Dear Daniel:

Do give your mother much importance when it comes to your mental health, no person is more powerful in a boy’s life than the person present for the child, usually the mother. It is within the early interactions of the child with his mother, that the child’s  brain is formed (the great majority of emotional neuropathways are formed in the first/part of second decades of life).

The focus on the mother is not about hurting her- it is about helping yourself by understanding how you were formed and what to do about it.

“I think my mom always had good intentions”- mothers with good intentions can harm their children anyway because of such things as ignorance and their own anxiety and distress. For example, a mother who is often anxious about her son’s health, asking him if he is feeling unwell, and when he feels unwell, she acts hysterical- this behavior is harmful to the child.

“Maybe she should have let her fears of seeing me in such a bad state and helped me from the beginning”- of course, it would have helped you very much if she did see you in a bad state from the very beginning, instead of leaving you alone with all that distress.

I am adding to what you wrote here the following: the intensity of your distress when you got heartbroken for the first time would have been significantly lower if you had healthy, loving relationships with one or two of your parents.

“She has her own fears and insecurities”- would you like to elaborate on this, on how her fears and insecurities showed in her face, her voice, her words, her behavior?

anita