Dear noname:

The word depression is in the title of your thread. Living in this way, being “overly cautious of every move I make out of fear I might somehow offend someone”, being therefore “quite and reserved to avoid mistakes”, this is a depressing way to live. Just like you wrote, living this way does “make it near impossible to have fun”.

I lived a lifetime having this very core belief, that I am guilty and that I have to be overly cautious of every move I make, fearing that I just said the wrong thing, didn’t say it just the right way, wasn’t complete, must clarify,  must add that I didn’t mean it that way, that I meant this and not that, cover all possibilities of interpretation of what I just said. That has been torture and no wonder my relief times was being alone, not interacting with others, daydreaming.

You wrote, “I don’t feel its realistic for anyone to fully accept my flaws”. By flaws you mean being guilty, in other words, being a bad person who is inclined to offend others with every move he makes. I don’t think it is possible for a person who cares about being good, to accept being a bad person.

I think this is exactly the core of the problem: you, noname, are a good person. I have no doubt about it. But you believe that you are a bad person. There is no way for you to accept that you are a bad person, this is why you struggle so much. If you were a bad person being bad, you wouldn’t be struggling. But being the good person that you are, you are tortured by this false core belief that you are a bad person.

Having had this false core belief myself, only recently changed and still changing, I had to go back to my past relationship with my mother (no longer in contact with her). I believe you need to go back there too. I know you don’t like it and of course, I will not push this idea on you, not at all. I will explain here why it is necessary and for what purpose, and I will explain it in a very simple, a very simplified way:

In the beginning you were not mentally separated from your mother. The two of you, in your experience, were one unit. In the reality of your childhood, in the context of the relationship between you and our mother, you were the good person and she was the bad person.

When a separation of sorts happened within that mental unit, as you grew up, a big flaw in the separation process has occurred: you took to yourself the badness that was hers and gave her the goodness that is yours.

Now you must go back for just one purpose: give her back the badness that is hers and take from her the goodness that doesn’t belong with her.

(Again, I use good and bad here in the context of the relationship between you and your mother).

There is no other way to change this core belief that you are bad and guilty, a belief which is not true to reality. No other way to resolve your lifetime distress, depression and loneliness, all based on this powerful and false (not true to reality) core belief.

anita

Dear noname:

When the core belief that you were bad was formed in your brain, that was when your vocabulary was much smaller than it is now and much simpler. It was before you read all the books you have read, before you attended higher education. The core belief was formed in the brain of a young boy.

For example, you used the word “gratitude” recently, wrote that you have gratitude for your mother. No way the young boy that you were felt gratitude. This is a word you learned later on, read about gratitude and even felt some of it. But not the young boy.

The young boy that you were witnessed an unhappy mother, was very distressed by it and believed he was the reason she was unhappy, a bad boy. This is why the boy tried to make her happy, so to be good, a good boy. As simple as that.

Let me know what you think and if you want, we can discuss the “what to do about changing that belief” question.

anita

anita

Dear noname:

I will share with you my experience then and I will do it as simply and shortly as I can so to not complicate my explanation with unnecessary details. I can elaborate on any one part if you ask me to.

My mother expressed her misery to me very vividly, generously and repeatedly. I felt and believed that her misery was a reaction to me being bad, that I cause her misery, that I brought it about. I felt and believed that she was an innocent child, a victim of my badness.

Throughout my life, her voice, the sight of her, was enough to trigger this core belief. This core belief ruled my life and brought about great misery and dysfunction into my life.

My first quality therapy took place in 2011-2013. In 2013 I cut contact with my mother. I struggled with guilt for a long time after cutting contact with her, feeling guilty for abandoning the innocent child I believed she was, causing her more misery, and being a bad person for having done so. Yet, I persisted.

Eventually my thinking and believing settled, after a few years of going back and forth from the old belief to the new belief. This is what settled:

1. When I came into my mother’s life she was not the child. I was the child.

2. In the context of my relationship with her, she was guilty (bad) and I was innocent (good).

3. Her misery was a reaction of having been victimized, but not by me. She was victimized in her own childhood, but that happened before I came into her life.

4. My misery has been a reaction to having been victimized by her. It was her in my life the moment I was born.

anita

Dear noname:

You wrote, “I’ve touched on this in the past and it turns into a pity party for her”, meaning in the context of your relationship with her, she owns empathy, it is all hers and none for you to have.

It doesn’t take emotional intelligent to let another have his hurt, to feel empathy for another. It takes a heart. We deny this about our parents, that they don’t have a heart, when they don’t. We will think of them as anything but a heartless person: they loved me best she knew how, is one saying. They don’t know how, never taught, don’t have the tools, and so on and on.. all may be true, but the end result is a heartless person.

See your mother as heartless (having no empathy for you), and you will be able to see that it wasn’t that you didn’t deserve empathy, but that she didn’t have it.

Maybe the girl in the group looked sad not because she was disappointed in you but because she felt empathy for you. You are just not used to it so you don’t see it. I suppose your mother was disappointed in you if you took anything away from her pity party.

You need empathy, everyone does, but you feel like a bad person for needing it, and worse, if you ask for it, if you communicate your need for it in any way. This must have been your childhood experience, being made to feel  bad for taking any empathy she believed belonged to her, and only to her.

You worry about using me for attention, or using your therapists. I think I have more clarity this very moment about what ails you so: you need empathy, you can’t help but reach out for it, but then you immediately, automatically feel bad about having done so.

I feel empathy for you, not for your mother, but for you. How does it feel, for you?

anita

Dear noname:

You are welcome.

Can you tell me more about you being a natural leader and elaborate on “a lot of what I have to say is completely contrary to how the vast majority of my classmates and teachers think”?

anita

Dear noname:

There is the periphery of what makes your experience of life what it is: family history, the neighborhood in which you grew up, your race, nationality, financial situation, politics, gender.

In the center of what makes your experience of life what it is –  is that mental unit you started as, your-mother-you. For as long as this mental unit is not examined and for as long as you don’t separate yourself successfully from this .. unhappy unit, examining the other things makes no difference. These other things are significant in other contexts, but not in this context of your mental un-wellness.

You are focusing and have been focusing on the periphery.

The mental unit needs to be examined for not other reason but one: for you to separate from it as the loving and lovable person you were born as and born to be.

Loving and lovable, loved, you will be motivated to get out of bed every morning.

anita