Dear humour,

I am definitely after more happiness, fulfillment, career success and so on but I either don’t know what to do to attain it or I don’t know how much is enough.

OK, let me ask you this: you know when you’re hungry, right? And you know when you’re full, when you don’t need more food in your system? If so, it means that you’re in touch with your physiological needs, such as eating, sleeping, etc.

However, it seems that you’re not in touch with your emotional needs. You are in touch with the needs of others – and you like to help them (I am grateful for my ability to be of help to others). However, you don’t know what YOU yourself need.

For example, do you need a hug, do you need to be talked to nicely, do you need to be seen and heard, do you need to be respected, do you need to be acknowledged…. all those are our core emotional needs. And it seems you have suppressed them in the course of your growing up, because you felt you needed to meet the needs of your family first.

Because the child – a capable, intelligent and strong child – believes that he can help their parents feel better, make them happy, make them less sad, or make them less angry… The child believes he has that kind of power, and so tries to meet his parents’ emotional needs, instead of his own.

In fact, he suppresses his own needs. He says to himself : “I’ll be fine”, “I don’t need much”, “I shouldn’t disturb my mother with my problems, she is so burdened”, “I shouldn’t make my mother any more sad, she is so weak and fragile”. Etc etc.

You see? You focus all your attention on your loved ones, and almost completely disregard your own needs. And it has been going like that for years and years…. The result is that you don’t even know what you need, or what you want.

I am definitely after more happiness, fulfillment, career success and so on but I either don’t know what to do to attain it or I don’t know how much is enough

Before you can actually set some goals for success and fulfillment in either professional or personal arena, you would need to get in touch with your core emotional needs. You would need to turn your attention inwards, rather than outwards.

We can talk about it more, if this resonates…

Dear farnaz,

you’re welcome!

i am stronger now and i prefer to be alone than in bad company

You’re right! Better be alone than get involved with bad people out of desperation.

i have a question for you , how many of people who you needed to forgive for any reason are still in your life ?for me most of them gone for good .

Well, my mother is one such person. She is very critical of me and likes to blame me while refusing any responsibility of her own. As I have been working on myself, I’ve put up some defenses and boundaries, to protect myself from her. About a year ago I complained about a physical pain I had, and she accused me of being a hypochondriac and used the opportunity to send some more criticism my way. So she used my vulnerability and my honest sharing to hurt me. That’s when I decided I’ll never again be vulnerable around her, and I’ll never again expect any empathy from her.

But we do stay in a superficial contact. In fact we rarely speak nowadays because I live in another country, and I mostly speak with my father on the phone. So our contact is minimal but it still exists.

I’ve also forgiven my father, who was her enabler and failed to protect me from my mother’s toxicity. But he hurt me much less than she did…

And I’ve also forgiven a relative of mine, who is a fun person to be around, but sometimes doesn’t care about other people and only cares about her own needs. But I don’t want to lose a friendship with her, so I decided not to expect much from her, but to enjoy her company when we meet once or twice per year.

I actually don’t believe people who were deceitful would stay once you saw through them.

Yes, deceitful people don’t like to be “seen through”. Fortunately I’ve never had experience with deceitful people, only with very critical people (my mother). But in both cases, we need to set boundaries to protect ourselves…

Dear humour,

But I am also proud of the individual I have turned out to be, considering the circumstances that we went through. Basically I did not end up a complete failure or a messed up person.

That’s good – you have a healthy dose of self-love and self-acceptance. You’re not hating yourself, which is great! You have an optimistic outlook too, which is also an asset. So yes, you should be proud of yourself!

But I also feel I have the ego body of a child and not that of an adult.

That’s because there is a child part in you (the so-called inner child), who got emotionally wounded due to his experiences growing up in an unhappy home. This child needs to have his core emotional needs met… before you can have healthy adult relationships.

I am definitely after more happiness, fulfillment, career success and so on but I either don’t know what to do to attain it or I don’t know how much is enough.

Well, what you have now is not enough…. Let me give you an example. You mentioned this situation at work:

I am also trying to get comfortable in uncomfortable situations, especially at work where I am put down subtly.

Should you get comfortable that people put you down (perhaps grow a thicker skin, ignore, numb your anger…), or you should develop assertiveness and boundaries and not allow those put-downs?

If you say you should get more comfortable accepting what you shouldn’t accept – it means one part of you wins (the submissive, enduring part, who believes he doesn’t deserve more).

If you say you should show up differently and respect yourself more and set boundaries so people wouldn’t mistreat you –  that’s when another part of your wins.

That’s the conflict I was talking about….

Dear humour,

I am sorry you feel bad about yourself and that your self-confidence is quite low. I’ve taken a look at some of your earlier threads, and what you wrote about your family and growing up (in the thread “Require advice on how to gracefully accept changes without getting overwhelmed”) could actually explain why you feel so low now.

Anita already noticed back then one important thing that you’ve said:

I have been extremely attached to my family always trying to make ours ‘a happy family. It never happened though. No matter how much I tried, nothing got better.

Also, you haven’t really spent fun time together as a family, making nice memories, or simply bonding with each other:

We have not spent time together, not had a meal together, never went on a vacation together. Basically we never made any memories

You also said that both you, your sister and your mother felt depressed on and off.

It seems to me that your depression could be the result of you trying so hard to make your parents happy, but never succeeding. This causes the child (and later adult) to have low self-esteem, because if nothing they’ve tried made their parents happy, the child concludes that it must be their fault. So you end up believing you’re not good enough, that you are somehow defective.

And you carry this false belief into your adulthood…. As an adult, you have been putting yourself down a lot, right? For example now, you’ve been telling yourself that you are mediocre, that you are falling behind in life, that you should have done a lot better.

It seems you have a strong inner critic, who is telling you that you’re not good enough, maybe even that you’re a failure.

Do you resonate with any of this?

(If you do, the antidote is self-love and self-compassion. It’s possible to feel better!)

Dear Pradeep,

when someone is addicted, it’s usually to soothe some sort of emotional pain, usually the pain of feeling unlovable or unworthy. It could be that your son doesn’t have a too high self-esteem and feels like a failure, specially now, since he has had a fallout at his previous job. The pressure to find something else, plus living with his parents, who have expectations from him, could be adding to his feeling bad about himself, feeling like a failure.

You may not be aware of it, but your words show that you still see him a child, because you said “I sent him to a therapist.” You didn’t say “I suggested he visits a therapist”. Again, you may not be aware of it, because you want the best for your son, but he won’t be helped if you see him as an unruly child who needs to be disciplined. It will only cause him to feel worse about himself and go deeper into addiction.

Rather, if you would see him as an adult and show that you value him and think highly of him, this will much more likely change his attitude. Because as I said, him feeling bad about himself, feeling like a failure, is what most probably causes his addiction. So try to talk to him with empathy and understanding, and show support for him, tell him that you believe in him, even though you understand that it’s hard for him at the moment. And then see if anything changes in his attitude… But try to be honest, don’t fake your good will and support.

If nothing changes and he is still waking up at 2 pm every day, then you can set some boundaries and some rules, e.g. tell him that you won’t be able to let him stay at your house and to move out. But use the tough approach only if the soft approach doesn’t work out. First use the soft approach – it will do good to your son, and to the relationship between the two of you!

Dear Katrine,

thank you for clarifying!

So it was another colleague who you talked with after the yoga date, not X.

And when all of you went to the pub in July, it was only one evening, not two evenings in a row. X and Y found out that you liked him only later. So they didn’t help you get together with him, however they seem to have been supportive. They knew about your date with him at the pub, and they seem to have rooted for you. Later X invited both of you to her housewarming party, but he couldn’t come, right?

I don’t think they could have or should have done more in terms of helping you get together with him, since he was in fact showing initiative towards you. There was no need for their “nudging”…

So when you say that they promised to help you out, but haven’t done anything – well, there was no need to help you out since you and the guy were already in direct contact, and there was no need for a “matchmaker”, so to speak…

 

I was too fast to react to not being invited out for drinks that day (they have asked me to join for drinks after work but I have been so exhausted after work that I said no a couple of times.

It’s good that you’re realizing that they didn’t want to exclude you intentionally, but that several times you actually refused to go because you were tired after work. And when you did go to a club (which you don’t like due to partying, heavy drinking and loud music), you left early, after only one or two hours. So I guess they figured you’re not a party animal like them 🙂

But that doesn’t mean they think less of you, or don’t like you, as you previously concluded. I think they simply respect that you are a different type, you prefer pubs and a calmer atmosphere, where you can actually talk to people and not get drunk. Based on what you’ve shared, I don’t think there is any evidence that they don’t like you or think less of you. They actually seem kind, they asked for your Instagram and complimented on your hair… and later they rooted for you to get together with him. I don’t see any ill will on their part.

I felt very hurt by not being asked and that feeling just stayed for me for a long time. I really didn’t feel included

Yes I can imagine, because your childhood wound got triggered. When there is a wound like that, it distorts our perception and all we can see is rejection, although in reality, there is no rejection. These girls don’t look down on you, they don’t think you are less worthy… but you still concluded that, because your childhood experiences made you believe that you are unworthy. That’s one of your core false beliefs, i.e. false conclusions about yourself.

Regarding the guy, he is certainly an enigma and I can see how his behavior drove you crazy… because he is like hot and cold, giving you mixed signals, and he seems to be still doing that (e.g. by standing next to you, not saying anything).  Really frustrating!

I just wonder – you said you didn’t reply to his messages after he started talking about his anxiety. Is it because you felt rejected, and so you felt there is no point in continuing the conversation?

Dear lko9,

I am mostly fine, but have chronic knee problems, which won’t go away anytime soon… I’ve learned to accept it, and as I accepted it, it’s more bearable, I mean even the physical pain isn’t that bad. For the time being, I can live with it… we’ll see what the future brings…

He encouraged me for my MBA degree and helped me see my qualities, also encouraged my writing when nobody else did.

That’s nice. Yes, I remember you said he was supportive of you, believed in you, even admired you…. but he didn’t believe in himself or value himself… and so he let those demons take over his life, they made him selfish and inconsiderate towards you…

Well, it’s good that you could forgive him and wish him all happiness. If you ever come into temptation to try to save him again, please remember that it is mission impossible… because no one can save him but himself. I feel like an overprotective aunt for mentioning it, but just in case, couldn’t help myself 🙂