Dear Ilyana,

I am glad you feel seen and validated here. It’s wonderful that you also feel hopeful that things can change for the better and that you can have a different, happier and more fulfilling life.

Regarding your father, I am sorry he wasn’t really there for you when you were a child, since he left you alone with your mother and her anger, and refused to pay child support. You said you didn’t have any contact with him from the age of 3 till you were 10-11. Did he change for the better after the reunion, e.g. did you see him more often since then? You mentioned he was sending you gifts and letters that your mother intercepted – was it before or after the reunion?

It’s good that you’re starting to see that things weren’t black and white, and that your mother was no saint, and that your father was no villain either. Also, it’s nice that he’s supportive of you now, both emotionally and financially. I guess it feels good, even though he wasn’t there for you earlier.

In therapy, we are talking about the little girl I was and how alone she felt. I want to give her what she needs now, but being good to myself is so foreign to me. I don’t know how to do it.

Well, one of the first things you can do is realize that you’re not a bad person, and it’s not your fault you had such a difficult childhood. You’re suffering today because you were deprived of love and care and appreciation and compassion. Your needs were not met, neither by your mother nor your father. You have substance abuse issues not because you’re bad, lazy or undisciplined, but because you’re hurting. So that’s the first thing to realize, which can allow you to have compassion for yourself.

I imagine you also have a pretty strong inner critic, which is criticizing you all the time, telling you nasty things about yourself. That voice is blaming you, telling you it’s all your fault and that you’re good for nothing. Part of it is your mother’s angry, judgmental voice. Well now, as one of the first steps on your healing journey, you can start developing an observer self, which notices all your emotions and thoughts, both positive and negative, without judging them. It’s just observing, watching neutrally and noticing what is happening inside of you. That part of us is necessary in practicing mindfulness, which Anita was talking about. It’s key for developing self-acceptance – accepting whatever is at the moment inside of you, whether good or bad, whether positive or negative.

And then there’s the third voice – a voice of a good parent, or a compassionate therapist. When your harsh inner critic would want to start its tirade of judgments and accusations, the compassionate voice says: “it’s not your fault, you’re not bad, you’re just hurting”. It’s a voice full of understanding and compassion for your inner child.

Your task would be to develop both the observer self, and the compassionate inner parent self, as key parts of a healthy adult personality.

But I feel frozen. When I try to make changes, it never sticks. I will quit smoking or start exercising and do well for a few months, but I always fall back down. My default position is sitting still and ruminating and poisoning myself.

Yes, if we try to change from the position of the judgmental inner voice who says “look at yourself, you’re horrible, be ashamed of yourself, you need to change ASAP!”, it never lasts for a long time, because in order to truly change, we need love and acceptance, rather than judgment and condemnation. The strict disciplinarian voice that pushes us to exercise or quit smoking is a part of the inner critic, and the inner critic is the opposite of loving and compassionate! That’s why after a while, we rebel against this strict disciplinarian (which often sounds like our strict mother, btw), and we go back to soothing and numbing our pain with substances and addictive behaviors. Until the change comes from the place of love for ourselves, it can’t be long-lasting.