Dear Bee:

You don’t feel comfortable or at home in your boyfriend’s grandmother’s house because you “don’t feel comfortable or at home anywhere.”

If your boyfriend changed all the furnishing in the house to your liking, you will probably feel a whole lot better, because he cared enough to do that, and because you will enjoy the new furnishing, until the newness of it all wears off.

Feeling at home somewhere means feeling that warm, safe, no-worries, all is good kind of feelings that some fortunate children get to feel as their parents make them feel valued and wanted, when their parents are calm and content and happy the child is in their lives.

Thing is you didn’t feel that in your parents’ house, or your grandparents’. I didn’t experience that as a child either. I had moments here and there of home-like feeling and it was intoxicating, but as I grew older, even those moments were not there anymore. It is only very recently that I am getting a bit of that home feeling.

What I learned in the last few years is that when we had a troubled/unsafe childhood experience,  we keep re-living that same-old-same-old childhood experience throughout our adulthood, regardless of new and changing circumstances.

You mentioned that you are depressed. I was a very anxious child, living in a very unsafe non-home. Anxiety turns into depression because the brain/ body gets exhausted by ongoing fear aka anxiety. Exhaustion from anxiety => depression.

I wonder if you attended psychotherapy. If you did, it was inadequate. Looking back this morning at my psychotherapy experience of 2011-13,  I have no memory of the furnishing of my then therapist’s office. But I do have a clear memory of his calm, handsome face, his eyes looking at me with interest, asking me questions, gently, wanting to know more about me. Oh how desperate I was to be seen, noticed, understood, gently.

anita