Dear Peace,

it’s so good to hear from you! And so good that you decided to focus on your studies and leave your boyfriend. He unfortunately was one of those people who was good at telling you nice words, things you like to hear and that you crave for, but his actions actually showed his true character. Now it would be the best if you’d stay away from men for a while, and focus on your studies and on yourself, your own healing.

You’ve already made the first step, and that’s the awareness of the problem: you’re aware why you’re attracted to men who flatter you and show interest in you – and that’s because you were emotionally neglected as a child. You felt all alone, abandoned, very insecure and fragile. You say you’d start crying when someone would simply ask you a question – so big was your sense of insecurity and perhaps inadequacy that you won’t know the answer…

Anyway, until now you’ve been repeating those old patterns regarding men, but now you have the awareness why this was happening and that it was because of your core emotional needs weren’t met. There’s a book on emotional neglect, called “Running on Empty: Overcome your Childhood Emotional Neglect“, written by Jonice Webb. It talks about how emotional neglect happens, as well as how to heal it, i.e. how to practice self-care, self-soothing, how to pay attention to your emotions, how to trust your emotions etc. I believe it’s a very useful book, so you might give it a try, regardless of whether you find a counselor or not.

The primary goal of your healing would be to meet those unmet emotional needs, either by yourself (with the help of the above book, for example), or by working with a counselor. What might also help is to buy yourself a doll, that represents you as a child, and talk to her every day, telling her you love her, brushing her hair, holding her. It might seem silly, but this is exactly what you might have been missing while growing up – that someone takes care of you, spends time with you, pays attention to your feelings. To compensate for that, you now become the good parent and care-taker for your inner child.

Also, try to take up a hobby, something that you like and enjoy doing, so that the positive, creative, playful part of your inner child comes to the fore as well. The goal is to have fun, to enjoy like a playful, innocent child. Having a hobby will also help you to relax after your studies, so it’s a win-win goal 🙂

Oh, and perhaps you can start a journal, where you’re writing everything and anything that comes to your mind, all your thoughts, feelings, hopes, desires… I believe it would be very useful in processing your emotions and even for self-soothing…