Dear Felix,

And in regards to my parents, they weren’t looking at the world like it’s a bad dark place, they just didn’t care about me.

Right – and because they didn’t care about you, your outlook on the world is that it’s a cruel, cold and unforgiving place. But since you did receive love from your grandparents, you’re now not depressed and suicidal, you haven’t collapsed, but are keeping on keeping on… Still, due to your worldview it’s very difficult for you, you feel exhausted, you feel like an overstressed engine that might break at any moment.

And emotionally, you feel lonely, you “crave intimacy and closeness like drug addicts and alcoholics crave their vices.” You feel on the verge in every aspect, saying things like “I might die”, because you feel that your current condition is not really sustainable. You hope it will be better, but at the same time, you say:

“I don’t know how [to love myself], considering I hate my self quite a bit, but I will learn.”

Do you really want to learn how to love yourself?

There is a filter that is skewing my perception of the world and my parents had some part to play in it because they ignored me and didn’t show love, and didn’t help me to build my future, but I’m not a little boy anymore. I want to stand up on my own. I am being my own parent right now, I am trying to look past the filter, I am trying to be a little bit more open minded.

The little boy is still inside of you. When you say “I’m not a little boy anymore, I want to stand up on my own”, you’re disregarding his needs and going into the Protector mode, which tells you that you can heal and thrive without tending to that little boy. Without tending to his pain. Without being a loving, compassionate parent to him – rather than a strict boot-camp coach that is pushing him to achieve and “keep fighting until you die.”

You’ve been a boot-camp coach to yourself, you’ve been pushing yourself to the limits, you’ve been “struggling, but not giving up”. It does seem you’re being a little gentler with yourself recently, such as what you mentioned in your points 1-3. That’s a good development – keep that up.

However, true healing will require some deeper work, the kind of work where you can be a compassionate, not a boot-camp parent to yourself. Where you can meet that boy, comfort him and tell him that he isn’t alone. That’s when you’ll start truly loving yourself…

I’ve been telling you all this before, don’t know if it will reach you now. But that’s the only path to self-love that I know works, and it works long-term. It’s a deep, transformational healing.