Dear humour,

I eat healthy food too but I also eat because I crave a good feeling.

I see… so it’s mostly emotional eating then. I was like that too – wanted to get a good feeling, to forget about the pain (but as I said, I didn’t know back then that I was soothing myself…).

My mother is very supportive when I am down but I also stand up for myself if there is unreasonable blaming etc. We have a fairly healthy relationship.

That’s good to hear. So with her you feel you can stand up for yourself and set boundaries, without feeling guilty? And what you said earlier that you often don’t know what a normal reaction is – it happens in other relationships?

Experiences are teaching me a lot of things. I wish I did not have to learn this way. The downside is I am losing people although I m gaining a lot of lessons on the art of living.

Due to your negative experiences in childhood, you’ve adopted a certain belief system and certain core beliefs about yourself, which aren’t true. You may not be aware of those false beliefs, but they are affecting you and your relationships even to this day. And if you haven’t healed those childhood wounds properly, I am guessing that similar unpleasant experiences keep happening to you, and they are only confirming those false beliefs that you have about yourself or other people (or the world). That’s probably one of the reasons why you’re “losing people”. Because you’re reacting from those old wounds…

Have you been in therapy? Have you worked on your childhood wounds and your unmet childhood needs?