Dear Inquisitive Soul,

It appears to me you’re caught in a conflict of whether to choose yourself or others. When you’re with others and socializing, it usually turns out to be a bad influence on you and you’re forced to cut them off. In other words, if you open up to others, it might cause you harm. But if you’re alone, in your “shelter”, you feel lonely and you harm yourself in different ways, by e.g. indulging in video games. So you end up feeling bad in either scenarios. Am I guessing this right?

You say: Whenever mom sends me a message “how I’m doing?” I always answer “okay”. I’ve read your other thread, and based on your discussion with Anita there, it could be that you’re repeating the pattern you’ve seen in your family. They were trying to protect you from family problems, and now you’re trying to protect them from your own problems, by not telling them the truth of how you’re feeling. But the price of that is loss of closeness and intimacy.

Maybe you’ve got that pattern going on with your friends and acquaintances too – perhaps you’re showing a particular “front” to them, e.g. of a busy person, or a successful person, while you’re not really sharing your deeper thoughts and feelings, perhaps your doubts and struggles too. This might be why you attract a certain type of friends, which later turn out to be not the best influence on you.

Do you think this might be a part of what’s going on?