Dear Clara:

“I had this weird sense of relief knowing that ‘oh, that’s where it came from’ when I read the first two chapters“- it helps to understand that much of what we become is a bunch of  reactions to our growing-up experience, and that as humans, our responses are.. human: if there was another human on the face of the earth who experienced your exact childhood, he/ she would have reacted similarly, if not the identically.

“At this point, I am not very hopeful of our relationship, I cried yesterday…  I think I was grieving the relationship, or at least the relationship that I thought I had“- I know you are hurting, Clara, and I hope that soon you will feel better and better.

About grieving what you thought you had: how about grieving wishful thinking of all kinds, and commit to realistic thinking, that which is in the core of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Schema Therapy, which is an integrative therapy that evolved from CBT and other therapies..?

anita