Dear Kkasxo:

“I wonder if I will ever find a way”- I think you will. I am quite confident that you will. You know people who say positive things just because it may help another, or just in case it does, not having anything to back it up, sort of cheering you along but no substance in the cheering?

This is not what I do here. I stick to Reality best I can because reality is my substance and fitting our thinking and feeling to reality is the essence of mental health. So when I write that I feel  confident that you will find a way, that is, mental health and a good life, I write it because you express insight, the willingness to learn: to look into your inner workings, into the past/ your childhood, to question the quality of the parenting you received, etc.. Lots of people are not willing to do these things but you are, therefore there is hope for you.

Here is a very significant insight on your part: “I felt that always as a child. I was extremely unhappy there… as an adult I completely understand and appreciate that they left and gave us a good life in the U.K…. but perhaps it affected my emotional/mental state..”-

you understand what many people don’t understand: that our current understanding did not exist back when we were young children. People retroactively incorporate current adult understanding, education, articles read etc., into the childhood experience. This prevents insight into what really happened then, so may years before.

So let’s look at what happened then: you were six or seven and your mother and step father left, gone .. forever. I write forever because now you know, retroactively that it was a year or a year and a half. But back then you didn’t know for how long the separation will last. And for a young child, time has a different feel to  it than it  does to an adult. When unhappy, a day feels like eternity, and a year, well.. that is truly eternity, a never ending experience.

For the child that you were at six or seven, you were left behind by your parents. Alone, with someone who didn’t really want you. I would say this has been your trauma, your childhood trauma, being left or abandoned by your mother/ parents.

Again, the fact that you were left for reasons you understand now does not change the reality of the child, being abandoned, left behind to live forever where you were unhappy, unsafe and unloved (“I was also unhappy because I didn’t feel ‘safe’… I wasn’t wanted there or loved”)-

– there is more to your recent post but the trauma you experienced as a child at about six or seven for the forever time of a year or a year and a half,  is so significant to my understanding, and I hope to yours, that I need to take a break. I will patiently wait for your reply before proceeding.

anita