Dear Girija:

You are welcome and thank you for your kind words of appreciation!

“I have read in many places that you attract the same type of people until you learn the lessons you have to. Do you think that is true?”-

No, I don’t think it is true except for certain circumstances, such as.. if you go to a bar at 10 PM and the bar  has the reputation of heavy drinking going on in there starting at 8 PM, if you attract anyone there, it is likely to be someone drunk.

As far as what you shared earlier, that you met men who had girlfriends, becoming friends with them not knowing they had girlfriends, later getting jealous- I don’t think it means you attracted unavailable men.

“Do you think changing my core belief would help with these fears too?”- yes, I do. Changing your core belief that you are incompetent (“That I may not be able to handle life.. that I won’t be able to handle all of life’s surprises”) will take away most of your ongoing fear, aka anxiety. Believing that you are competent will be like… having a competent, capable person with you at all times, so that when a problem occurs, this person will know what to do and will take care of what needs to be taken care of-

– and that someone will be you!

I wrote to you that it takes a lot of time and a lot of work to change this core belief. Your response was: “I am ready for it, this plant needs some water”-

I want to talk with you about that water, what I mean by it. The rest of this post will be about that water that you need.

You wrote: “there used to be times when I mentioned how I felt to my mother and she used to just move on to something else as if I had not said anything. It used to make me feel invisible”-

You know that you cannot see your face unless you look into a mirror, be it a glass mirror or.. water in a lake that act like a mirror. You can’t see your face without a mirror because of where the eyes are located.

When you mentioned how you felt to your mother and she ignored you as if you didn’t say anything to her, she took away your mirror and you didn’t see yourself. Whatever it was that you told her, was lost.

Like all young children, you loved your mother deeply and wanted nothing more than to please her. You were not angry at her (that came later). But she wasn’t a mirror to your love of her, she ignored it and so, you forgot how you felt for her then. It was lost to you.

When she criticized you, it is something you saw in the mirror, a person worthy of criticism.

Over time, during your earlier childrhood, you got an image in that mirror, an image that is hugely distorted, an image distorted by a distorting mirror, your mother. You don’t see the loving, innocent, eager to please little girl that you were and instead you see someone faulty, worthy of ongoing criticism.

Needing water, in this context, means needing an undistorted mirror, a mirror that will show you accurately who you are.

When I wrote to you earlier the paragraph:  “In my life experience… I have never met a person your age who is.. more competent than you”- all that I wrote there, I claim, is a true image of you. That was an accurate mirror showing you an accurate image of who you are.

Problem is core beliefs are formed in early childhood and a child’s mother is powerful in that formation, she is the mirror. To look into an accurate mirror, you have to abandon the distorting mirror, to no longer look there. To do so, you have to go back to your childhood and see for yourself, that you were an innocent, good little girl who loved her mother completely and then betrayed by that mother.

You can’t change your incompetent core belief by achieving anything (all achievements will be dismissed sooner than later) because the belief was formed before you achieved anything.

This is why it is necessary to go back to the time before you achieved anything and see yourself the way you truly were then, at that time.

anita