Dear Umaz,

Also, I don’t find it useful to continuously relive my past. It’s emotionally exhausting and takes away from my present.

Good psychotherapy helps us heal the emotional wounds and deficiencies from the past – it’s not meant to last forever, reliving the painful experience again and again.

Based on what you’ve shared so far, you have a wound of rejection, which you’d need to heal. If you find psychotherapy too expensive, you may try to do some self-healing, i.e. the inner child healing.

You as a little girl have been rejected by your family. As anita said, maybe it happened not in your early 20s, but much earlier? This girl feels hurt and reacts whenever she feels a semblance of rejection. Your main pain point seems to be rejection by the family – this time not your own family, but your boyfriend’s family:

i feel like a liability and not really a part of the family which he claims I am.

I just said something like ‘oh so you invited your ex’s family but not me when you say I’m supposed to be your family? Dont ever say that I’m your family because you don’t treat me like family, I’m not family, I’m just your girlfriend. And don’t ever make me speak to your mum and sister either, I’m done playing nice with them’.

You feel excluded from your boyfriend’s family, same as you felt excluded from your own family. Until you heal your childhood wound, this or a similar issue will keep coming up in your relationship.

So I encourage you to start working on healing that wound, healing your inner child, telling her that she is loved and cherished.

But I really am alone, I don’t have any people in my life I can rely on. I don’t have family or friends. I don’t have very good self esteem to make new friends.

The little girl in you feels very alone, and probably unworthy of love. You – the adult Umaz – would need to reassure her that she is not alone, because you are with her and will never abandon her…