Dear esther08:

I am glad you asked me what I think. I re-read all your posts on this thread, so I can give you my best thoughts, that is, the most accurate, to the best of my ability.

In a note to me, you wrote: “That comment you made about seeking independence really struck a chord with me and i suppose that’s more where id like in put or any advice.”- will try to accommodate this request.

If you are to learn something true and significant from our communication here, such learning will cause you distress. Most people escape distress automatically, and so, reject such learning. Evaluate my input for any truth in it, you decide. Be prepared for distress: unfortunately, it is part of the process.

You wrote: “I don’t want freedom from my mother, i think i just want a healthy relationship with her”- in this sentence you made it clear, did you not, that the relationship with your mother is unhealthy. To me, it is clear.

When you wrote: “everything here feels so empty” that includes your relationship with your mother: it too is empty. When you wrote: “I often feel very very lonely”- that means you are extremely lonely in your relationship with your mother.

When you traveled, “that was the only thing i felt excited by.” and it is then that you got back your “creative side, photography and pottery and looked forward..”

But when back home, your creative side was gone, your motivation- gone, and you “feel zero motivation here, although its comfortable.”

Now, why am I focusing on your relationship with your mother? Maybe it is the expensive rent where you live that is the problem, maybe the job, the people… why my focus on this relationship?:

My answer to my own question to follow:

You wrote: “I find life hard, relationships with ‘friends’, making friends, careers choice, financial instability to name a few. It feels like a struggle thats not worth it – i am ALWAYS, disappointed by things and people.” Then you wrote: “Previous travel has taken me someone else, away from here, new things that i know nothing about and thus cannot disappoint i guess”

The answer is in these last quotes, above. There is “a sadness to her (your mother), like she’s given up on life” you wrote earlier. I think it is she who is “ALWAYS disappointed by things and people,” and it is you who adopted this core belief, that things and people will always disappoint you. It is her belief that has taken root in you, through the relationship with her. When you traveled, you were like “someone else”- someone who temporarily didn’t believe that people and things were disappointing and “thus cannot disappoint,” you wrote.

The independence that struck a chord in you, I believe, is in peeling off her core belief about things-and-people-always-disappointing, untrustworthy (a core belief that keeps her lonely, even with you), and forming your own core belief which will allow you to approach (selectively) things-and-people with hope.

anita