Dear  Nikkole:

I re-read your posts. I was thinking about what  you  wrote here: “Ever since I was little  I loved making videos, and  editing them was  my favorite  part”- I was thinking how wonderful it would be if I was  able to edit the story of my life, take out all the undesirable parts  that damaged me, keep the  good parts and connect those to make  an excellent story!

It  would have been  a short story though, containing images of me running on the green grass as a child,  with that child excitement, eager to  see what’s next, feeling that joy that  escaped me since. There would be scenes of me running  toward the  blue water of the  sea, looking  forward to those waves carrying me up and down, cool, in the  hot and  humid day… and the  warm sand under my feet. And there would be that  scene of an uncle asking  me questions as  if my answers mattered, him wanting  to hear  me.

Back to you and  your search for professional direction. I figure that because you can’t edit out those ugly scenes of your childhood that you described here, there is the option of not working with people at all,  or having very little contact with people in the context  of  a job or career. The war zone you lived in as a child led to  intense anger at  others turned inwards, like you described, changing from being  aggressive to difficulty  being assertive. That makes working with people, as you do now in retail, very difficult.

Another factor is your endurance of distress: having grown up in a war zone created  such distress that  it exhausts you and  lowers your ability to endure outside  distress without getting overwhelmed. So another consideration is working in a place or environment that is low in  stress.

Let’s say you continue with retail, not  all retail establishments are the same, different clientele, different merchandise, different locations… different stress levels. I remember  working as a waitress   in a lobby of a calm hotel, serving  coffee here  and there, low stress and  pleasurable. On the  other hand I had  one experience as  a waitress in a  busy restaurant and I forgot who ordered what, was quickly overwhelmed and wasn’t  able  to perform.

The healing  process from the war zone you experienced as a child is a  long, long term  endeavor. Later, a few years  from now I suppose you will be  able to endure  more  distress than you are able now, and  you will learn to practice assertiveness effectively, that will make working with people  easier.

Maybe do the less stressful jobs and/ or without   much contact with people while  you heal and re-evaluate  later?

anita