Dear Neo:

You wrote: “Even though my existence was insignificant I had few dreams”- in reality, you having been born and alive, your significance is not lesser than any other human. Yet you believe that your existence was/ is insignificant. And so, I ask myself, why you believe that way.

You wrote that you had dreams… even though your existence was insignificant. It is as if you were not supposed to have dreams, as if you borrowed something that other people have, dreams. Other people, being significant, have dreams. So you stepped into a … sort of fantasy land where you too could have dreams.

But the belief deep inside, that you are insignificant, will not allow the dreams to come true. Interestingly, even when a person who believes he is insignificant, even if his dream does come true (example, passing an important exam), the person still feels miserable, right after the first emotional high, perhaps.

And so, it is the belief that you are insignificant that needs to be looked at. What do you think?

anita

Dear Neo:

The belief that you are insignificant took hold in your brain when you were a child, when your parents expressed to you that they were not proud of you (“I could not do anything that would make my parents proud”).

I do hope you pass this exam you are studying for. But this core belief, that you don’t have what it takes to make your parents proud, is in your way of studying effectively. This core belief causes anxiety that interrupts your brain from operating at its best.

Parents often enough communicate such damaging information to a young child who takes it in, naturally and automatically, as the truth, not being capable of evaluating such information.

And as often as this happens, the messages parents pass on to the child are incorrect and so, the core beliefs formed are also incorrect.

anita

Dear Neo:

You are welcome. Clearly you have low confidence in your abilities. You wrote in your original post: “With luck and lots of help, I completed my college degree”. You assign the credit of your college degree completion to luck and help from others,  not to your abilities.

Clearly, you believe that you are not good enough, “I always thought I’d never find someone who thinks I’m good enough to have in their life”.

The reason for having low confidence in your abilities and in general feeling not good enough is that your parents were proud of your brother but not of you, “I could not do anything that would make my parents proud”. What this means is that you tried, you did things, but they either ignored what you did, or expressed to you that what you did was not good enough, insignificant.

You wrote: “You can’t possibly believe you have skills to fly a jet unless you have actually flown one”. But you can believe that you can learn the skills successfully if, as a child, for example, when you presented to your parents a drawing you made in school and either one of them took their time to look at your drawing, with pleasure and appreciation, and comment on how much they like the way you used green and red in the apple tree you drew.

As far as your guilt- from what you shared you did hurt her. It is unfortunate. But notice this, when we are hurt, as you have been hurt as a child and onward, it is impossible to not pass on that hurt somehow. I am not in any way… recommending to pass on the hurt, of course not. What I am saying is that it is not possible not to, somehow. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”, I hope I am quoting it correctly, this is a law of physics. A thing or a person cannot not react to hurt.

All you can do is do your best to heal from your original, early hurt, so there is no more hurt to pass on to others.

I hope you post again with your thoughts and feelings.

anita