Dear arguseyed:

I re-read your other three threads starting five months ago.

This is my understanding of your situation at this point: Your childhood was bad: you were not supported by your parents. They very often discouraged you and focused on negatives. They were socially inept themselves and discouraged you from going out. You exited your childhood years very lonely, almost invisible, unseen, unattended to. You did earn three university degrees, went out on a few dates only and have been focusing on getting that emotional support you so desperately need from friends.

A few of your friends may have been insensitive and selfish but others were decent enough. You shared a lot about your anxiety and depression and you were too sensitive to what they said in return, hanging on to particular words they used or tone of voice as indication that they too, like your parents, did not see you. That made you angry at them and you expressed that anger at them. So you became unpleasant to be around: anxious, depressed and angry, as well as rejecting of their efforts to support and comfort you.

Your pain from being unseen, invisible, neglected, rejected as a child is understandably intense and this very pain makes it very difficult to receive anything but perfect responses from others. Anything short of perfect is not good enough.

I think, like I wrote to you before, that you should no longer live with your parents. I think that living with them makes it so that you continuously re-experience the same rejection, invisibility that you experienced as a child. Unless you can HEAL while living with them, you should move out. And I think you should limit your expectations of being supported by friends and understand, if you can, that they are limited people, not competent psychotherapists. Like that friend who tried to help you with shopping for pants, she was trying to help. But you were upset because she didn’t SEE you, didn’t see that you require a different size accommodation of pants.

Competent psychotherapy where you will heal through a supporting relationship with the therapist, moving out of your parents’ home and having minimal if any contact with them, lower expectations from friends, these are some of my thoughts.

anita