Dear ginn,

I would just like to add something else, which I think is important. You said:

Here’s the repeated pattern, resigned my job to stay at home hoping for doing something bigger to change my life or the world.

The desire to do something important and “change the world” is very familiar to me. I had the same desire in the past, and I can tell you that it stemmed from my low sense of self-worth. I believed I needed to do something big, so I would finally feel worthy. It wasn’t a conscious thought, but it was still driving me unconsciously.

Like you, I always dreamed about big things, but never really did any of them (Unfortunately, all the thoughts just in my mind, no actions are taken.)

I never felt capable enough. I felt stuck, like you, between big dreams and no realization. The reason for that pattern is low self-esteem and the need to prove your worth, both to yourself but mostly to your parents.

Dear ginn,

you are welcome.

I know my dad shouldn’t do that, but it’s the way he talks because it runs in family blood (my grandpa).

Our parents often repeat their parents’ mistakes. My mother brought me up similarly to how her mother brought her up… with lots of criticism and very little empathy. Your father and grandfather sound the same…

Even though I’m grown-up now, he still criticises me when I make mistakes. I believe his behaviour has had a big impact on me, slowly accumulating from a young age, and subconsciously has taken a toll on me.

It’s good you’re realizing that your father’s behavior affected you, and still affects you badly. It is what caused your low self-esteem, i.e. the sense that you aren’t good enough.

You say your parents support you in everything (My parents are always supportive for everything I want to do in my life). However, it seems your father has only been supportive if you are winning, if you are strong and fearless, if you are not afraid. But he hasn’t been supportive if you are losing, if you feel weak and afraid, if you feel confused and are lacking direction. In those situations, from an early age, he had no empathy and understanding for you. Although such situations are an important part of life. We are all vulnerable, and the worst thing we can do is to try to suppress or “defeat” our vulnerability.

Brene Brown gave an amazing TED talk on vulnerability (The Power of Vulnerability), please check it out. She explains why vulnerability is so important. She goes as far as to say that “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”.

Feeling weak and vulnerable is really sucks.

It sucks because you were made to feel weak and useless, and by extension, unworthy of love, whenever you felt vulnerable. You received a wrong message…

Actually I’m learning to stop thinking negative thoughts and allow myself to be weak and vulnerable.

It’s great that you have started doing that!

But when I tell myself that it’s okay to fail or make mistakes, my inner self denies it and tells myself that if you do this way, you can do better because you’re weak and that’s why it happens.

Your inner self is your inner critic, which is the internalized voice of your father. This voice pushes you to be strong, so you would be loved by your father. I think this is its main motivation.

If you start telling yourself a different story – that vulnerability is not a weakness, but in fact an asset and a precondition for a healthy personality – you might notice that this inner critic isn’t so loud any more…

I was overwhelmed by my own emotions and had panic attacks. I couldn’t even control my thoughts and forgot to tell myself I should stop. I guess I need more practice and can’t hope that I will change my mind in a short time, right?

Yes, it takes time and practice to tame our inner critic. You would need to develop a positive inner voice too, as a counter-part to the inner critic. It would be like an inner cheer-leader, or an inner compassionate parent, who has a lot of empathy and understanding for you, specially when you feel weak and useless. Have you perhaps gotten in touch with that voice too?

Dear aphroitte1,

I’ve became so distant because finally after so many years I realized my worth, I gained small self respect and confidence and I am braver that before. And I know that bothers him. Because I am saying no to his bad behaviour and that will be the deal breaker for him. I am just happy that I am self conscious now about a lot of things and I am not blind and thinking oh, he loves me. No, he doesn’t. Even if he did in some point, his love hurt me. It was not that love that will make me grow, be happy and healthy. And I want that for me. My priority is being myself and happy and finally with peace.

I am so happy that you’ve realized that he doesn’t truly love you, and that you won’t be allowing to be treated with such disrespect any more!

I’ve always fantazised about having kids with him etc. but growing kids with someone so close-minded and patriachial who doesn’t respect me and love me the way I should be loved would be equal to murdering our kids. I don’t want my kids to see unappreciated bad love in front of them and to think that is okay. I want to be the cycle breaker in my own parents patterns and in my love relationships.

This is also a huge realization! You want to break the cycle of generational trauma, you don’t want your children to witness an unhappy marriage, where the father doesn’t respect the mother and treats her poorly. I applaud you for being determined to change the course of your life for the better, to stand up for yourself, to not tolerate lesser treatment, and by doing that, to also show a good example to your future children.

Your boyfriend was indeed not just treating you poorly, but it was almost emotional torture, e.g. the situation you described on the New Year’s Eve 2 years ago:

it was day before new years eve, first of all he didn’t call me to say that he had arrive home safely, secondly he was delaying the answer about celebrating and he just said okay we are going to make something up tomorrow. He knows that I am not that type of person who would make plans 5 to 12 because it annoys me and it was also frustrating because my parents were asking me where we will be celebrating and I couldn’t give them an answer. So fast forward 31 December came and he slept till 4 p.m. i was waiting for him to get up. So when he texted me that he is awake I immediately asked him okay what are we doing tonight? He became angry saying I am so annoying without patience, crazy and always wanting to fight and ruin everything.

You were rightfully frustrated about 1) his not letting you know that he arrived safely, 2) his refusal to make any plans, even though it was already last minute, 3) getting angry at you for urging him to make a decision already, since it was just a few hours before the New Year’s Eve celebrations were to begin.

That’s just one example of how he blamed you for something he has brought about. He told you you were crazy and impatient, although everybody in your shoes would be impatient! You said that something similar happened whenever you planned to go out with him:

he would always like for every going out or event delay the answer or giving me unexplained answers or ignoring me so I can become angry and he would shut me down with we are not going out now because you are so impatient. That made me sick to my stomach and I still remember the feeling how he made me feel crazy for feeling upset.

He would delay the answer, give you vague answers, or ignore you altogether. When you started getting impatient and frustrated, he told you he won’t go anywhere, out of spite. And that it’s all your fault.

That’s clear emotional abuse. And also, victim blaming. He as the perpetrator blamed the victim. He used to tell you you destroyed him mentally, you ruined his life, and “go destroy someone else’s life”.

Also, he had no respect and appreciation for you, and he mocked you in front of your friends. When you complained about it, he called you dramatic and crazy, and called you other derogatory names:

In those rare times we would go out, he would be mocking me in the conversations or if we were with friends instead of being by my side I would always feel like he is making fun out of me. And If I wanted to comfort him he would say that I am always dramatic, we would fight for hours and hours and none of our fights are solved actually. I feel like i cant Talk with him about anything. He doesn’t understand me or he doesnt care. He just made me insecure and crazy. And he had that freedom to call me whatever he wanted and to be very cruel towards me with words that he never should’ve been with me etc.

You wanted love and respect for him, you even got into fights because of it, but to no avail. It just made things worse, and in the end, he made you feel it’s all your fault and that there was something wrong with you. You were sinking deeper and deeper into insecurity…

I am so glad, aphroitte1, that you’ve decided to turn a new page in your life. That you have realized your value, and that it is not you who is the problem in your relationship.

What I believe would be also useful is to allow yourself to grieve:

I was so unappriciated and I am so sorry for myself he made me think that all these years he made me think everything it’s my fault. It never was. Maybe he is not capable of love or he is totally incompatible with me.

I get shivers by thinking of this. It was disgusting.

Awful. Just awful reminding me myself of these things. It’s catastrophic and I can’t understand why he was and still doing this to me if his intention was never to truly be with me.

This relationship was very harmful to your mental and emotional health, to your sense of worth and self-esteem. You’ve been traumatized by it. I think it would help you if you would acknowledge that you’ve been through a lot of mental and emotional abuse, a lot of pain, and to have compassion for that aphroitte, who at the time didn’t have the strength to resist and stand up for herself. Just be with her, see her, embrace her, soothe her… I think it would help you heal more quickly…

Dear ginn,

you are welcome. There are several things I would like to address.  One is that you said you often felt stressed about your studies or work, and this lead to giving up and resigning:

I found it interesting back then because everything was new to me. But after a few months of studied, I felt stressed, wanted to give up

Then I worked in another design company for 2 years, (thought different company and environment will be better), but too stressful, couldn’t find the joy and I got panic attacked

Another example is when I was working part time at high school, I couldn’t find a joy from it, then I simply did my work and made a lot mistakes. I was so scared that my boss would find out and fire me, so I decided to quit it before he find out.

I wonder if the reason for resigning is that you don’t feel good enough in what you’re doing – which causes you stress and panic attacks – rather than the lack of spark? Or maybe it’s the lack of spark that causes you to underperform, which then causes you to feel not good enough? In any case, it seems to me that feeling not good enough could be a theme for you. It could also be why you refused to take the piano exam, because you were afraid to fail and be embarrassed.

It seems your classmates looked down on you and excluded you from their company:

Also, wanted to prove myself to those people who looked down on me. From kindergarten to junior high school, I used to be boycotted by my classmates. So this also lead to my low self-esteem.

That could be one more reason why you felt “lesser than”. And why failing an exam would feel so crushing for you.

I don’t know how supportive your parents were as you were growing up. You said you were mostly afraid of disappointing your father. Was he strict and criticized you often? Do you feel he (or your mother) had expectations on you, which were hard to meet?

I want to be successful because I want my parents to retire and enjoy their lives, they had been through a lot of hardships. The most afraid of disappointing person is my dad if I failed anything. To be honest, I don’t care about the money, I just need it for my parents so they can have a better life. So I can freely chase my passion.

Your desire to provide for your family so they can retire, and at the same time chase your passion might be somewhat of a contradiction in itself. Because when we have financial obligations, we often don’t have the luxury to chase our passion, since our passion might need a lot of work and becoming proficient in it before it can really pay off and earn us a living. For many people it’s a long process, even if they know what their passion is. It takes a lot of time to “monetize” our passion.

I think that’s one of the reasons you feel trapped in your tower (I always feel like I’m stuck in a tower, couldn’t get out from it.) Because it is a little bit of a pat position indeed… You can’t satisfy both your desire to chase your passion and to be successful relatively quickly and earn a decent amount of money for your parents, so they can retire.

How do you feel about all this? We can unpack the problem further, if you’d like…

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Tee.

Dear ginn,

I feel for you. I too was very disappointed in my choice of studies and wanted to change uni, but my mother threatened to stop supporting me financially if I do so. She was afraid I would never graduate if I start dropping out and changing fields, and she told me – either I stay at the place where I started, or I need to find a job. And so I chose to stay where I was, because I couldn’t imagine dropping out of uni altogether and joining the workforce at the age of 20.

You say:

When I was child, I always ran away from problems and challenges.

When we are children, it’s normal that we run away from problems and challenges. The parents and other adults are there to help us when we face challenges. Could you give an example of a problem or challenge you used to run away as a child?

I studied design which I was not that interested in university, I did it because my parents told me to

Was it because you didn’t know what you liked, and so they suggested something to their liking? Or you did know what you liked, but your parents convinced you that that’s not the best choice?

Dear lk09,

how have you been doing? I wish you pleasant holidays and a very happy New Year!

Dear canary,

how have you been doing?

Dear Ryan,

how have you been doing? I wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays!