Hi Anita

Apologies for not responding for a while I have been busy at work.

I believe my sister ran away from home because she didn’t feel loved by my mother. Growing up we shared a room and I felt my sister to be a stranger almost, and a bit of a bully. Once she left unexpectedly I felt grief and guilt. I now see it wasn’t my responsibility to carry that emotional burden but I did. After a few months, my sister reached out to me and our relationship changed, with me attempting to give her some sense of love and stability that my mother never did and us clinging on to each other. Only thing is my sister and I relied on this dynamic heavily and looking back I was much too young to carry the role (we are only a year apart). As well it was clear to me that she wanted me to stay as I was, naïve, always giving and kind and tolerating her crossing my boundaries.

Regarding your advice on what I need to do now; you’re right I most likely need to move away and live my own life. The anxiety that comes is very overwhelming and I’m unsure how much psychotherapy has helped to ease it. Psychotherapy has definitely broken down my reliance on my previous identity, which is where the anxiety comes from I guess.  However when telling my therapist about my confusion, her simple answer is to go out there and experiment. Except its not that easy when I am incredibly anxious and my previous dating experiences has come about in the midst of all this anxiety. Everything feels muddled and hazy and so to just simply ‘experiment’ whilst in the midst of this anxiety it just was not helpful advice for me. Although maybe I just need to accept that I will have this anxiety forever and to do things anyway. What do you think?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by afeels.