Dear Elli:

Thank you for wishing me a happy new year.

This is what I figure is happening: a child is very, very sensitive to what her mother says and how her mother behaves. Your mother’s words were very powerful and now, even when she doesn’t say anything to you, her words from long ago are still playing in your brain. This is what happens in every human’s brain: hurtful words from childhood keeps repeating through our adulthood.

What did your mother tell you when you were a child and a teenager.. and on: “she was always compare myself with other girls my age and school, that they were better than me, that they got married before me and they have families” (Feb 2019).

Fast forward, Jan 2020, you wrote: “all the girls in my job are married”- your mother’s words are repeating in your brain: “they were better than  me.. they got married before me”, etc.

She also told you that you “always made poor choices on my relationships”- it is scary to be told that by your mother because it means.. you can’t trust yourself to make good choices. So you get very scared of making more and more poor choices, worrying.

And when you were worried because of what she told you, worried and sad, she criticized you (“every time that I was sad was the first person to criticize me”). So first she makes you sad and then she criticized you for being sad. It is as absurd as this example: a person throws ice cream in your face and then criticizes you: you have ice cream all over your face, what is wrong with you???

Is it a wonder then, that you “lose my motivation to live, to fall in love, and I just cannot imagine my life to be happy?”- not with her words keep playing in your brain, can’t be happy hearing her words, can’t be happy or hopeful making choices when you are so afraid that once again, those will be poor choices.

“the Christmas passed, all those days I was felt lonely, all family members were with their families and babies” (Jan 2020), you hear her words, they are now your words: “other girls.. they got married before me and they have families” (Feb 2019)

You shared today that you moved to an apartment, stayed there for 4 months and returned to your parents’ home a week ago. And as a result of the move back, you “feel better, safe etc.”. Feb last year you shared that you were living in our parents’ home and that you are “not ready to move and stay alone, I am afraid in a flat alone”.

When a child grows up scared and believing she can’t make good choices, then she is scared to live alone, alone with an incompetent person.. her own self. She still believes that her mother knows better, so she feels safe living with a supposed competent person, one who makes good choices.. her mother/ parents.

My message to you today: your mother criticized you not because there really was something wrong with you, something inferior, being less than other girls your age. She criticized you because there was and is something wrong with her.

It is very difficult to change what we believe deep inside (we believe what we were told by our parent at an early age!), it is difficult to lower the volume on what she said to you then, and hear different words, different thoughts. Like: maybe I can make good choices! Maybe there is nothing wrong or inferior about me!

And it is most difficult to do that when we keep hearing the same hurtful words and messages. I figure, you are less safe living in your mother’s home than living alone, even though you feel safer.

If your anxiety is intense and relentless, and so is your depression, and you don’t find the motivation and energy within yourself to move out, and since you are not seeing a good psychotherapist, maybe psychiatric medications will help you. A group of such medication called SSRIs, has helped millions of people to feel better, to experience less anxiety and less depression.

Did you ever try those?

anita