Dear Paul:

Usually I wait for a reply before posting again. Sometimes there is no reply from an Original Poster, quite often, really. I have some thoughts and I will share them with you. It is up to you to consider my thoughts, to evaluate them for accuracy, to accept or reject. And it is up to you to respond, or not.

These are quotes from your share and my understanding based on your one original post only:

You started with: “I am not here seeking pity or a shoulder to cry on”- it is as if a voice in your head said to you: don’t try seeking pity here! You have nothing to cry about, you deserve the pain you are in!

You continued: “I am simply looking for some alternative thoughts and opinions”- it is as if you are defending yourself against that voice, arguing your case: I am not asking for pity! I know I don’t deserve it. I am only looking for opinions, that is all, so let me express myself, will you?!

“It was her initiative to split up, but I was OK with it”- what I am hearing is: I have been okay with a whole lot of bad things happening in my life. I am used to it. (And I deserve them).

“Ever since the break up I have been falling apart”- clearly, you were not OK with it.

“I don’t have clinical depression… not even close, I am a lot stronger than that” – I hear you saying to that critical voice (who keeps talking to you as you type): see, I am not looking for pity. I just told those people that I am not depressed, that I am strong!

“and parents and siblings who just monsters”- this is a slip, a message from the child that you were, the young child who correctly saw his parents as the monsters that they indeed were. One or both of your parents have a mental representative in you: that critical voice (aka inner critic).

A child does not make mistakes in evaluating his parents as good or bad to him. The child brain is not crowded or clouded with previous experiences that may distort the evaluation of the reality of his parents.

“They are not bad people”- this is a thought of the child later on: the child is not able to endure the thought that he is stuck with bad people, and so he closes his eyes to reality: they are not bad people.

I am thinking that you believe it is your fault that your parents mistreated you, that “they have written (you)  off”. And that you deserve to be “dying inside… live the rest of (your)  life alone.”

You asked: “Any thoughts on how I can help myself not feel this way?”

My answer: believe the child in you who saw your parents as monsters, as bad people to the child that you were. Free that child from believing that he was and is the bad one. Give him back his goodness, his innocence.

Change that core belief that you are bad, that you deserve pain and suffering. Confront and manage that inner critic, insert the truth into the barrage of its untrue input day in and day out.

Restore that goodness to the child that you were and he will believe that he deserves a good life.

anita