Dear Nala,

you are very welcome! You say it is hard for you to pin point what could be the cause of your anxiety, because you don’t remember anything super traumatic. The thing is that there doesn’t need to be one single traumatic event (which would be like shock trauma), but there can be many smaller events, ordinary day-to-day interactions, due to which the child can develop anxiety and low self-esteem.

I have had my fair share of family relationship issues as well, but nothing that is crazy or super “traumatic”.

These family relationship issues – which have been nothing super traumatic but still unfavorable – could have very well contributed to your present-day insecurities and low self-esteem. They may have also lead to not trusting yourself (It truly makes me question myself, like I cannot trust myself, like I don’t know the difference between an anxious thought and how I truly feel.)

You’ve mentioned one of those issues, which is that you feel responsible for your family’s happiness, and you can only be happy if your family is happy (I base a lot of my happiness on the happiness of others, especially my immediate family.) If they are not happy, you try to help them. But perhaps your help doesn’t make a difference, because they keep being unhappy, no matter what you do? You would like to see them “thrive and be happy” – but what if they have some internal blocks to being happy, and no matter what you do, you’ll never succeed in making them happy? Because it doesn’t depend on you, but on them.

If you feel guilty for being happy if your family is unhappy, that’s a recipe for life-long misery. And maybe a part of you which feels guilty is now sabotaging you, telling you something like: “How can you be happy while your family is unhappy? It’s so selfish! You are a bad person!”

The above is just one example… maybe your internal saboteur is telling you something different, but whatever it is, it’s something that makes you feel bad about yourself and stops you from pursuing your happiness. You can counter this voice by the voice of your True Self, who knows that you love your boyfriend and that you are capable of having a happy and fulfilling relationship, as you have proven so far.