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Dear Dandan,
I have had this huge interest in going to a europian company with a job offer and to work there.
[learning German and learning about German culture] created some interest in working in a different country , mainly European country and precisely Germany.
I wanted to go out to get the international work experience. To work with people around the globe. Also to be independent in a different country. Living by choice and freedom.
The above seem like your genuine desires, something that your soul is calling you to do, not something that has been imposed on you by your parents or the society. Is that right?
But then, something stopped you from going after your desires. It’s your fear of being alone and stepping out of your comfort zone:
I didn’t have the guts to move away from my comforzone here.
But after getting the offer, I only can think about negatives. Like how lonely I will get there. I am a sensitive person. My friends also told I might get lonely there.
You changed your mind because of fear. This fear is quite common when we’re about to do something that requires us to step out of our comfort zone. We’re creatures of habit, we like the known, even if we don’t feel good in it. We fear the unknown and the possible challenges that our new circumstances might bring.
Which will prevail – the fear of the unknown or the excitement about the new opportunities – largely depends on the way we were raised. If your parents were fearful and didn’t really encourage you to try out new things, or if they expect from you to always be there at their side and take care of them, you’d naturally be more reluctant to leave, even for a limited time. Maybe you haven’t developed the sense of independence, required to live on your own in an unfamiliar country, and to cope on your own, emotionally, when your family is away?
If you’d like to share some more about the way you were brought up, it might explain better why you have such a hard time giving yourself a chance to experience something new in life.
Dear Dandan,
Thank you for sharing your life story with us. It hasn’t been easy for you. You grew up with a depressed mother, who would only stop being depressed when going out, to trips, restaurants or movies. This means she couldn’t be joyful with you, nor could you be a reason for her to be happy.
When she was inside the house, doing the chores, taking care of you, she was probably always a little sad and depressed. That can be quite devastating for a child. The only time she would light up a little was when she watched TV. You watched a lot of TV with her, and there would be all those romance movies. It’d make your mother happy, it made her feel alive. You felt good for a moment while watching romance movies with her.
Fast forward to your 5th and 6th grade, where you started having crushes on girls. It’s normal at that age, but for you it was almost like a game. When you described your crushes when you were older, you said “I liked getting crushes and approaching and flirting with gilrs though I wasn’t serious.” I think having a crush and being engaged in all that drama reminded you of the times when you watched romantic movies with your mother. It made you feel alive – the same it made you feel alive when you were a child. In short, it gave you a high. So I guess it was probably a little addictive.
In the 7th and 8th grade you developed a passion for dancing and even won in dance competitions. You say you loved a feeling of being like a celebrity, and teachers and others appreciating your performance. How did your mother react to your dancing successes – was she enthusiastic or not too much?
Later, in the 11th grade, you developed a passion for bodybuilding and were quite fit and had the best physique ever. But you didn’t continue at the university. You now regret that you haven’t pursued further those passions from your youth, and that you wasted many years on failed relationships, having crushes, and smoking and drinking.
Dear Dandan, I believe your life so far has been a pursuit of passion – something that will lift you from the depression that your mother gave over to you, since she was depressed too. And also, it was an attempt to bond with a woman who will finally be enthusiastic about you, unlike your mother was. Romance and crushes served that double purpose: 1) of giving you excitement and a “high”, and 2) giving you hope of finding a girl who’ll finally be head over heels about you.
In addition to that is the problem of self-esteem. Because you couldn’t make your mother happy, you concluded you weren’t good and worthy enough. You had a taste of “worth” when you won those dance competitions and were somewhat of a celebrity. But it wasn’t enough to help your self-esteem because the wound was much deeper. You feel unworthy and unlovable, because your mother gave you that message, albeit unintentionally.
Perhaps your flirting with the idea of becoming an actor is even an attempt to become someone your mother would finally appreciate – because it seems she’s quite enchanted by actors.
So till now, you’ve been living with the false belief that you’re unlovable and unworthy, and it’s been like a self-fulfilling prophecy because you’ve made some mistakes. But this can change, your wound can be healed…
Dear Dandan,
First, I am glad that both you and your family all recovered from covid!! I’ve been following the news and am hoping that things will get better soon in your country…
Thanks for explaining some more about your mother and your situation at home and while growing up. It appears you were and still are your mother’s favorite:
She likes me more than my siblings. She always takes extra care of me. Even now. Treats me special, prepares juice , extra snack food for me. If I am not normal , she will be disturbed too.
My mom still loves me a lot. My sister says that my mom is liked obsessed with me. My mom wants me to be happy every single second. But i don’t know I couldn’t handle too much love.
One reason you could be her favorite is that you’re a boy, which is in many families in India more appreciated than having a girl. I don’t know if it’s true for your family. But beyond that, I think there’s another reason why your mom likes you the best:
She likes talking. She has complained a lot that dad doesn’t talk at all. she hasn’t had anyone to talk and share at all. But I have listened to her a lot.
Two days back when tehre was some fight, my mom was dull, she seeks me all the time. She wants me to be around her. She tells that my presence gives her some strength.
Your mother had two major problems, I believe. One is that she’s sad and depressed by nature, so she‘s a person with low energy and quite needy. She needs others to lift her up, and she also needs movies and other events to lift her from her lethargy.
Emotionally, she’s a needy person, with a propensity to easily slip into depression. Even if she took good care of you and your sisters physically, and walked twice per day to your school to give you lunch and snacks, it doesn’t mean she was able to give you the same amount of emotional care and nurturance. In fact, it appears she needed you, her son, to provide that emotional care for her.
She felt lonely in her marriage and didn’t have an emotional companion in your father, which means she didn’t have emotional support from him. He worked a lot, trying to ensure the best future for you, and he also wasn’t someone who talks a lot. I assume he wasn’t really emotionally responsive, didn’t understand her emotional needs. As someone needy and fragile as her, your mother needed someone to nurture her emotionally, and that someone was you. She talked a lot with you. Perhaps she sometimes complained that your father was so silent and unresponsive?
In any case, it appears the roles were reversed: instead of her taking care of you emotionally, you took care of her. You tried to make her happy but it was difficult because her unhappiness was much deeper and you could never make her happy. But of course, a child wouldn’t know that.
In the 11th grade, when you transferred to that strict, Spartan like boarding school, you did pretty well in the first couple of months, you even consoled your school mates when they felt homesick. But when you went home for holidays, I guess you saw how your mother was sad and depressed, and how bad she felt without your emotional support – and you couldn’t bear that. You faked stomach problems so you could come home never to return to that school again. I believe you didn’t do it because you were weak and needy (or at least that wasn’t the main reason), but because your mother was weak and needy. She needed you, and you couldn’t bear that she’d be without you.
This goes on to this day – she seeks you to console her when she has a fight with your sister. She seeks you to put cream on her legs, even though she could do it on her own. But she likes your caring and your proximity too – as she says, you give her strength. More precisely, you give her emotional support, like you always did.
She was so fragile amd needy of that emotion I felt. I did apply and massage. I do that many times. But that day as she was needy of that emotion, I felt so heavy inside, it was too much to me. Felt like crying, I don’t know how to explain that. When someone shows too much of emotions , emotional need are is so fragile around me, it makes me very weak and I feel like crying.
Yes, you feel heavy, because it’s a heavy burden for a small, needy child to take care of his needy mother. You could never give her what she needed, and at the same time you never received what you needed from her. It makes you feel desperate. You are dependent on each other, you’re still attached to her like with an umbilical cord. And that’s why you couldn’t accept that job in Germany – because your mother needs you. You can’t leave her, because she’s needy. She’s even more needy than you are. It feels hopeless for you.
So you’d need to learn to emotionally detach herself from her, and find happiness and fulfillment regardless of her inability to be happy and fulfilled. You’d need to detach that umbilical cord…
After you detach the umbilical cord, you’d need to focus on fulfilling your own unmet emotional needs. Only then could you have a chance of having a healthy romantic relationship. So there are steps, it’s a journey, but it’s doable and it’s worth it! Because as you start untangling those knots, things will be become clearer and you won’t feel at such an impasse like now.
Dear Dandan:
You are welcome. The more you share, the better I understand. You shared previously: “My parents are so loving and caring”, and most recently: “I know for sure my mom loved all of us”.
Let’s talk about a mother’s love in general: a mother’s love, when it is really love, on an ongoing basis, it makes for a mentally healthy child. Let’s look at the mental health of your sister and you (you did not describe your other sister):
1) your sister: “my sister used to attempt suicide many times and my dad used to hold her tightly and not let her. This happened for years”.
2) you: “I hate being alone most of the time…I feel always low… mostly low and depressed… I have used a razor blade to mark cuts in my hand. Plenty of them. Lot of blood… I used to drink and smoke a lot”, etc.
The proof (of a mother’s love) is in the pudding (the child): if your mother truly loved you and your sister, where did that love go.. why is it not in you and your sister.
Also, if your mother really loved you and your sisters, how is it that when you first mentioned the word love in the context of your mother, it was not about her love for her children, but her love for going out and being entertained: “She loves going out, eating out in restaurants”, etc.
If she loved her children where was her happiness about spending time with the children she supposedly loves so much: “my mom is.. low and depressed.. most of the time when she is inside the home.. Once we plan to go out somewhere, she becomes more happy and enthusiastic“- she was not happy inside the home with her children, she was happy to go out and enjoy restaurants etc.
Your sister’s suicide attempts or gestures, you cutting yourself, feeling low most of the time, having a very low self-esteem, having many crushes on girls and women (being desperate for love) all these do not indicate a mother’s love.
The reasons and excuses for why your mother did not love her children (“she didn’t have good education. She did not go to college.. My mom has social anxiety… isn’t mature enough… inferiority complex… she wasn’t capable… She has faced a lot of mental trauma herself) do not change the fact that she didn’t. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding: if she loved you, where is that love, where did it go?
“She likes talking. She has complained a lot that dad doesn’t talk at all.. I have listened to her a lot”- you were your mother’s friend of sorts, a substitute husband perhaps.
“She was dull if we were dull. She mirrors our feelings”- for any child, the mother is the mirror for the child’s feelings. The child looks up to the mother for emotional understanding and guidance.
“For her, it is something emotional when I apply and massage her legs when she is in pain. She was so fragile and needy… I did apply and massage. I do that many times. But that day as she was needy of that emotion, I felt so heavy inside, it was too much for me. Felt like crying, I don’t know how to explain that” (May 1, about your mother).
– Earlier (April 30) you wrote about your first girlfriend: “whenever we were too close.. as she was so soft and fragile, I used to feel something weird, as in something too much, too much that I can handle in my mind.. being so close, so much attached, it was something that made me so much mad. I don’t know how to explain”.
Do you see the parallels between the above two paragraphs, one in regard to your mother and the second in regard to your first girlfriend?
You wrote that your first girlfriend was “soft and fragile” and your mother was “so fragile”, but your mother too was soft. You repeatedly, over the years, as a boy and later, as a man, massaged her soft legs, looking up at her face, seeing her smiling with pleasure, enjoying the physical, fleshly pleasure that you gave her.. that experience felt weird, didn’t it, too close, too much to handle in your mind…?
Wikipedia on covert incest: “Covert incest, also known as emotional incest, is a type of abuse in which a parent looks for their child for emotional support that would be normally provided by another adult… The effects of covert incest are thought to mimic actual incest though to a lesser degree, and Kenneth Adams, who originated the concept, describes the victims as having anger or guilt towards parents and problems with self-esteem, addiction and sexual and emotional intimacy”.
anita
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by .
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This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by
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