Dear Addy,

you’re welcome, I am glad you liked the example.

Just today I’ve tried to empathize my friend, but the thing was that her stupidity made me little grumpy so.. Like who reads negative news (Murder and etc) super early in the morning and then be like “It felt like a nightmare”?

As anita said, when you see someone as stupid, it prevents you to empathize with them. OK, maybe you don’t see her as stupid, but you thought her behavior is stupid (to read the news first thing in the morning). But even so, an empathic response would have been something like “Oh that’s terrible” (reacting to the news of some murder). And then proceed with a suggestion “you know, that’s why I never read news so early in the morning – sometimes they are so horrible they spoil my entire day. I prefer to start with xyz…” (here you describe what helps you start your day in a positive, uplifting way).

So you empathize with her feeling of distress, and then you suggest something which might help her in the future. But you don’t push your opinion on her (specially since she didn’t ask for your advice), and you don’t treat her as inferior to you. If you do that, you won’t sound grumpy or condescending…

And for work I had to speak in Indirect way to one of the colleague ” like yeah it’s not like I told you to do it 3 days before. Obviously, you have other important stuff to do” but after that I felt like I did hurt her in some way.

Yes, that was rather cynical. Was it your subordinate to whom you said that? Was she supposed to complete a task and failed to do that, and this was your way of scolding/criticizing her?

I don’t know why attacking like that is a reflex for me

Being cynical and sarcastic is a defense mechanism. I think it happens when our heart is closed (guarded), and so we’re not able to empathize with others. A lot of people use it in communication on social media, specially when they argue with people with differing opinions, because it seems cool. When you use sarcasm, you’re not vulnerable. It’s like a shield. But when you use sarcasm with people with whom you want to have a close, friendly relationship, that’s a problem. Because we don’t want to throw poisonous darts at them. Rather, we won’t honest and open communication…

If you use sarcasm automatically, like a reflex, it could be because you were attacked a lot in your childhood, and you learned to close your heart and pretend it doesn’t hurt. And then you use poisonous darts to defeat the “enemy”. Maybe it’s like you’re saying “you can’t hurt me, I’ll rather hurt you“.

Maybe I buried something so deep for so long that I don’t even remember but it’s still there and I don’t know how to work on that

It could be that you built a shield around your heart, so you can’t be hurt again? And this shield goes up automatically, whenever you feel a certain friction or disagreement with anybody? And you start throwing those “darts” at them?

Dear Addy,

Your work colleague is obviously struggling either with that particular task or something else is putting pressure on her and this is effecting her ability to perform her job in a competent & timely manner. Also when you initially asked her to do this task did you give her a completion deadline and did you also say it was okay to prioritize this task over her other jobs?

Regards Roberta

Dear Addy,

Well, it’s not the best weekend for me because I tested positive for covid today, and am having a pretty massive headache. But it’s a little better now than a few hours ago, and thankfully, I am able to reply 🙂

Let me be frank: it seems to me that you’re in a bit of a Protector mode again, since you’re now trying to diminish the bad that happened in your childhood (your father harshly criticizing you for even small “imperfections”, getting furious and yelling at you, easily losing patience with you). Here is what you said earlier about it:

My father is a civil engineer and perfectionist and he gets angry if things aren’t going as he wants it to be. And in my teenage I used to help him even though I didn’t really wanted it but in my head I was like no let me help.. But whenever I do something wrong, or get anxious to find tool or take some more time to find.. He’d get furious and scold me

Once while working he told me find something and I couldn’t find it and he give me like a “dead eye” and I got really frustrated and I screamed at him and ran into my room and like “I ain’t no living here no more” but my mom stopped me tried so solve this matter.

What you’re mentioning now (in your latest post) is only that he was comparing you to other boys in your village, and that all parents were doing that. But that’s not the only thing he was doing, was he? It was his anger and rage at you that was truly damaging to your psyche, and then in addition, there was comparison and criticism if you haven’t performed as well as others. This kind of treatment for sure left a mark on you, even if you claim it hasn’t.

Anita already talked about it (not sure if on this thread or elsewhere) that in childhood our psyche is like a sponge and soaks in both the good and the bad conditioning. That’s why the first 7 years of our life are called formative years. So even if you think that some things that happened to you weren’t a big deal – from an adult’s perspective – they were a pretty big deal for you as a child. And it left a mark on you, your self-confidence, your relationships etc.

So please Addy, don’t try to minimize what happened to you. Your father unfortunately wasn’t a loving and kind father, but a strict, judgmental and angry father. Perhaps he was sometimes nice to you, but only on those occasions when you did everything “perfectly”. Otherwise he wasn’t pleasant at all, as it seems to me.

You are also finding excuses for your mother. But she did tell you to stay silent and not confront your father, hasn’t she? When he criticized you, when he was extremely harsh with you, you were supposed to endure it silently and “turn the other cheek”. Because in your culture, the father needs to be respected, even if he is a bully.

Your mother didn’t want conflict indeed, but on what terms? Well, the terms were that you suppress your protest and your justified anger (and your natural self-defense mechanism), and keep silent. This is how you’ve learned not to set boundaries, to never say directly and openly if something bothers you. To never complain. To not act in your best interest (because sometimes it is in our interest to protect ourselves). Your mother taught you that.

She pleaded at your reason, telling you that you should be more mature than your father:

My mom to me is like “one of you have be the understanding one, Now you decide”

She presented it (enduring abuse) as a virtue. And you obeyed. You decided to be the “understanding one”, who will take the abuse silently. And so you accepted – due to your mother’s programming – that you cannot protect yourself from your father’s anger, that he has the right to disrespect you whenever he pleases, and you should just swallow it. This is how she disabled you from setting healthy boundaries.

I am not saying that you should be angry at either your father or mother, and go to attack them and tell them all your grievances. No, that’s not what I am saying. But what I am saying is that you need to first accept that certain abuse and false, harmful conditioning happened in your childhood. Even if your parents didn’t know better – even if they didn’t do anything outside of your culture – still, they have harmed you. Their parenting left a mark on you, left certain wounds in your psyche, which you need to heal. If you want to have a happy and fulfilling life.

Admitting that the damage happened – even if your parents didn’t do it on purpose – is the first step to healing.

Dear Addy,

yeah unfortunately covid is still around, and even if it’s omicron and I’ve been vaccinated 3 times, it’s not too easy on me. Thank you for the advice – I’ll try the ginger tea with honey and lemon…

It’s good you’re realizing that some inner child work is necessary too, and that you can’t only focus on the future without addressing the past.

Today I was thinking about a question you posed earlier – why it is that you’re afraid of emotional intimacy and feel trapped in relationships:

I shun emotional closeness and I’m not sure why…

Now I started to think I do have the issue of expressing my emotions or share it openly

When they [a girl that you like] finally start to get even closer with me, I just feel like I don’t know how to explain but like trapped?

Well, I think it’s because you were taught not to show your feelings (your “bad” feelings, such as anger and hurt and sadness). You were taught to always show a happy face and never complain. And you probably believe that this is how it should be in romantic relationships too.

If you believe that you cannot be honest with the other person, that you need to pretend to be perfect (perfectly happy and capable and optimistic and driven) – then no wonder you’ll feel trapped.

So it seems to me that you believe – due to your childhood conditioning – that you need to fake it in relationships, and you don’t want that. You’d rather be alone.

Anyway, that’s my best guess…

What do you think?