Dear Daniel:

Good to read that overall you are in a good mood, that you don’t regret moving back to your parents’ home, that you managed to study almost every day, and the best part to read is that you are rather proud of yourself!

Regarding you having “an issue about people.. not satisfied with the people around me”, not feeling comfortable with people, and having little hope that you will ever meet a friend or a lover with whom you will feel comfortable, and therefore you “suffer every day and angry when I see people who seem happier than me”-

– this is the same emotional experience you had as a child, feeling uncomfortable much of the time with your father, and with your mother. When we get emotionally injured in childhood, we continue to experience that injury as adults, unless we take on the very slow healing process. Significant emotional injuries do not heal by themselves, they don’t disappear by themselves, because of the passage of time, or because of career accomplishments and material success.

Here is some of what you shared about the nature of your emotional injury in childhood: “He (your biological father) was violent… he could get angry at any moment for no apparent reason.. My mom is rather calm but often stressful… She worries about everything (May 18-19).

“When I began living with my mom, everything revolved around surviving.. we had nowhere to go. So for a few years, we traveled from place to place in order to eventually find a place to stay. I must have been 6 when we found that place… She (your mother) wanted to protect me from anything that could hurt me.. I was sad when she was sad (August 15-17).

As a child you suffered from your father’s undisciplined anger. Every animal that is able to sense anger gets scared when sensing anger, because anger is a threat of violence, it precedes violence. Of course, children are especially afraid of anger, particularly adults’ anger because children are small and weak and physically depend on the care of the adults in their lives.

Your mother did not express anger, but she expressed anxiety, and just like you were “sad when she was sad”, you were also anxious when she was anxious; she was “often stressful.. worries about everything”=> you were often stressful and worried about everything.

Your mother was overprotective of you, you wrote a few times, but of course, she didn’t protect you from her anxiety, from her worries, so those.. became your own. You are not comfortable with people now because you were not comfortable with an unpredictably angry father or with an often anxious mother.

There really is a way, Daniel, to experience a different kind of emotional experience than the one you had in childhood and ever since, but it takes the ongoing dedication to the process of healing. I understand that you are busy with your schooling, and it indeed should be your first priority, as well as taking care of yourself best you can. But keep in mind that the healing work will need to be done sometime in the future, hopefully in the next few years.

anita

Dear Daniel:

You are welcome. I think that writing a letter to your father is a good exercise, and that “writing everyday about anything” is a good practice, it is a form of expression (ex-pression) that make it possible for some of the intensity of deep, troubling emotions to exit (ex-it) the inside, where they are trapped.

Good to read that you are studying hard. I understand your obsession with “the idea of having a girlfriend”- one day it will happen. I understand the deep frustration on the matter (something to write about..?), but one day, it will happen for you.

anita