Dear Sofioula:

“As I see it, you as suggesting that I use sarcasm (well meaning) to try and pass on the message: ‘Hey! I’m 10 y.o no more!'”-

-no, Sofioula, I don’t do sarcasm, very bad at it, if I tried. When I suggested that you give advice to your parents, I meant it because they really do need good advice. And I figured, having read from you for so long, that you are more qualified to give them good advice than they are to give you good advice.

Happy belated Birthday!

anita

Dear Sofioula,

happy belated birthday! I am glad you’re feeling good, although very busy – but with the things you love and enjoy!

It may not make sense to you but this is how my brain works, 2 sided. It is completely split. I often have agruements with my own mind. OCD again, plays a huge role in this I think. The only senario that plays in my head, is that I am a loser and he was right.

It’s the inner critic telling you you’re wrong and blaming you. It’s the internalized parental voice. You’d need to develop the voice of the good parent, which is a loving, compassionate voice. It would counter the inner critic and enable you to forgive yourself for making mistakes or for changing your mind.

I saw that when I met my then bf, I didn’t want to marry or have kids until a certain age, I knew I always wanted to do those things, but it wasn’t something I stressed or even thought about. My obsession and fear with having a family ASAP, started with my first visit to the OB/GYN.

Alright, so your need to get married and have children young didn’t just stem from your parents “brainwashing” you and expecting it from you, but because you genuinely got afraid that your health would deteriorate and you wouldn’t be able to have children later, because you were wrongly diagnosed with a health condition you never had. In addition to that, you lost your beloved cousin a few years earlier, who was born with brain damage and severe health problems – also due to an ob/gyn mistake.

So your desire to get married ASAP (which you wanted from your previous boyfriend) stemmed both from your parents’ expectation, but also from your own fear that they may be right that you’ll really stay alone and die alone, due to a medical condition which doesn’t allow you to bear children. The diagnosis was like an alarm firing up in your head, because there was now a real danger that your parents’ “prophecies” would turn out true, so you better hurry up because what if they’re right.

Though I do not cry anymore and have been back to normal – somewhat – I still carry a picture of me as a baby in my wallet and fear that I will never be able to have my kids photos in there. 

After the diagnosis, you feared that you won’t be able to have children ever. It was an unbearable thought for you, not only because you wanted to be a mother and experience the joy of motherhood, but also because it carried a horrible sentence for you: of staying alone forever and dying alone. The two great fears got activated in you. That’s the alarm – the double alarm – that turned on in your head.

And it appears it’s still hard for you to switch it off completely. There’s still a fear that your “grim destiny” might be possible, although not probable. The fear is present, but it has lessened.

Well, now you’d need to silence that ominous voice in your head by telling yourself that you’re healthy, you have no medical condition, and you have enough time to meet the right guy. Not just the first willing guy, but someone with whom you’re really compatible. For silencing the ominous voice, what you need again is the voice of the loving, compassionate parent – to assure you that you’ll be fine and there’s no need to worry about it.

Now it occurs to me that your father was actually not just the critical voice, but also the ominous voice, always worrying for the slightest thing, always having plan B if things go wrong, and believing that things might go wrong easily. You internalized both of those voices, and your misdiagnosis only strengthened them… so truly, you need a counter-voice, which is the voice of faith and trust that things will be fine, that you’re safe, that universe has your back.

Both my father – and I suspect your mother too – were too young to be able to check and control their emotions, or even find ways to let them out in a non catastrophic way

My mother wasn’t too young when she had me, she was 33, but she was the worrying, catastrophizing kind of person, like your father. So the ominous voice is very familiar to me, and I too internalized it…

But the question is how do we approach the inner child as adults and how do we start fixing our compass? In my experience, being myself is the same as being silly, that no one will take my seriously and that being spontaneous is not adult-like.

It’s the inner critic telling you that you’re silly. It’s what you’ve been hearing from your parents since you were a child: that you don’t know what’s good for you, that you make stupid decisions. If you’d only do what they tell you, you’d be much better off. And you believe it. Now it’s the time to stop believing it. To do that, bring in the inner compassionate parent, who’ll tell you you’re smart and capable of knowing what’s good for you.

As for being spontaneous, that’s one of the healthy qualities of the inner child that many adults sadly lose, specially if they’re fear-based, like your father and my mother is. If you fear life, you need to have everything pre-planned and under control (and you need to even have a plan B!), because you never know what might happen. And what can happen is only bad, in their mind. So they need to ensure that the least possible damage happens… but that also means the least possible joy can happen too, because they can’t enjoy life while waiting for a catastrophe to happen…

Let me know if you have found ways to address this in your own experience, if you would like to share how (if) you fixed your relationship with your mother, or rather how you respond to your mother behaviors as an adult . Without losing your soul.

Well, I stopped trying to please her, fulfill her expectations and live my life the way she’d want me to. Because of that, she’s very sad and offended at me. We barely speak. And we live in two different countries, so we rarely meet as well. In her eyes, I am a great disappointment and a failure. But I’m not upset about what she thinks of me, I can live with it. She cannot really make me feel bad about myself, like she used to before.

Thank you so much for all the kind and supportive words. I work better in life with words of affirmation and support.

You’re very welcome. And as I said, try to develop that positive inner parental voice, which will give your inner child words of affirmation and support, to counter your judgmental and catastrophizing inner critic!

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Tee.