Dear ginn,

you are welcome. There are several things I would like to address.  One is that you said you often felt stressed about your studies or work, and this lead to giving up and resigning:

I found it interesting back then because everything was new to me. But after a few months of studied, I felt stressed, wanted to give up

Then I worked in another design company for 2 years, (thought different company and environment will be better), but too stressful, couldn’t find the joy and I got panic attacked

Another example is when I was working part time at high school, I couldn’t find a joy from it, then I simply did my work and made a lot mistakes. I was so scared that my boss would find out and fire me, so I decided to quit it before he find out.

I wonder if the reason for resigning is that you don’t feel good enough in what you’re doing – which causes you stress and panic attacks – rather than the lack of spark? Or maybe it’s the lack of spark that causes you to underperform, which then causes you to feel not good enough? In any case, it seems to me that feeling not good enough could be a theme for you. It could also be why you refused to take the piano exam, because you were afraid to fail and be embarrassed.

It seems your classmates looked down on you and excluded you from their company:

Also, wanted to prove myself to those people who looked down on me. From kindergarten to junior high school, I used to be boycotted by my classmates. So this also lead to my low self-esteem.

That could be one more reason why you felt “lesser than”. And why failing an exam would feel so crushing for you.

I don’t know how supportive your parents were as you were growing up. You said you were mostly afraid of disappointing your father. Was he strict and criticized you often? Do you feel he (or your mother) had expectations on you, which were hard to meet?

I want to be successful because I want my parents to retire and enjoy their lives, they had been through a lot of hardships. The most afraid of disappointing person is my dad if I failed anything. To be honest, I don’t care about the money, I just need it for my parents so they can have a better life. So I can freely chase my passion.

Your desire to provide for your family so they can retire, and at the same time chase your passion might be somewhat of a contradiction in itself. Because when we have financial obligations, we often don’t have the luxury to chase our passion, since our passion might need a lot of work and becoming proficient in it before it can really pay off and earn us a living. For many people it’s a long process, even if they know what their passion is. It takes a lot of time to “monetize” our passion.

I think that’s one of the reasons you feel trapped in your tower (I always feel like I’m stuck in a tower, couldn’t get out from it.) Because it is a little bit of a pat position indeed… You can’t satisfy both your desire to chase your passion and to be successful relatively quickly and earn a decent amount of money for your parents, so they can retire.

How do you feel about all this? We can unpack the problem further, if you’d like…

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Tee.