It’s actually not weird – you’re attracted to people who trigger the fear of abandonment in you, because they remind you of your mother, who was the first person who triggered that fear in you. We’re always attracted to people who remind us of our parents, so we can finally get from them what we didn’t get from our parents. You’re hoping to get a sense of security and commitment – something you didn’t get with your mother.

Dear TeaK,

Honestly, I don’t see it. I feel like I genuinely tried to feel safe with whomever I came across. I feel like I’ve tried everything, I was not limited to a kind of people, I was just looking for people that would be able to understand me. When I see that a person cannot communicate with me, I lost interest. Is this the problem? I don’t know. But I can say that I have no standards other than this. I just want to be understood, like the rest of the people.

Do you perhaps feel that your mother would have liked to leave you, but couldn’t because you were her daughter and she had an obligation towards you? Is such notion somewhere in the back of your mind?

My mom loved us like any other mother would do. But I know that she’s seen children as something that would hold people back. Therefore, she never wanted us (me and my sister) to be mothers. And I don’t think that we would ever have children. So, I don’t know, maybe that’s right. She would never leave us, but if she didn’t have us, maybe she would be able to break up with dad and have a new life where she is able to make her own decisions sooner. With us, she had to wait for a while, and then she broke it off years and years later.

Has your mother scolded you for other things (not necessarily related to toilet training) with words like “What have you done?!” Because it sounds like something you would hear from an adult and then repeat it to yourself when you feel you did something wrong.

That might be the case, my mom used to be hard on children, like if someone is behaving spoiled. She didn’t like spoiled children. And I wasn’t a spoiled child, so it was maybe nice. I don’t know.

Perhaps she was always in a rush when feeding you, she didn’t play peek-a-boo with you, she didn’t have time for a bedtime story, or was in rush to read you one… all in all, that the emotional bonding didn’t really take place as it should have, and you felt rejected and abandoned by her. Do you think this might be the case?

She was working hard and trying to raise us, do all the responsibilities at home as well. Maybe that’s why she didn’t have much time. Thank you for your reply, I can agree with you at those, that I deserve better stuff from people. But my emotions don’t work like my logic. It’s so easy to be caught by a thought loop and then it makes me suffocate for hours and days. I was able to do my yoga practice today with a delay of 10 hours, I guess. It didn’t help that much but maybe I should start with some breathing exercises as well. I am currently reading a book on yoga/meditation and the spiritual sides of the elements written by a yogi. I can either try to believe in what he says, or I can find all the words and concepts as nonsense. It’s hard to grasp some stuff when you’re reading about spirituality. He tells about how some elements can be out of balance in our bodies and how it does affect us. For instance, if someone’s air element is not in balance, then that person might have some troubles with flatulence. This kind of sentence makes me even more skeptical.