Dear Cat:

You were scheduled to be back at work march 2, two days ago. I wonder how you are feeling and functioning.

I re-read your posts on the thread and would like to offer you my input this morning:

Here is your core belief: “I’m a bad person if I don’t suffer too.. I’m a bad person if I focus on myself or did things I loved” (Feb 25, 2018)

You are somewhat aware of this, but not aware enough to not hold this core belief as the truth. There is no way for you to live a good life believing this. It is possible to change core beliefs that are not true to reality, and yours is indeed not true to reality. Changing core beliefs is difficult and it takes a long time. Reads to me that you will need the help of a quality psychotherapist to do so.

Here are your expressions of your misery/ suffering/depression, Feb 3- 16: “I’m spending my days… depressed and not eating or washing properly… at the moment I am just staying in bed all day trying to find motivation to carry out my goals, even doing small things like going to the shops to buy food… I need to let go of my depression in order to move on in life…

“Up until recently I suffered from severe, severe depression and anxiety…I have difficulties sleeping as well because I have a really bad pain in my mind… there is a physical pain… It keeps me up all night… in my head I still perceive a lack of will to live almost.”

These are memories you do not have: “I can’t remember one time as a child or growing up where I was just allowed to be happy or at peace as everything me and my sister did was wrong” (Feb 5)

Here is what you wrote about the formation of this core belief: “I have guilt from the past, from the person I couldn’t be for my parents…it’s like their opinion was God’s Truth…. So it’s still so hard for me to comprehend that they were wrong”-

it is difficult now, presently, for you to comprehend that they were wrong in communicating to you this core belief. This means that you still believe them to be somewhat Gods and that what they communicated to you was “God’s Truth”.

You wrote: “I used to get called Selfish all the time, just for doing fun things that made me happy. Even when I tried to help my mum would be like ‘no it’s fine. I’ll do it.'”

You learned that if you are happy you are being bad. And so, if you suffer… you are being good. And you learned that you can’t make your mother happy (she rejected your efforts to help her/to make her happy), so… the least you can do is to make yourself as unhappy as she was.

More about your core belief: “I feel guilty for simply living my life or being confident or free because my parents never had that freedom…I really feel like a massive moral weight is on my shoulders… it’s like being morally and soulfully contracted to carry out a life under their pains and misery, and feeling like I am harming them if I choose to love myself and therefore cut them out of my life etc. It’s the worst feeling in the world.”

A strong part of you that pre-existed this core belief, the …. animal part of you, still loves life and wants to be happy, so it takes you away from misery and into those manic breaks: “because my enthusiasm was stamped out as a child, throughout my teenage years and young adult life, it meant I wanted to seize as much enthusiasm as possible, which made me trust the wrong people and have many manic episodes” (Feb 15)

Changing this core belief, healing, requires that (with the help of a quality psychotherapist) you do some emotional work, gradually, over time. The emotions in you that feel overwhelming now, need to be gently brought up and accepted, respected, processed. You wrote: “I want to cry but feel I can’t… I am scared to sort out my bedroom and sell things and look at old photos and notes etc. because doing so means I have to face all those emotions that I have felt in the past…  I’ve been in therapy but I couldn’t talk about it because the feeling is so indescribable“.

This is why quality psychotherapy is necessary, I believe. You need help to cry audibly (no longer silently), to face all those emotions and to be able to describe them.

Back to the manic episode and extreme thinking: “in terms of seeing my life, and my self, and everything around me (literally). I either see it with no worth and potential, or I see with so much worth and potential and respect (Feb 16),

and: “I’ve been feeling manic since Thursday, being obsessed with keeping a positive energy… I haven’t been able to sleep because I’ve been so positive…  when I’m manic/ fixated on something, it’s difficult for me to get to a place where I am rational, I tend to just get fixated… staying in my pjamas being obsessed (for real). I’ve been manic since the gig on Thursday, just from all the positive vibes that was there. Everyone was really happy, and I was really confident…I’ve been super confident this week.. Since then I’ve been really quite high. And haven’t been able to sleep properly as too excited – like a child at Christmas.” (Feb 28)

These manic breaks cannot last, they are only breaks. They cannot last because your core belief won’t let these breaks last. And so, you have these exhilarating breaks only to ups come down, and sometimes, come down hard. In quality psychotherapy you will learn that middle-way, a balance, emotional regulation, a sense of comfort and safety.

You already tried to make your mother happy and failed (she didn’t permit you to help her) and you tried to make your father happy and failed (the rolling stone clock you gave him is an example, he ignored it), and you tried to make your sister happy… and Clarence. Even if you succeeded, at this point, there will still be your own suffering that needs to be helped. Even if everyone in your life did not suffer, there still be you who is suffering- in between those breaks.

You wrote: “I have felt almost like a stray human… Like I have never really been accepted in the human race, like I am an alien that is visiting for a brief period of time. Just always the outsider with so much despair in my heart, silently crying out” (Feb 9)-

Again, in therapy, you will, over time and work, no longer be that alien. You will no longer silently cry out. You will be heard and you will be healed.

anita