Hello Daniel,

Thank you for your response.  Your thoughts should be like eating a nutritious meal.  They should be there to nurture you.  Any thoughts that are not nurturing you need to be kicked out.  Keep all the positive thoughts and kick out all the negative ones.  Be aware of how you are talking to yourself, your inner dialogue.  You can use what is called the “STOP” technique.  As soon as you catch yourself talking negatively to yourself, say STOP.  Literally, STOP yourself from doing it.  Replace that thought with a positive thought.  Prepare yourself – write down your “normal” negative thoughts and then write a “positive” one alongside it.  As soon as you are aware of that particular negative thought entering your consciousness, make yourself say the positive one to counteract it.  It’s like building a new pathway in your brain, a new way of thinking.  It becomes easier with time the more you practice it.

You say that you don’t feel loved by anyone.  Does that include your little brother?  Right now, he is too young to judge you and will be accepting you as you are.  Does that include your mother who doesn’t know how to help you through your depression?  How can you love yourself?  This is not dependent on being loved by other people.  Loving yourself first is your gift to yourself.  You can stand in front of a mirror and tell yourself that “I LOVE YOU”.  You can do this every morning when you get dressed and every evening before you go to sleep.   You can count all the good qualities that you possess.  I’ve only asked for three, I could have asked for 30.   Read them to yourself until you have absorbed them and begin to feel good/better about yourself.

There are always opportunities to get to know people – make conversation with someone on the train, on a park bench, in a cafe.  It doesn’t matter that you might never see them again.  The fact that someone, YOU, has engaged with them in this way could be exactly what they need.  If that is what brings you joy, then do it.  No excuses.

Your father cut contact with you at 14.  Your logical mind is telling you that it is for the best and that you would freak out and run if you ever saw him.  How are you going to release these feelings if you never see him?  Depression only comes from two places, one of which is unexpressed anger.  How can you express your anger when your father was angry and your mother left him?

I’m going to make a suggestion.  I am going to suggest that you write a letter to your father expressing how you feel towards him, how hurt you have been by his behavior, how frightened you are at the thought of meeting him, how you’ve had to keep your feelings to yourself until now and what that has done to you.  Pour all your emotions out.

You don’t need to send the letter.  Once you’ve written it and are happy that you have included everything, you can either keep it in a safe place, you can hold a ceremony and burn it as a way of releasing it or, if you want to, you can post it here so that we can all share in experiencing your deepest feelings.

I look forward to hearing from that new, positive you.

Peggy