Dear Javairia:

The present state of your exhaustion can be understood when reviewing your past (and present) life at home.

On April 16, 2020 you shared that when you were a child, your very anxious mother “wouldn’t stop talking every five minutes”, expecting someone to be “24/7 by her side”, and you were that someone (“she used me for that purpose”). You talked to her “throughout childhood, even about things a child shouldn’t be talking”, for example she’d say: “What to do, my life doesn’t have a purpose and I want to die”, and you tried to answer her. You talked to her about topics that were “overwhelmingly serious for a child”, including the suicide she mentioned repeatedly. Your mother gave you “almost no space” to yourself-

– All this was exhausting!

On August 25, 2020, you shared that your home is “an unstable living environment, where everyone gets angry easily and are just getting pissed off at things one minute or another”, that when you stay home for long, you begin “to get pissed off at things too”, and life at home makes you want to escape your mind.  You wrote at the time:  “I am not this kind of person when I am outside, away from home and my family”. More about how it feels being at home with your family: “I have never felt safe in this place. My mind sinks into a really bad place when I’m here.. I am unable to get things done, since I can’t focus.. my mind is just not co-operating with me”.

More about the relationships between family members: “We are all by ourselves in terms of emotional support… I feel really unprotected and insecure. Everything I do feels like walking on a tightrope with no safety net underneath.. I know if I do well, I survive, but if I don’t, no one has my back.. I do not have a home where I can feel at ease- a place or a company that reassures my presence. I feel really unprotected and afraid. I feel really isolated in this house”-

– All this is very, very exhausting: living in an unstable environment where people often get angry is exhausting, being anxious with no emotional support means that there is no one to calm the anxiety, and anxious day after day is exhausting!

April 30, 2021: “Everything is so tiring. Little activities drain me out…I am anxious…  I just worry and feel tired by the idea of having to do anything.. exhausted of just the thought of doing it.. I need more time, more energy. I need someone to tell me that I don’t have to do anything and just lie down and breathe… I feel tired. I’m not energetic, I run out of energy so soon… I don’t feel thrilled thinking about my future like others do, I just feel scared. Immensely scared… my brain convinces me that I’ll end up in a bad place, a really bad place, no matter how hard I try”-

– Everything has been tiring for a long, long time, not only now as you face graduating high school, but long ago.. your whole childhood was tiring. Notice the last sentence I quoted: “my  brain convinces me that I’ll end up in a bad place, a really bad place, no matter how hard I try”- this was your experience so far in life: you did end up in a bad place every day, that bad place being your home. You tried hard to be a good student at school and often succeeded, but you still ended up back home, which was a really bad place.

In August last year, you wrote: “My mind sinks into a really bad place when I’m here”, here being at home. Regarding your life at home: “everything just makes me want to escape my mind”-

Your physical home, “a bad place, a really bad place”, has become your mental home, and your mind sinks into that mental home (“sinks into a really bad place”). You repeatedly wanted to escape your physical home and your mental home (“want to escape my mind”).

When you move out of your physical home for the first time, you will not automatically move out of your mental home. Moving out of your mental home will take more time than moving out of your physical home. It will take a long process of healing, with help and emotional support by others. But sooner than you can imagine at this time, you will find yourself living in a much better place, a good place, physically and mentally.

anita

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by .