Dear Sann:

I very much like the practice you did at the beach and at the hostel garden, talking to people authentically, voicing your feelings, your experiences, participating in a conversation. Please do practice more and more.

A later topic in your two posts above was medications/ psych drugs. I prefer not taking those and the 17 years I took the common combination prescribed: antidepressants+ anti-anxiety+ anti-pschotics did nothing to improve my mind or my life. In fact things got worse. I figure these drugs are useful in emergencies, short term at times, and that is all.

As far as the colleague, the title of your thread. I know you reached out to him lately and he didn’t call you back. I am thinking at this point that you may not have the story correctly, that you have been overthinking this so… so much that the truth is not that complicated. In other words, your wishful thinking, needs may have made things look more meaningful than they actually were. It seems to me that there is nothing there, in reality, to long for. I don’t think the answer is in him, the love you need is not there.

But it is somewhere and the thought of it is exciting for me, that Sann will love and be loved in return. You mentioned me being married a few posts ago. I thought it will never happen. I was almost 50 when I got married. Can you imagine. And 55 before I had a good marriage. So it can happen in your life too, sooner than in mine, I hope.

Regarding the doctor you saw who told you that “parents do the best they can, they can’t help it, no parent is perfect”- Sann, that’s a lie that a lot of people tell. It is not true. People say it because they are parents and because they don’t want to see the truth of what happened to them as children OR what is happening between them as parents, and the children they have. It is a shame that this lie, this untrue is so popular. It blocked my healing for many years. Abusive parents do not do the best they can. They do their worst because they are not afraid to do their worst with their children. They know the child has nowhere to go, no choice but to stay and take the abuse and … still love them.

They don’t behave abusively to other adults, most of the time, because they know other adults have options, somewhere else to go and to never talk to them again and tell others about what they did. So they do their best with strangers and their worst with their children.

I noticed you replied to other threads and I will be reading some of your replies although I only comment on what the original poster posts on any thread. I like it that you reached out even here. Please don’t be discouraged if and when posters don’t come back to their threads and/ or don’t respond to a replier. It happens to me all the time.

As to the rest of your latest posts here, you are making an interesting point, causing me to think the following as-I-type: we think we have great power to destroy, to harm others but we don’t think we have any power to cause good things to happen. I think it makes sense in that our mothers impressed us with their terrible behaviors, so terrible is what we expect to cause. If our mothers told us how we make them happy, how happy they are that we are in their lives, then we would have grown up believing we have power to cause good things to happen. I hope I make sense to you, further developing your point. See how you are teaching me to see more?

What a good point.

I did not address all your points, that about your anxiety and its function. Remind me of it in your next post and I will address that and other points following your next post here. Please do practice and take good care of yourself. I like who you are, I really do. And I see how great a potential you have to be more and more of who you already are, a loving and lovable person.

anita