Dear Nanda:

You are very welcome. To summarize your situation right now: you are 21, having recently dropped out of college and you are looking for jobs. You live with your mother and younger brother and you can’t move out because you don’t have enough money to move out.

As a child, you were abused by family members, “they bullied me, called me stupid every day.. called me useless little crap.. they wish I dead soon so I didn’t waste their money”. A cruel aunt did a lot of the abuse against you and she now lives in another country. Your mother with whom you currently live either abused you directly in those ways  (calling you names, wishing you were dead etc.) or she didn’t protect you from such abuse. You wrote specifically about her, “my mom.. judged me, complained about anything, being unsupportive, etc.”.

In your note to me you wrote that you started practicing mindfulness, excellent. But notice: if your mother is disrespecting you and mistreating you currently, mindfulness can’t and shouldn’t make it.. feel okay. You need to be treated with respect.

You wrote that you experienced perhaps embarrassment, or “Self loathing? Anger? Self conscious?” after being denied as a job applicant. These feelings, shame, anger with self, these happen when a child is disrespected and mistreated by a parent. A child sees his mother and father, even an aunt or an uncle as this all-knowing, all powerful person, and when disrespected and mistreated by that person, a child automatically believes there is something wrong with him that brought about that bad treatment. He then feels anger toward himself, for … brining about this treatment.

But it is a misunderstanding of a child. There is something wrong with the parent, not with the child, when mistreatment happens.

This anger toward oneself, this self loathing then expands to other areas as the child and later, the adult-child finds “proofs” that indeed there is something wrong with him and this is why he didn’t get this job or pass that test.

I hope that you learn to see yourself, the child that you were, as the victim that you truly were, not responsible at all to the treatment you received by your mother, father, that evil aunt and so forth.

There is nothing wrong with you.

How is your mother treating you currently? And is that evil aunt still part of your life or your mother’s life via internet/ phone?

anita