Dear Kshitij:

Today is exactly 3 months since your original post of Feb 18. I am re-reading your posts to see if I can add anything that maybe, maybe will be of some help to you.

“I made significant recovery in my physical health by the end of 2022… But, when the scholarship issue came, it shattered me… I began feeling that just when things started to become better, they went for worse… I began to think that its pointless to keep hopes…” (Feb 19)-  you made significant recovery, experienced personal success in regard to your physical and mental health recovery, had some hope for continued success, but when the scholarship crisis happened, you lost that hope and became hopeless, believing that you are doomed to No Success aka Failure (so why try..)

In this belief there is the unrealistic expectation that once success is achieved, it will continue for a long time, maybe forever; no more significant setbacks or challenges.

“I felt that no matter how much I tried, things would always get worse” (Feb 19)- this belief is in the core of the problem.

“When I would use to think as a child that everything is aright between me and him, there used to come another ‘sermon’ or an incident of his bad treatment“(April 18, exactly a month ago)- this is the basis of your belief that you can’t succeed, that you are doomed to failure: you tried to get your father to approve of you, to like you, and you failed again, and again and again, no matter how hard you tried for years!

It is true that you failed to get him to approve of you, but it was a situation where you had zero chances of success because he projected his father into you very early on.

Imagine you try to pick up, not a small rock, but a whole mountain: zero chances of success. A mountain is too big and heavy for any person to pick up. Now imagine, after failing to pick up a mountain, you decide that you will fail at anything and everything you do in life..?!

Q: Is picking up a mountain comparable to getting your father to like you? A: Yes, because your father has never seen you when he looked at you. He was seeing his father all along, and he’s very angry at his father.

When you tried to get your father to like you, you were (unknowingly) trying to get him to like his own father: zero chances of success.

His criticisms of you were his criticisms of his father. He didn’t see you; he saw his father. He placed the wrong mirror in front of you, showing you a reflection of someone else. Please look in a real mirror, and see yourself as you really are, approvable, likeable, a good person who can succeed in spite of setbacks and challenges, such that we all face.

anita