Dear Eric:

You posted for the first time, under the name Felix, on July 3, 2019, when you were 20, attending your 2nd year at university, 40 minutes away from your hometown by boat, somewhere in Southeast Asia. The thread was about a girl you knew in high school. I replied to you on that same day. Your second thread was on September 9, 2019, a thread titled “I can’t stop thinking about her“, her being the same girl (a girl to whom you confessed your feelings, “but she rejected”).

Since then, you graduated university, and currently, at 22 or 23, you live at home, in your hometown, with your mother, father and younger sister. You do not have a close relationship with either one. There is little to no extended family present in your life (your mother is an only child, and your father doesn’t get along with his siblings; during the Chinese New Year, a major holiday, only the 4 of you sat at the table). You help with 2 family businesses, but you have no passion or interest in either one. You do not have any professional interest or ambition. You want to have a girlfriend, but you never had; you rarely meet with friends in-person, and you spend a lot of time alone, in your room, with the computer, on social media.

Altogether, you started 25 threads as Felix (July 2019-February 2021), 4 threads on a different account as Greg (October 2020-March 2021), and 3 threads on another account as Eric (February-March 2022). There may have been other accounts, other screen names, I don’t know.

In your first thread, July 2019, you expressed a problem that has been persistent throughout your threads: overthinking about one topic or another (mostly: the girl, your height, posting pictures & messages on social media), being distressed but not able to stop overthinking; in other words, not being in control of your overthinking:

Here are only a few quotes of the many times you expressed this problem: July 2019: “I can’t stop thinking of her, I’m so desperately need help in stop thinking of her…I try to stop thinking of her but… keep thinking of her… I’m still obsessed of her”, October 2019: “I can’t stop thinking of her, I need help… I’m trying to help myself to stop thinking of her”, April 2020: “I have difficulties in accepting my height which is 5’5. All this time I’ve been living on thinking about this all day… If I think about my height suddenly, I’ll try to not think about it…. like I keep telling myself not to think about it… and I’ll start doing something like watching/activities, but sometimes it’ll lead to something that makes me think about height again… that ‘height issue’ stuck in my head“, July 2020: “I’ve posted a post of a pic…Am I thinking too much regarding this post? I have difficulty sleeping thinking about this”.

What happens is that the topics of your overthinking change- you stop overthinking one topic, but start overthinking a second topic, then back to overthinking the first topic, or a third topic. In other words, you get a relief from overthinking about one topic, only to start overthinking about another topic, and over time, you keep returning to the same topics.

When you stop overthinking one topic, you hope that you will not overthink it again, that you are done overthinking it… but you end up overthinking it again… and again. November 2019 (overthinking about the girl=> overthinking about your height): “Right now I’m considering finding a new girl for me to like, even though she’s still on my mind sometimes. But it’s just that I’m not confident as I hate my body so much as I’m very short“.

Later in the same month: “Right now I’m feeling better on my height concerns“, and later that month: “just now while I’m working out, I saw that most of the boys are way taller than me and it drops my mood again“. Jan 2020:  “I can’t accept my height which is 5’5″, later that month: “Right now I’m feeling better regarding my height… I hope my mind won’t stop thinking like this“, July 2020 “recently I’m feeling a bit better regarding my height (I hope it keeps getting better in the future)“, and later, same month: “I still have this problem regarding my height“,

October 2020: “How to stop thinking about this, Help?… I posted a pic …I could have chosen another pic…I can’t stop thinking about this… I’ve been regretting this for 5 straight days”, May 2021: “I can’t control my thoughts. I even have difficulties sleeping due to this problem… I even cried because idk what I should do to stop these thoughts. So, the problem is that yesterday…  I posted that cake pic on my Instagram story… idk if this is just me overthinking or not“.

Sometime in March 2020, you thought that you matured and accepted your height and are done thinking or overthinking your height, you felt relieved and grateful: “I used to hate myself for having a short height but right now, I have matured, and I accepted who I am, and I feel grateful for it, and some reason for me accepting myself is because of this website and I’m thankful for anyone who have replied me before”, but a month later, on April 2020, you posted:  “there’s another problem that I can’t take my mind off, is that she’s the same height as me“… a year later, April 2021: “So I’m going to need some advice regarding my height again. I know I’ve been posting lots of threads in here regarding my height. I’m really tired of my height, sometimes I can distract myself from thinking about it. But recently I went to the mall and saw people who’re younger than me (who used to be shorter than me) are now taller than me… all my distraction of me in not thinking my height all this time is gone again“.

In May 2020, you shared that you just graduated from university, and you are back home helping with the family businesses which you expected to inherit, being that you are the only son. You wrote at the time: “I’m a person with no ambition at all but I really wanna have a family of my own… I really wanted to have a partner to talk to, to cuddle to, to hug“- never in your threads did you express any ambition in regard to your family businesses, nor did you express any professional ambition otherwise. On the other hand, you expressed a strong and persistent interest in having a girlfriend, but you never had one, never held hands with a girl (” I also haven’t even experienced holding a girl’s hand”, July 2021).

In June 2021, you described your overthinking with more details: “I stop thinking of this obsessive thinking when I do activities, but when I have free time, I’ll start thinking about it again. Then I tried to not think about the obsessive thoughts at all… and it didn’t work but the uneasy feeling is still there… what I’m afraid of is that if I don’t think about that thoughts… it’s like I left an unsolved case….like I need to make sure to my mind that the problem is settled… like I need to know that those people didn’t view me as embarrassing… but it’s not possible… as there are 300 people who viewed my Instagram stories, that’s why the case is always unsettled in my head” –

-this uneasy feeling is what’s behind overthinking. Your brain tries to get rid of the uneasy feeling by thinking and thinking and thinking (aka overthinking, aka obsessing), trying to solve a case, to settle a problem (the case and problem in in the quote above: people who viewed your Instagram posting might think badly of you. But additional problem is that (1) you can’t know what all those people are thinking, (2) can you change what they are thinking, so the problem is forever unsettled and the case- unsolved.

Your persistent topics of overthinking are the reasons you imagine that girls would reject you: (1) your height: you shared on one thread that your height is 165 cm, which is 5’4”. On other threads, you shared that it is 5’4”, (2) the look of your face, “chubby cheeks and thick eyebrows” which makes you look “like an angry person”. You trimmed your eyebrows, but your “face still looks scary”, you wrote. Also, one of your front teeth is turned inward, and most recently, you shared a tiny bump or bulge on one of your shoulders due to scoliosis: “I’m worried if my future partner would view me negatively if she, for example cuddles me or etc. Like she might notice my shoulders has a bulge”, March 7, 2022, (3) the fact that your family is small, (4) that you graduated with a lesser/ wrong bachelor’s degree, (5) one of your father’s two businesses involves the smell of fish, (6) other reasons.

In June 2020, you stated the following: “I think that’s the main problem that connects each of my issues which is me always feeling inferior to others… therefore it leads me to try to show off to erase it. This inferiority feeling also causes me to unable to communicate properly with strangers, due to me afraid of their judgements and lead me to freeze in the middle of the conversation” –

– your main problem is indeed a feeling of inferiority (shorter than others, worse looking than others, having a smaller family than others, having a lesser bachelor’s degree than others, etc.).  This inferiority feeling is the uneasy feeling that you mentioned earlier, the uneasy feeling that is fueling your overthinking. There is great sadness, regret, anger and frustration attached to this feeling of inferiority, uneasy feeling:  “I’m so sad right now with this regret… like I can’t fix it anymore… I sometimes wish that I was not born at all in this world… all of it is relating to regret” (October 2020), “So recently I have a new problem, this problem is driving me insane that I even hit my own head with my hand… Even when I’m alone in my room, I feel like screaming” (May 2021), “I tried punching the wall many times, but it didn’t help me calm, my hands are a bit bruised now… I tried to stop my frustration by punching, I punch my bed with anger…. It gives me a temporary satisfaction that I can release my anger, but still, I can’t get rid of this frustration” (Oct 2021).

Because you can’t read other people’s minds, you don’t know what they are thinking. Even if you knew what they are thinking (and sometimes you know because they tell you), you can’t change what they are thinking of you, you don’t have that power. The only problem that is possible for you to solve is about what YOU are thinking.

And what you are thinking is that you are inferior to others, and this thinking, like you stated yourself, is “the main problem that connects each of my issues which is me always feeling inferior to others“.

My closing thoughts: what’s fueling your overthinking is (1) your feeling/ core belief that you are inferior to others, (2) your mental habit of overthinking, a habit that is by now chemical in nature, (3) lack of a social support within your family and outside your family, you are too alone, too isolated.

Are you really inferior? In some ways, you are. But then, every person is inferior to others in some ways: there is always someone taller, prettier or more handsome, someone more intelligent or educated… someone more charming (better social skills), etc.

Because every person is inferior to others in some ways, should every single person- because of his/ her inferiorities- suffer from any of the anger, frustration, sadness and regret that you suffer from? No, not you, not anyone. Try to separate your height from the feeling of inferiority.

You don’t like your height, I understand, and I am not suggesting that you should try to like your height (or your face, or your bachelor’s degree, etc.). What I am suggesting is that it is possible for you to not like your height, etc., and at the same time, to not feel inferior because of it.

Regarding the chemical habit of overthinking aka obsessing, this is a habit that involves the production and secretion of certain chemicals in the brain and body (neurotransmitters and hormones). It is possible to slowly, gradually and patiently change this chemical habit with the practice of mindfulness, such as listening to a mindful guided meditation at night, before you go to sleep (maybe it will help you sleep better).

Also, there is an option of psychiatric medications that are prescribed for people who suffer from obsessive thinking, as well as psychotherapy.

Exactly a year ago, March 30, 2021, you wrote as Greg: “So I can’t take it anymore, why can’t god just let me disappear? I’m tired of this world… it’s like what I’m doing everyday serves no purpose. I’m helping my parents’ business everyday… even though it’s boring I still try to cope with it, hoping that one day I will find myself a girlfriend. But still I’ve tried numerous times and failed. I’m really tired, and I don’t have any close friends… I always pray and hoping that God will give me my desired happiness. And sometimes I have expectations, and it’s always disappointing. I hate this world” –

– when you no longer feel inferior to others, when you stop comparing yourself to others and feelings lesser than them, you will no longer feel the anger and great frustration that go together with the feeling of inferiority. Without that intense anger and frustration, it will be possible for you to form and maintain close relationships with others: with friends and with one special girlfriend/ wife.

anita

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by .