Dear Aum:

You are very welcome. “I’ve worked a lot on my relationship with my parents these past 2 years… it’s surprisingly improved“- good thing. I want to note though that your relationship with your parents did not improve to the point of providing you with a support system (only 4 days ago, you wrote: “I don’t really have a good support system“).

“I understand and accept that they do the best they can with who they are“- personally, I know that I need to go beyond doing the best with who I am (as in being a constant, remaining the same): I need to become more of who I am: more understanding, more patient, etc.

“I’m not as angry toward them as I used to be“- less angry, still angry.

“I also talk to them about comparing me to my brother, and they actually make an effort to understand. It’s helped me stop comparing too, and has really changed my self-worth“- so they do make an effort to understand what they didn’t understand before… excellent, if they indeed stopped comparing!

“All of my goals for this year were actually self-focused. As you said, I needed to ‘find value outside the context of my family’. I actually managed to do this. I did the work to make sure I put myself first“- excellent!

“That’s why I’m a little disappointed about the practical goals I didn’t achieve… How does one bounce back from setbacks and try again?“- add to your goals and measure your progress in regard to your new goals.

In your original post, you wrote: “I had a lot of goals for myself at the beginning of 2022. For the first couple of months, things were absolutely going my way. Around April, it went downhill. I lost some work gigs“- your goals had to do with work and when you lost a few work gigs, you failed in regard to those goals and you became depressed. Many if not all of the reasons for losing the work gigs had to do with circumstances and conditions out of your control, right?

My suggestion: add goals in regard to what you do have control over, and make these your primary goals. Measure your daily progress in regard to your primary goals. This way, when things happen out of your control, you have something to hold on to: daily success in achieving the primary goals. Does this make sense to you?

anita