Dear noname:

What a precious first paragraph! If my printer worked, I would print it on a nice paper and put it in a  frame, on the  wall. So beautiful, makes me feel nice and warm.  Thank you for it!

Regarding blaming your mother, again, she was severely depressed for a long, long time. Maybe she still is. So she wasn’t available to see you, to notice you, to feel affection when she did notice you and to attend to your well being, to ask: how are you? (he most common question strangers ask, she didn’t ask, did she)

Problem for you as a child  is that you naturally concluded that you failed her, that you were “not being enough“, especially since your father told  you to make her happy, gave you that job, something you remember so clearly because it was so meaningful to you, it really was a job that  you took on most seriously.

“I struggle  with dating because I’m uncomfortable with knowing I may not be what the  other person is looking  for, so I blame myself for not being  enough“.

Not-being-enough is the  legacy your mother left  you with for being depressed on and on and on, not noticing you, and your father for giving you the impossible job to make her happy… neither one of them put you as a high priority in their lives.

So you keep feeling  and  believing that you are  not enough and there is no easy way to change this core belief. It really is a process of making  new brain connections, new pathways to infiltrate t he old and  it takes unbelievable  amount of persistence and  patience.

Keep stating  the truth to yourself every time you notice the untruth has been stated or suggested by the part of you that believes what is not true.

Regarding: “I sometimes compare myself to my clients who may have had ‘worse’ struggles than me”- not true. A child experiencing X, does not have another’s Y experience  to  compare. He only  has X and  it feels badly, no comparisons. Later one hears  of Y and retroactively compares, a useless, academic like comparison that really is unprofessional because again, the child has only X and doesn’t feel better (not!) knowing another’s Y experience.

If I understood correctly you are staying at your mother’s and sister’s place at the moment, for the holidays, another week  or so, or  for the rest  of this year? If so, it might be  an opportunity to practice something, don’t know yet what it would be.

anita