Dear Dandan,

perhaps there was a misunderstanding. It’s clear that you love your mother very much and believe she was loving and caring towards you and your siblings. Perhaps she intended to, but as you said, she had many issues, like inferiority complex, and feeling sad a lot of of the times, and this affects a child a lot.

My mother e.g. believed she was a martyr, and she criticized me a lot and was strict with me. But she did everything for me, she took care of me physically very well, got up at 4am in the morning to cook lunch for me before she went to work, etc. She was a martyr mother, provided for all of my material needs, but not my emotional needs. And that caused a lot of psychological problems for me as I grew up.

What I am trying to say that our parents might have good intentions and might care for us physically, but due to their own limitations, they fail to meet our emotional needs, which are as important as our physical needs. So e.g. if your mother had low self-esteem, she would allow her children and her husband to yell at her:

Every single day in the morning before leaving to school, they used to shout at mom for every single thing like if they don’t like the breakfast, if the uniform was not ironed well and for various reasons.

She has faced a lot of abuse from my sisters as well as dad.

Perhaps that weakened her further, and she was suffering a lot, always being a little sad and depressed. She believed she cannot help herself, or even that she deserves it (you said she had inferiority complex, being born in a village, having no college education). So if your dad and sisters were abusive to her, perhaps you were the only one who understood her and had pity for her. You didn’t treat her like that, you only shouted at her a few times. You were kind to her most of the times and tried to console her and make her happy. She could talk to you, perhaps complain about your father and sisters, and you would listen. Was that what was going on?

It doesn’t make your mother a bad person,  it’s just that she didn’t have the capacity to take care of herself, or stand up for herself. She was weak and had low self-esteem, and as a result, she didn’t have the capacity to give you proper emotional care either. I can say with certainty that when a parent has emotional/psychological deficiencies, it always reflects on the children.

My mother was also encouraging me to study well and go abroad to places like Germany, but at the same time she was critical of me and didn’t have trust in me. Your mother seems like she didn’t criticize you, but she was emotionally dependent on you, and it was a burden for you, whether you’re aware of it or not. A child cannot give emotional support to a parent. Rather, a child needs emotional support from the parent. If the roles are reversed, a child cannot grow up to be a healthy, independent individual with needs and wants of their own. They will always remain attached to the parent, trying to make them happy, and making their happiness depend on their parent’s happiness.

So I believe you should be looking at your role as emotional care-taker to your mother, not in the sense of emotional incest, but simply as you seeing your mother suffer and be sad, and trying to make her happy and comfort her, when she couldn’t do that on her own.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Tee.

Dear Dandan:

Earlier you wrote that about 2014 and onward: “I wanted to improve my self esteem, improve myself in every aspect my looks, appearance, personality”. In May 2, 2021, you wrote: “I will focus (on) the workouts and what I can do to improve my confidence… getting started with the workouts for this transformation challenge”-

– I want to propose to you today an emotional transformation challenge that will make it possible for you to succeed long-term in other emotional (self-esteem, confidence), physical (looks, appearance), career (a satisfying job, maybe abroad) and relationship (a satisfying relationship/ marriage) challenges:

Stop seeing life through your mother’s eyes. See life anew, with your own eyes. It will make a huge difference in your life for the better.

Through your mother’s eyes, she is Everybody’s Victim, everyone judges her and everyone victimizes her, including  neighbors: (“She didn’t have a great relationship with the neighbours as well when we were kids. She always felt people judged her”).

You feel so much pain for her because you believe that she really is and has been, since her childhood, Everybody’s Victim, a tragic figure, and you are eager to defend her and show (here on your thread) that she really is that victim, that tragic figure.

I understand that her life has been unfortunate in some significant ways, but many people’s lives have been, and are unfortunate, including your sisters’ and your own life: look back at your life so far, hasn’t it been quite tragic?

She is not more of a victim than many millions of people all over the world, past and present. She is not as much of a victim as she has presented herself to be. In some contexts she presented herself to be the victim when it is not true at all, for example, your sisters, when they were young girls, were her victims, not the other way around.

As long as you believe that your mother is Everybody’s Victim, The World’s Tragic Figure, you will continue to carry in your heart too much pain to handle. With too much pain to handle, you are bound to fail in the challenges you set for yourself.

Let’s look further into how The Victim affects her favorite, special person: “She likes me more than my siblings. She always takes extra care of me. Even now. Treats me special.. My mom still loves me a lot. My sister says that my mom is like obsessed with me… I don’t know I couldn’t handle too much love… She wants me to be around her. She tells that my presence gives her some strength… For her, it is something emotional when I apply and massage her legs when she is in pain. She was so fragile and needy of that emotion when 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“-

– her special treatment of you is too much for you to handle, it makes you feel so heavy inside. It may give her some strength, but it takes away your strength and  makes you weak. Her special treatment of you is keeping you sick: it traps you and imprisons you inside the life of Everybody’s Victim.

Please take on the challenge of freeing yourself from that prison, that world: see your mother as she really is and you will see you the way you really are (a much  better person than you imagine yourself to be in every way), and you will see other people as they are. This clear seeing will make it possible for you to make better choices in life, choose wisely what other challenges to take on, and succeed in those challenges.

anita

Dear Dandan,

it’s good to hear from you again! I am glad you’re doing the body transformation challenge and haven’t given up. I imagine it makes you feel a little better and more positive about yourself?

I understand you weren’t ready last time to look deeper into the psychological stuff. But you might need to, at least a little, to resolve the dilemma about your ex girlfriend. You say: “I still can’t forget her. I haven’t had this closeness with anyone else“.

Considering that you had 2 long-term relationships before her, one of them almost ending in marriage (and it didn’t only because of her parents, not because you didn’t want to get married) – it means quite a lot. I mean, if you wanted to get married to a girl with whom you felt less close than to your ex, then it would make sense to seriously consider your ex for marriage as well. At least that’s how I see it.

You say you weren’t this confused before the pandemic:

I wasn’t this confused pre pandemic. I always had people, friends around and that gives me mental strength.

Your confusion may have to do with the fact that you’re living with your parents. It triggers and amplifies your feeling of insecurity, even hopelessness. Because growing up with a sad and depressed mother, and never really succeeding in making her happy although you tried your best – can lead to a feeling of hopelessness. You may be unconsciously thinking something like: “today things are good and we may laugh (when mom is happy after seeing a good movie), but tomorrow it may all come crashing down and we may lose it again. I may lose it again (when mom is depressed and I cannot console her).”

So, you might have this feeling that happiness is fleeting, and that you will lose it sooner or later – because that’s how you felt while growing up. And now that you’ve been living with your family for l,5 years, the feeling is stronger and you cannot shake if off. You don’t have the mental power to resist it on your own.

Please consider that this might be a problem, and that living with your parents affects you negatively. It affects your thought process too, making you even more insecure, confused and hopeless.

You might want to consider that the fears you had/have about your ex are also magnified by living at your parents’ place. If you want to have more clarity, you’d need to move away from home. I believe you’d need to do that before you start applying for jobs abroad, before making any major decision in life. Because now you’re trapped in this thinking, and even if you get a good offer, you will most probably refuse it, like you did in the past:

I have this feeling is grass is greener the other side on all the aspects of my life. Every single thing. Even about job. I have an interview tomorrow at Bloomberg and I know even if I crack it, from that moment, I will feel negative about the offer and moving to different country. But now when I am here with a different company, I want to try for companies outside. My mind keeps switching so frequently. There is something fundamentally wrong with my thought process.

Yes, your through process is hijacked by your fears and the feeling of hopelessness and worthlessness – everything you felt as a little boy. In order to help yourself, you’d need to move away from home – as prerequisite No1. What do you think about it? Do you think it’s feasible?

I sometimes think was it all a mistake, that we both met in the first place.  … I wonder was it a mistake that I met her in the first place or that’s how people meet the liked ones in the world.

Many love stories are born from “chance” encounters. Why do you think it was a mistake? If you felt more close with her than with anybody else, then it can’t be a mistake – but rather a gift?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Tee.

Dear Dandan:

* In your thread, you wrote about your depression: “I hate being alone most of the times. I get zoned out and get depressed for no reason, even among friends. I feel always low for no reason…I feel depressed with myself when I am alone.. I get depressed mostly post afternoon and evening.. I feel like which ever path I take I am doomed and going to be miserable”-

– your depression is a result of a daily complex chemical mix that your brain and body produce, including neurotransmitters and hormones. Your brain is in a chemical habit of being depressed, a habit that intensifies post afternoons and evenings.

You wrote that your depression “sometimes doesn’t have any main reason”, and sometimes it is because of your un-accomplishments, such as not getting to your best physique,  “So I have a feeling that if I lift up these work on these, eventually I will be fine and happy”-

– Your depression is a chemical habit of your brain and body. Exercising helps temporarily because of uplifting chemicals that are produced during exercise, but some time after the exercise, your brain goes back to its chemical habit of depression. Therefore, when you accomplish your desired physique, not long after, you are very likely to return to your habit of depression, and be a depressed man with a great physique.

* In your thread, you wrote about your overthinking: “Every small step. I over think a lot. I have like 100 thoughts with images and gifs running in my mind without control every minute…My mind keeps switching so frequently. There is something fundamentally wrong with my thought process….I tend to think a lot about past whenever something doesn’t happen in a good way but I know there is no use of thinking that way… I am overthinking… Sitting at home alone in a room and overthinking about everything makes everything look scary”-

– You are suffering from obsessive thinking. (You obsessively think about negative topics because you are depressed)

From reading your words (quotes above) and seeing the volume of your posts (how your many thoughts burst into the screen as you type them), it seems clear to me that you need to see a medical doctor for psychiatric medications so to treat your (1) depression, (2) obsessive thinking.

I am not a medical doctor, but millions of people are treated successfully with the SSRI group of medications that are used to treat depression and obsessive thinking (one tablet treats both). You don’t have to be on psychiatric drugs forever, but in your case, I think that they are a necessary beginning for your healing.

You have to have a relief from the severe depression and obsessive thinking that you suffer from before you are able to make significant life choices regarding career and relationships.

“I feel like which ever path I take I am doomed and going to be miserable”- without medications providing you with the relief you need so desperately, I agree with this statement. Please see a competent, reputable medical doctor as soon as possible. (I don’t think that SSRIs will interrupt your physique building, you can ask a doctor about it).

anita

Dear Dandan:

“She moved on. Gone for good” – I hope that she really did move on, for her benefit.

“I am a horrible horrible person” – only if you posted today because you hope that she will read your words, feel sorry for you and change her mind about moving on. Is that why you posted here today?

anita