Sublimeliver,
Thanks for sharing. I know I can push past all this and live a truly fulfilling life, and I know that the relationship I have currently is one that is meant to last, and that we only need to hold our heads high. What hypnosis are you doing? I’ve been looking for something good. Joseph Clough is definitely something to check out.

Louise,
I read something profound that I’d like to share with you that explains your questions. Its a bit long, but I think it would be worth your time to read:

Many of us are raised by well intending parents to be the carriers of their sadness. Often the one child who is softer than the rest, who is more sensitive than the family is used to, is the one selected to deal with what one one else can or will deal with. It is an odd fate. I was one of those. I was often called too sensitive, too emotional, to day dreamy. But as I grew older, as life visited us with the hardships that life inevitably does, it was I who was needed to carry the burden of my families inability to feel. Without having my capacity to feel ever valued I was the one to shoulder sadness with the brunt of my heart. I have come to understand that there is a huge difference between sharing someones pain and bearing it. Too many times, those in pain use the concern of loved ones as a way to ground what they dont want to feel themselves. The way electricity runs off into the ground during a storm, they mistakenly use others to run their sadness and pain into the ground of those who care. Too often, we want others to hold our sadness or pain because we wont take the risk to ask them to hold us while we are hurting. As an adult trying to be my own person, understanding which feelings are genuinely mine and which are those I have inherited is often confusing. People like me frequently feel responsible for emotional condition of others. It is a delicate and never ending task, this sorting of what is truly ours and what is not. When unable to stay within ourselves, we become codependent, never feeling at peace until the emotions of everyone around us are managed and tended-not so much out of compassion but as the only way to quiet our anxious burden as carriers of sadness or when rebounding the other way we can isolate, becoming not only dispassionate to others, but also numb to ourselves.