Dear Ravi:

Isn’t there a door you can close so you have privacy in your room? After all, it’s not your room if there is no door you can keep closed.

We agree then, that there are separate issues here.

Study then until May. Be a studying Zombie. Better if you were a “bright eyed and bushy tailed” student, eager to learn, awake, happy and motivated, but this is not the case. You have to deal with What Is, not what is not so.

So study, Ravi. And post here anytime so to express your emotions. I will listen and give you feedback without advice about other topics, focusing on your goal of passing and doing well on the May exams.

Let us put all other issues aside, the best you can. One aim at a time. There is hope and promise to your life, only not all at once.

anita

Dear Ravi:

You are welcome. You deserve my support, Ravi. You are a good young man. You know I wouldn’t state this if I didn’t believe it, don’t you? You are a good man. And I believe Jerry knew it and still knows it. Some of your behavior was wrong. Nothing unforgivable, not as far as I am concerned. I mean it! So let go of this “I am evil” brooding. You are not evil.

You are a good young man and you have good values. Please do not argue with this…!

Tell your mother, father, grandmother, to knock and wait for your permission before entering. Take charge in this way: tell them what you need them to do and not to do so that you do your best studying.

I encourage your studying because this is what you want to do.

So study. Maybe you won’t make it, but do what you can do. Be a … hero in your own life, Ravi. Be someone you look up to. Do so by focusing now on your studies, and doing what you can to make up the time. Be as calm as you can while studying. It is possible to study and pass exams as a Zombie, depressed and not motivated. It takes being a hero in your own life to do what needs to be done, what you choose to do, whether you feel like it or not.

anita

Dear Ravi:

Taking a break for now. What popped out in your head about your grandmother is unfortunately quite true. Reality is often mind boggling, incredible, wish it wasn’t true. But if your thinking is not aligned with reality, the price to pay is way too high. So however unpleasant reality is, it is better for you to see it as it is.

Till later, take care. Have faith in yourself, I do!

anita

Dear Ravi:

I just remembered what you recently shared, how your mother (was it?) who got very angry at a teacher who punished you by having you stand for 30 minutes. She was angry that you had to stand on your weak legs, remember?

Prove her wrong, prove all of them wrong, that you are not weak. Sure you are scared and sad and tired, but you are not weak. Study regardless of how you feel. Be patient and gentle and firm with yourself, all three. Firm means you do what needs to be done, and studying is what needs to be done because it is your goal to get into medical school. So do what you need to do, no matter what is happening around you.

anita

Dear Ravi:

Unfortunately for you, your family gave you the message that discomfort is a terrible, terrible thing that you may not be capable of surviving. This is a powerful message. The discomfort they tried to protect you from is physical discomfort as in standing for a long time and being hungry.

Problem is that there is such a thing as emotional discomfort. And your family has been doing their best, in various ways, to increase it. And they do not comfort you when you experience that kind of discomfort.

There is a concept taught in psychotherapy called “emotional regulation.” It is part of teaching the patient/ client to endure emotional discomfort. When you wrote in the last sentence above: “I cannot survive (the “terrible crushing sensation in my chest…)” It means you feel that emotional discomfort is dangerous and you don’t have the ability to endure and survive it.

One of the skills taught in psychotherapy is to sit there, notice the “crushing sensation in (your) chest”, focus on it and observe it: how it feels, how it changes… and it does change, eventually it becomes weaker and goes away. As you notice this, you learn that you can survive it, that the uncomfortable sensation is not dangerous.

This way you learn strength. You wrote that you are a weak person. No wonder you are, and no wonder because you were taught that discomfort is such a terrible thing that should be avoided no matter what because you can’t endure it.

When you learn that you can endure it and that indeed (physical and emotional) discomfort does not last forever, that it is not dangerous (If it was dangerous you would have died many times over, wouldn’t you?), then you build strength, that is, the faith in you being capable to endure and survive the discomfort and function well enough in your daily life with the discomfort.l

These very days for you, is an opportunity to observe the discomfort, to notice it is not dangerous, only uncomfortable (as intensely uncomfortable as it is), and function well enough in spite of it.

For your own best interest, develop this skill of emotional regulation. You will build strength and nothing will be more exhilarating than when you realize you are indeed strong.

anita

Dear Ravi:

I can hardly stand reading that you are a monster and deserve your pain. I can hardly stand it anymore.

About you deserving this pain: there is a line from a movie Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood when a character just about to be shot said to Eastwood: “I don’t deserve this.” To which Eastwood replied: “Deserving got nothing to do with this”- and he shot him.

My point here is that you have pain coming to you, Ravi, whether you deserve it or not. If you were such an impossible being: a perfect human being, perfectly good at all times, 24/7, guess what? you will still have to endure misfortune, injustice, rejection… pain, be it being physically uncomfortable or emotionally/ physically uncomfortable.

No matter who you are, what you are, if you are alive, pain is coming to you. And deserving, indeed, has nothing to do with it.

So, even if Jerry contacts you today with just the right love for you, even then, you have pain coming.

There is no way around it, Ravi. You want a better life and a better experience of life, you have no other way but to endure discomfort.

What you are doing now, is in your mind, you are looking for a way out of the pain, mainly thinking: Jerry will one day be with me and then I will not have pain. But this is not true. You will still have pain, no matter what happens. No escape.

So, stay with the pain. There is no escape. Not now, not in the future. Accept it. It will feel better when you accept it. This is the only way out of it, is to let it in and not run away.

anita

Dear Ravi:

You want to clear this test. It may not be available next year. Focus on studying (I sound like your mother now, I don’t like it but I am afraid she and I are in agreement about just this thing and … only this)- got to put all aside and focus on this. Be as calm as you can and… put everything else aside. Don’t even post here unless it helps you study.

Imagine you are on a remote island and you have nothing else to do, nothing you can do but study for this exam. Give it all you got.

You may not pass this test. But give it your best!

anita

Dear Ravi:

It occurred to me early this morning, before getting on the computer, that I automatically believed what your parents told you yesterday, knowing your mother is the dominant parent, I imagine she told you that (or told your father to tell you): “my parents give me the fresh news that from next year, the said exam may be introducing some new rules which would make me ineligible to take it anymore. Means I have to clear it this time, or never.”

You wrote that yesterday and I automatically believed this is so, as you have, right? Because we believe our mothers… no matter who they are. So I thought earlier: she has a bad record in delivering true information to you as far as the scam college, an intellectual unreliability on her part, her own misunderstanding. And then there are her values: as long as you become a doctor, nothing else matters, not even if you beat your (future) wife. She is so focused on you becoming a doctor, all means justify the end, so it fits who she is to flat out lie to you about this exam being a one time thing so to pressure you to study.

Will you CHECK this “fact” she told you for truth or lack of truth?

Since it helps you to post here, please do. I will reply to you every single time you post. I like you and am on your side, wanting and wishing you nothing but the best life that can possibly be for you, now and in the future.

anita