bit more about the disappointments you’ve experienced, or the challenges your family members are facing – please do so. Perhaps by unpacking it a little, some things will become clearer and easier to tackle.

Dear Tiny,

what if he thought, half jokingly, that he’s annoying you with his question about wine so late in the evening, and so, as a continuation of his thought, he remarked that similarly, he’s annoying his pet too. Perhaps he evens feels or knows that you’re slightly annoyed these days, and he thinks it’s because of your job/career. So he might have been referring to that, but didn’t mean anything bad. He just tried to be witty and even apologetic, like he didn’t want to bother you with his unimportant question while you have much bigger worries, like your career. Do you think this could be the explanation?