Dear Buruberu:

You wrote above that your early memories of yourself, as a child, are of feeling “isolated and not understood.” You wrote that your parents struggled financially and with each other. This means to me that your parents were too busy with financial issues and with their relationship, and so, they were not available to attend to you and to understand you, and this is why you felt isolated and not understood.

You wrote, as I understand it, that you dot have a lot to complain about when considering how other people cope well enough with worse childhoods. My thoughts: people often survive ANYTHING, any emotional and physical pain, and sometimes they seem to be doing well, as in holding a job, even making good money. But many of these people are not doing so well, are on psychiatric drugs, suffering a lot- think of the-rich-and-the-famous, like Robin Williams: an international star, certainly doing well, but no, not really.

When you were a child, you needed to be understood, as all children need. You needed to be attended to. It is very scary for a child to be neither, to be alone, day after day, night after night, year after year. You get used to it, but it is damaging.

In your original post you wrote: “I made a step towards committing suicide today. I am 30 and have little support in the form of friends and family…My behaviour at times in my life has been destructive, and this hasn’t improved much with age.”

You still need today, just as you needed as a child, that support, that connectedness, being understood. To be understood, by your own self, you need to be understood by someone else first. This is true for anyone and everyone. Without you understanding yourself, you don’t understand your own behavior and why you would behave in destructive ways. You even want, at times, to destroy that stranger- that is YOU- because you don’t understand that person looking back at you in the mirror.

The purpose of competent therapy would be for you to get to know yourself, to understand you, to connect to you.

anita