* Good to see you here, Juanita!

Dear Arran:

You know the Beatles’s song: “All you need is love”? I think it is true. This is obviously what you did not have: LOVE. And as a child you desperately needed it. You didn’t get it. So you grew up impoverished. Not connected, not to your parents, not to others, an outside… and you still are, walking at the edge of the room watching others having fun (your original post).

You hold on to perfection because (?) deep inside, you believe IF you were perfect than you would have been loved, as a child.

And having gotten poor grades in school, and succeeding presently far less than perfection, you feel hopeless, too far from perfection= too far from love.

The connection between perfection and love was made in your brain when you were a child and the connection is there. Your wife may still love you (?) Your kids I have no doubt- they do love you, but you cannot let their love inside you because for you- due to the early connection- you are not loved until perfect.

Being so far from perfect, you feel hopeless and think about death as a place to rest from the painful lack of love in your experience. You know you can never be perfect…

What is love? It is NOT perfection. It is not material success. It is when you realize you were born lovable and didn’t have to do or achieve anything to EARN it.

Look at your children, do they need to earn your love?

A good psychotherapy can help you gradually undo the neural connections in your brain between love and perfection and make new connections between love and you just BEING. (A human BEING, not a human doer). A good enough psychotherapist will help you through this.

Reality is, truth is, you were born lovable. And you are lovable. You don’t have to do anything. Once you KNOW this truth, your mental health will be good and you will feel peace and LIFE in you and … well, this is the way.

What do you think?
anita