Dear Monica:

What I meant by “There is no substitute, long term, for you enduring your distress in KU”, is that without having a new boyfriend, without having your parents visit or you visiting them, or in-between such visits, when you feel very uncomfortable, distressed, it is then that you need to endure that distress, that discomfort without panicking, without lashing out, without resorting to fantasy.

At those times, enduring the distress means to feel it and do nothing.

If you don’t experience this, what I wrote in the line right above, then there will be no progress, only a going back and forth between reality and fantasy, distress and relative calm, on and on and on. It is a way to go, you can graduate this way, but it will continue to be very… turbulent.

anita