Dear Mina:

1. Correct.

2. You are welcome.

3. It is the symptom, or the result, not the reason. You learned to sacrifice a part of yourself. Someone taught you. It is impossible for a child to understand this and it is very difficult for an adult child to figure it out, that a parent taught them to put away an important part of themselves. It is difficult because you don’t have a different experience growing up than the one you had, so you have nothing to compare it to.

If you think about what your mother, let’s say, disapproved about you, what she still disapproves of, that will give you a clue.

anita