Dear Robbie:

“About 5 years ago I wrote a very long post here“- it was back on June 8, 2018, your very first post on your first tread, a post I answered on that same day. The last time we communicated was on Feb 7 and 16, 2023. Welcome back to the forums! I have been away Feb 16-Aug 28, 2013, and back every day since, good to read from you today!

About your childhood, you shared in this thread: “I was a shy kid, in many areas blocked, stuck and anxious… disconnected from myself, from my healthy needs and boundaries quite early. Earlier than I can remember…. I grew up in a flat with my parents. I didn’t have my own room, or my own space… Most of my childhood I’ve lived in a guest room which served also as a storage room for my parent’s stuff. The door was made of glass, so I’ve had no privacy…. For years, after school I would go to my parents’ work place and wait for them to finish work… I would wait there for sometimes 7..8 hours. I’ve had nothing to do there. I would wait, walk around, just wait for the time to pass… During summer holidays we would go to our lake house. We would spend months in total there. I hated it… Similarly, at the lake house we all slept in one room and I didn’t get much space for myself. Also, I’ve had no friends there. I felt alone and caged.

“Since I didn’t like school that much, I didn’t bother studying either. I remember not being interested and finding it very difficult to concentrate. I would procrastinate and avoid homework at all costs. The costs however, were high. My mother used to hit me whenever she would find out about my bad grades. A few times, I remember being brutally hit with a belt. Often after hitting me she would cry and apologise. She lost it quite a few times like that. I remember being confused – not understanding what the f*** is going on.  Also, once I’ve been promised that if I don’t improve my behaviour they will take me to a foster home. I’ve been told they will abandon me. I remember feeling scared that I will lose the attachment to my parents…

“When I was about 11, my parent’s bought my first computer. I was hooked from the early beginning. I would spend an entire day and sometimes night playing games and watching films”.

About today, you shared: “Today, more than 5 years later, many things have changed. I’ve come closer to myself and I’ve learned to be more comfortable with my daily life… I am very, very grateful for all the insights that came my way, the teachers and the experiences that transformed me. I am also very proud of myself for letting myself be guided by my heart and not my fears.. For the last 3 years I’ve been working online and it has been very good – I was able to work whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted and the pay was very good. I enjoyed that!.. I’ve learned to be close to myself, to procrastinate way less and have a healthy routine… “-

– C o N g R a T u L a T i O n S   for all your learning, amazingly expanding awareness and progress, and I am glad that you are very proud of yourself!

“Also, many things haven’t changed. As I recently said during a therapy session, ‘The game is the same, only the level has changed’… Although many things have changed… I’m still looking for the same thing I’ve been looking for as a kid. I’m still looking to fit in… I’ve had a couple of jobs in the last years but couldn’t hold on to them for long. Often I felt excruciatingly anxious and tired while at work, I just wanted to escape. For the last 3 years I’ve been working online and it has been very good…  I still at times felt like I wanted to procrastinate but knowing I can do it in my own terms helped a lot. In many ways that job was tailored to my current blockages and anxieties. I managed to work and have an income without experiencing a lot of discomfort. Now, sadly the project I’ve been working on ended and again, I find myself looking for a job. I am more confident now of course, I have better awareness and I know things will work out. However, I would like to dig deeper into what has been really holding me down. I’ve often felt like I was operating with half of my brain tied to my back….I’m curious if any of you see the connection between my childhood and my current struggle finding a job and motivating myself to move forward. I often feel stuck and tired of this inability to move on”- 

– Yes, I see the connection between your childhood and your current struggles: I could title your childhood story, The Boy in a Glass Cage, or Stuck Waiting, and/ or Never Alone,  Always Lonely (“I was very lonely. Well.. Not. My parents where there every second of my childhood“, from a previous thread).

Being observed at any time through the glass door of the storage room where you lived, in the flat, with parents entering at any time without knocking, parents who saw you but.. didn’t see what you needed so desperately (privacy and positive attention), and when on “vacation” in the lake house .. still no privacy- no wonder that as an adult, you don’t want to be observed by people and therefore, you have had problems having long-term relationships. Lonely- you need people; having been caged in a situation where you were watched at any time- and sometimes hit by your mother(and threatened to be placed in a foster home), you need to be away from people. This is the main conflict, as I see it.

The boy in the glass cage was an anxious boy, a prisoner. Fast forward, the boy is you (not all of you, but much of you), and he will not be caged again, not if he can help it: not in a relationship, not in a job! The job you described was perfect for you because it afforded the boy enough freedom, and it is clear to me that your future job or jobs should be similarly flexible, so that the boy can experience a measure of freedom. And the woman for you needs to be similarly flexible, affording you lots of alone time behind a closed, solid door into which she’ll never enter without knocking first, asking and receiving permission to enter.

anita