Dear Ana:

There is nothing a child wants more than to see her parent happy, but to make your father happy you had to not do what makes you happy and instead do what he wanted you to do, work on his chosen projects. When you enjoyed yourself he felt sad, when you did what he wanted you to do, that which you didn’t want to do, he was happy and you would “see his sparkling eyes and him happy”.

So you learned that you being happy makes your father sad, and because a good girl does not make her father sad, you learned that … it is wrong for you to be happy.

This is why years later, even though you naturally “want to have a good day, be happy, forget my worries and love this life”, you “can’t seem to do this longer than a few hours”- it feels wrong to be happy.

You wrote: “My boyfriend always tries to make me go out and do things, and I love it as much as I hate it”- you want to be happy, but you feel it is wrong for you to be happy, that you are a bad person if you are doing what you enjoy. In the back of your mind, you see your father looking at you sad.

“When we’re on vacation I feel guilty after a short time for enjoying the sun and doing nothing while I know my dad is at home working 24/7 as always”.

You and I have a lot in common, for decades I felt guilty for feeling joy and in my mind’s eye I saw my mother being sad. I felt that I didn’t have a right to feel happy, didn’t have a right to forget that she is sad, that she had to be happy before I was allowed to be happy and attend to my own life.

You asked: “Any ideas on how to go on from here?”- yes I do. It will take you changing your core belief, formed early in childhood, that you don’t have a right to feel happy.

Question: you did your best to make your father happy, I have no doubt. All the times you didn’t do what you wanted to do and instead did what he wanted you to do, all the times you expressed the opinions he approved of, all that you did, did you succeed in making him a happy man?

I will be back to the computer in about fourteen hours. I hope you post before I return and will reply further to you.

anita