Dear Luna,

good to hear from you again! I think it was a good decision you broke up with him. As it turns out, he too agreed and saw it as inevitable.

It’s understandable that you’re now feeling “distressed and confused”. It’s a new situation for you, and you are quite sensitive and in need of a lot of support. He was that support for you in the beginning, and I think that’s why you feel he was “the only safe ground you had”. You’re now on your own, and need to be your own support, and/or find other resources, such as therapy.

 I feel like a glass full of cracks. I was cracked by a lot of bullets, but I will not break. it’s painful.

It’s good you feel resilient enough to continue without breaking. But you’d need to deal with your childhood wounds and childhood trauma, because that’s what caused those bullet wounds and cracks in your system. That’s what causes you pain. You’d need to heal, slowly but surely, in order to be able to live a happy and fulfilling life.

I ask myself why I have to add a new kind of pain to my pains. So far, I have endured a lot and gone through many problems. It amazes me how I managed to do this.

You are a strong woman, Luna. You can take a lot, but it hurts. As I said, now is the time to start healing those wounds. In Japan, they have an art of gluing back together broken pottery with gold (it’s called kintsugi), because they believe that our scars is what makes us beautiful. It’s what makes us stronger, more authentic, more of who we are. Perhaps you can look at your healing process as the art of gluing your broken pieces with gold, and then standing beautiful and strong.

How does that sound to you?

Hi Damien,

you’re welcome. I think it’s a good decision to wait till she comes back from visiting her parents. As you say, she might be in a better mood and more relaxed, so this could be a bonus. Aug 15th would have been tight indeed.

I do hope she’ll be receptive to you and your vision of the future. If not, at least you’ll know you did your best. But I hope it all works out fine for you. Let us know how it went… and fingers crossed!

Dear Felix,

Till now i’m still doing the exercise with the dumbbells… although the dumbbells are light and i only do a few moves, i easily get tired…. i tried adding push ups and i felt exhausted easily…. Like i feel so weak, i cant imagine when i can go to the gym later on after covid restrictions has been lifted, although i really want to bulk my body/make it bigger….

You’ve just started a few days ago, no wonder you get easily tired. Keep it up, that’s how you train your muscles. Slowly, step by step, and always go just a little bit over your tiredness limit – push yourself only a little bit over what you feel comfortable. That’s how you’ll make progress and develop stamina. And it will make it easier for you once the lockdown is lifted and you hit the gym – you won’t need to start from scratch there.

This exhaustion feels like i’m not a person meant to do exercises … but i’ll keep trying.

Exercise is for everybody. In the beginning it’s hard, specially if you are weak and have no muscles, but with time it gets easier, and you might even start enjoying it 🙂

Don’t girls usually prefer guys who have a well-paid job or better?

Of course it’s a bonus if the guy has a well-paying job, but that’s not the only criterion. What I wanted to say is that you shouldn’t try to impress those kind of girls for whom money and status is one of the main criteria for choosing a partner.

why does everybody like to promote their so called “happy” lives on social media?

Not everybody likes it, but there are many who do. They feel better about themselves when they post, they like other people’s attention, they want to present a certain”perfect” picture about themselves… there are various motives why they do it. Sometimes people simply want to share their joyful moments with others (e.g. when posting holidays pictures), and there’s nothing wrong about that.

I easily question my decision whenever i saw other people feeling happy….Like when i saw they achieve something on that “job”… i question myself, should i’ve taken that “job path”?

If i saw them having a relationship in their uni days, i question myself… why cant i get a relationship in my uni days…

And if i saw them happy studying abroad… i also question myself, i should’ve study far abroad… and it end up making me feel regret…

Why do u think this “questioning” myself happen? How can i get rid of it?

You’re questioning yourself because you don’t know yourself. You believe that doing what everybody else is doing will make you happy. But in reality, you can only be truly happy if you are doing what makes you happy.

Here is what I told you a while ago:

The solution is not to become extrovert, if you’re an introvert. The solution is not to talk about superficial things, if you prefer deeper topics and talking about emotions. The solution is not to become someone else, but to be yourself, with confidence.

Whenever you start thinking that you should do this or that because it seems it makes other people happy – make a pause and tell yourself that even if it makes them happy, it won’t necessarily make you happy. Because you are unique, you have your unique needs, goals and desires. You need to get in touch with yourself more (I spoke about it in my previous post), to discover what will really make you happy.

Hi Felix,

thanks for your kind words regarding my health. I hope your asthma will get better too.

I have this mental thought and I am pretty sure it’s an accurate representation of reality, is that until I am super fit physically (and emotionally), have a house, and can show a woman that I can be a good father, I have NO chance.

This mental thought is a reflection of your experience with your mother. Unless you’re materially well-off (owning a house is a pretty high standard!), you believe you’ll be unattractive and invisible to women. Your experience with your ex wife was different, you said she wasn’t materialistic, however the early imprint is still active in your subconscious and is running your life.

I know that’s not always the case, but I am going based on the last few years of my life. I am invisible to local women.

Our subconscious beliefs are like a magnet. They attract what we believe is true. If you strongly believe you aren’t rich enough to find a woman, it will become your reality. For example, you’ll look in wrong places, you’ll be attracted to a wrong kind of women (materialistic ones) and won’t notice a different type, you’ll mingle in the wrong neighborhood, you’ll give away a vibe that will repel women etc etc. All those are ways how we create our reality based on a subconscious false belief.

But this relationship problem, I truly feel it will break me. Not being overly dramatic or anything like that. I truly feel like I will lose my mind being this lonesome.

I know you’re not exaggerating. Being in a relationship, having a loving, caring connection with someone is a basic human need. But there is a trick there: if we don’t love ourselves, if we believe we are unlovable (because we for example aren’t rich enough), no amount of outside love will satisfy us. We’ll still believe we are unlovable, and we’ll sabotage even the best relationship. This might have happened to you earlier, perhaps, with your wife?

In any case, the place to start when looking for love is within. You need to love yourself first, so you can be ready for a healthy relationship. Otherwise you’ll blow it. Can you see that?

Hi Damien,

I will tell her in advance and of course if she can’t or need time to prepare or think of course I will wait.

I think if you plan to travel around the 15th, then today would be high time to tell her.  Don’t postpone it further because 9 days is already quite a short notice.

When she took her decision, I just said at the moment that I was disappointed because if she would see by herself she could at least make her opinion in person. But she thanked me for respecting her a choice.

Right. So she appreciated that you didn’t force her to meet then. If she rejects you again, or tells you she isn’t ready to meet yet, it’s important to respect that decision again.

Yes I can talk about I would like to have a discussion with her. But I think also without the pression she feels I want to change her mind. And that I come only for that.

Yes, you can tell her that you simply want to talk, but also that you have no expectations from her. So you’re not forcing anything. Anyway, inform her as soon as possible that you’re planning to come and see what her reaction will be.

Hi Felix,

welcome back! It’s good to hear you’re doing better job-wise and that you’ve found a job you really like. That’s great progress!

I am sorry though that you’re suffering in the relationship department and cannot find anyone suitable.

And the second issue is the anger at women that I am trying to process. A lot of what I feel is fair criticism, but my anger goes deeper (and no I don’t express it online and that’s not the answer). But it’s irrational.

It’s good you’ve realized you feel angry at women and that it goes deeper. We’ve spoken about it in your last thread. This is what I believe is the root cause of your anger:

My mom divorced my dad as soon as I was born and found someone who had status and money (considering it was USSR). So that’s why I don’t fully trust my mom even though she is a very good person, she still put her own ambitions over her husband and son a the time.

Your anger at women in general may be irrational, but your anger at your mother is very rational and justified. She was the first woman who betrayed you.

Any thoughts on how to manage this utter awful feeling of loneliness, sexual frustration, desperate need for closeness and intimacy, female friendship, etc?

Well, I think you’d need to work on that early anger towards your mother and the experience of having been abandoned by her. You’d need to heal that wound before you can be ready for a healthy, mutually respectful relationship. Are you still attending therapy?

Dear Richard,

I agree with what anita said – that when we lack a sense of personal power, we tend to be much more reactive and anxious about the events in our lives, because we feel unable to protect ourselves, we feel unable to say No. We feel helpless.

This could be related to your sense of powerlessness and helplessness with your brother: you weren’t able to protect yourself and say No, bugger off! And your parents weren’t there to protect you either. So sinking into helplessness became your default mode…

I believe practicing saying No in a safe environment (in therapy) would help a lot in your healing. You said a few posts ago that so far you haven’t worked on your past in therapy. You also said: I have told several people I believe the way I am today mentally and emotionally is rooted in my childhood. Just not sure how to begin to heal from things that happened so long ago.

If you’re seeing a therapist at the moment, you can mention your brother’s bullying, and ask to work on that. If they don’t know how or don’t think it’s important, you can seek a different therapist. Because there are definitely ways to deal with it and to basically re-write the old imprint of helplessness into a new one of empowerment.

Dear Javier,

I’ve checked out the work of Dr. Nicole LePera, which Sarah suggested (thanks Sarah! 🙂 ),  and I think it could be very useful because it talks about ways to regulate our too anxious and disregulated nervous system. Which is what I believe you would need as one of the first steps in your recovery.

If you could learn a few methods to self-regulate, such as using breathwork, and this would help you calm down and not feel overwhelmed all the time, it would be a big step. If it succeeds, perhaps you wouldn’t need medications (again, I am not a professional, this is just my layman opinion).