Rahel,

What Matt wrote was something I very much agree with. I can understand if you want a simple solution, or a checklist of things to be done, but if you can open your heart for a moment and read what Matt wrote, you might find some answers that can not be explained with lists.

Smiling can surely make one feel better, but to force a smile on your face all the time doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

If you don’t remember to do things, it’s OK. You are being extremely hard on yourself, expecting consistency and if you fail to meet that, you blame yourself. You’re only human, so don’t worry about the consistency so much.

Why does sympathy make you feel depressed? Do you confuse it with pity, perhaps? Pity is looking down on someone and perhaps seeing them as weak. Compassion is understanding the pain that someone is going through and the feelings of care and support that it arises in one’s heart.

I didn’t mean that you need to stop words, but to not believe everything that you tell yourself, especially if it’s very negative or hard or demanding.

When you ask about balance, I think that what Matt said is quite correct, that you need to have the balance between your mind and your body. Meditation can help.

You’re just being defensive to protect yourself from some threat that you perceive. When you can understand that you are doing all of those things for a reason, because the feelings of safety and love has been compromised, it could become easier to be more gentle towards yourself.

As for your the example about your aunt, to me it just seems like your feelings just get the better of you. We all have fleeting feelings. One minute everything is fine and then the next minute something happens that angers us. That is quite usual. It seems as if you have trouble handling the emotions that arise and they rule you instead of you letting them pass.

That does not make you anything peculiar, and you’re not the only one who is defensive, impulsive and finds it difficult to temper their emotions.

In addition to the support group idea, would it be possible for you to find someone local who could help you meditate? You need tools to help you deal with any imbalance that you might have and find ways to learn how to care for yourself.