Dear Tee,

Good that you’ve realized it at a relatively young age! But the imprint stayed, and so their perfectionism became your own perfectionist inner critic. Which is telling you that you’re not good enough, not accomplishing enough at work, not earning enough money etc etc. It’s sad that both your father and grandfather were perfectionists, so you received a double dose of criticism.

Yes the IMPRINT! That’s the thing I’m working on

Not only that, but it seems there was no male role model who could have served as a positive father figure (“My neighbors are like that, older relatives etc because they grew up in competitive environment“). So you were surrounded by bad role models…

Yes exactly! And as we talked recently now I realized how good it is to be surrounded by good and supportive role models

Right… so for your grandfather, it seems you were a tool to boost his vanity and pride. He boasted to others with your accomplishments, while at the same time he wasn’t really proud of you, but kept criticizing you. I can see how damaging it was for you, and how toxic. I understand why you wanted to get away ASAP…

Yes and at that time I was like I’ll make him proud of me. But later I realized that his pride and ego are much toxic

It’s good you weren’t criticized by your mother and grandmother. However, I get the feeling that they didn’t protect you from your father’s and grandfather’s criticism either. Your mother told you to take your father’s criticism silently and “maturely”, so basically she never challenged your father to change his approach. My father never protected me from my mother’s criticism either. That’s why the damage done by my mother was much bigger than it should have been. Because my father allowed the abuse and didn’t say anything. I think something similar happened to you too?

Yes I can say that’s really similar what happened to me. But what do you think what stopped your father and my mother from protecting us?

Yeah, and I think there is even a difference between self-esteem and self-confidence. Self-esteem is a basic sense of self-worth (which doesn’t depend on any skill that you possess), whereas self-confidence is related to various skills we have. Say a professional athlete may have a lot of self-confidence that they are good at sports, but once they get injured, they may feel worthless because their self-esteem was based on their skills and not on a deep inner sense that they are worthy as a person.

Perhaps you too feel self-confident is some things, but what is missing is a deeper sense of self-worth, of being worthy simply because you exist?

I totally agree with you! I do feel like I’m missing deeper sense of self-worth. And recently quite a lot

Right.. and it seems to me that you’re very cautious with relationships not only because of your father’s (and grandfather’s) criticism, but also because you weren’t protected enough by your mother. So relationship might seem like a very scary thing, where no one is on your side?

Right! and that’s the reason why I also still have fear of commitment. It feels so scary.

Okay, you’re afraid to be judged by your partner. So to protect yourself, you rather judge her and make her seem deficient, so to feel less vulnerable? Like, you first judge her before she can judge you?

Hmm may not like who’s first but like because I tried to kind of make the relationship and the person “Perfect” like we talked about empathy before. I used to directly run for the fix instead of empathizing first.

Okay, so you don’t want a relationship to be a competition and a power struggle. You hate it.

EXACTLY!

And that’s why you’d rather not go into it. But the problem is that a part of you believes that relationship is a power struggle. Or at least that being in a relationship means being judged, criticized and hurt. That you can’t show your weaknesses, or even your spontaneity (like dancing while cooking lunch) without being criticized. Right?

Yes being vulnerable and showing weakness as well as opening up as I should be that’s something I need to work on.. and I believe I’m little better than before in that regard.

For spontaneity I don’t feel criticized. Because in my previous relationships I received lot of good compliments about it and I myself believe that without spontaneity relationships are much less fun.. Because I’m someone who gets bored pretty quickly

And if you approach relationships from that vantage point (which is a vantage point of fear), then I think it’s better not to date. Because you’ll likely get more of the same. But if you work on slowly dissolving that fear, on realizing why it’s there and then dissolving it… that’s when you open yourself to a different kind of dynamic in a relationship. To a possibility of a healthy relationship.

I want to get out from this fearsome repetitive cycle. So, I will date and experiment till I have the success.

That would be my answer to your question whether you’re ready to date (You think I’m ready? Or I still need lot of healing even to start dating someone?). I think you’re ready to date if you can let go of some of that fear of judgment in the relationship. We can talk more about it, if you’d like to…

Yes we can talk more about it since I’m still confused even so that I’m being mindful about myself. It’s still makes me overthink

I have a funny example about fear of judgement. So the date I told you about (Before the doctor) I was in hurry, I took a shower I get ready and forget to put the deodorant and just went out. And when she started being touchy and huggy with me I realized heck I forget the deo and instead of being in the moment and even though I knew that she’s not thinking about that I smell, But in my head I was like don’t let come near too much now because of your mistake now she’d take you as someone who doesn’t even groom himself properly. And I was actually trying to be less touchy with her just because of this overthinking and fear 😂