Hello Anita,

Thankyou very much for getting back to me, its kind of you to reply to this and I really appreciate your wise and clear insights and advice. With the helping others it helps me in a way, to think of everyone as connected and all human beings together, that are all struggling so if I feel like I can help I would like to.

I am still living in the same situation, with both good and bad days as described above. Coincidently I have gone home for the weekend to my parents and although they love me, I realise now why I left home at 18 as we have a very surface like relationship and I feel the odd one out.

I have tried online therapy and have an appointment to start face to face therapy next week as I think just talking to someone may help. I agree with you in that there is no guarantee of success either way I go and I think that’s what scares me as I have never really trusted myself before (and this decision in my head seems huge and scary!) But I am trying to work on it and know myself better. It is slow work.

I think because I always felt lonely and isolated as a child (even though I lived with a house full of people) and feel isolated often in my relationship my main worry is that it is something wrong with ME that causes that. I often look at people in the street or on social media and they just look like they belong and look so happy and FREE and self accepting and I so would like to feel like that.

As a child I was called ‘high maintenance, ‘little black rain cloud’ and their love was linked to how well I did at school. One time I got a B ageade and was shouted at and called a failure and someone’s who’ never going to achieve anything and was sometimes hit With a belt as a young child but I never knew why. If I failed in any way e.g. got less than an A, failed music lessons I was not allowed to do my part time job with animals which I loved (and felt like my home with my friends there also) so I was always kind of anxious and stressed as there was always the chance I would fail. When I met my boyfriend I had very low self esteem (which is partly the case now). I didn’t feel worthy of love.

Do you have any advice about how to get in touch with your feelings/intuition please? With the small stuff I feel like I can listen to my gut feeling and feelings fine but with this decision, because it seems so scary to me, I just clam up and don’t feel anything truly consistent.

Thankyou very much again for writing back. 🙂