Dear Cat:

You wrote before you met Noel: “I feel like if I try and get close to people or be nice then they’ll think that I am trying to hurt them or something”- this fear is based on your false core belief that you are a bad person. Being a bad person means that you will harm others (by definition of bad).

The latest experience with Noel promotes this false core belief, that you are a bad person, harmful to others.

I believe it is important that you stay away from intimate relationships for a long while because you don’t need any more encouragement, or “proof” of this core belief.

I believe that it is important for your mental well being that you are cautious about your interactions with others, and while being assertive, that you will be careful to not be harmful to others. When in doubt (about whether you are harmful), stay away from a person, withdraw all contact.

I think that it is and will be difficult for you, for a long while, to distinguish between being assertive and aggressive (fearing to be passive and submissive you are likely to go overboard and be aggressive), this is why I suggest that you stay away from intimate relationships for a long while, and that you withdraw when in doubt.

Your core belief that you are a bad person, harmful to others, has to be challenged, evaluated and changed in therapy. This core belief will not allow you to live a good life. After all, it is in the belief itself that a bad person does not deserve to live a good life.

Reads to me that indeed you shift from depression to mania, as you indicated yourself in the use of the word mania/manic. I think that the brain gets tired of the ongoing painful depression, takes its breaks from it via mania, prolongs the mania as long as possible and then crashes into depression.

Having lived your life “very detached, a very  floaty individual who was just drifting through life allowing myself to get bullied from all angles” has resulted in you being angry and aggressive at times, going to the other extreme of passivity. Understandably you are angry at having been mistreated while drifting through life. You will have to learn to be not passive and not aggressive, but assertive.

Also, better stop trying to help others with their problems and focus on yourself. The incessant efforts to help others, seems to me, is part of the mania, and so, it is not healthy for you.

You placed Clarence and Noel and the beginning relationship you had with them on a spiritual pedestal where neither one belonged. This is one reason why I believe you should stay away from intimate relationships for a long while. The moment you see a man you just met as “a mirror of my soul”, “my soul mate” and “a beautiful soul”, I see trouble to come.

And last, for now (I may add later, definitely will if you communicate with me about the quotes above and this very post), I will attend to this little sentence you wrote: “my Mother had broken my heart”. Notice you wrote Mother, capital m.

My Mother, the Most important person in My life, the one I loved more than anything, broke my heart too. It is about that betrayal I mentioned to you earlier.

anita