Dear Lisa:

I read your posts in the two threads you started.

When you were ten or eleven, a man was choking your mother in front of you. You had no way of knowing at that moment that she will survive the choking. What you saw was your mother being killed. This is, figuratively, the ground underneath you being taken away, and like that side table falling, so did you, I am thinking. Any feeling of safety was gone at that point, however fragile it was before that incident.

Without healing, without correction, without help, when you enter adulthood, you don’t magically get over an experience like that. Things happen, and without a solid ground underneath you, you don’t really know what is happening, and you remain scared.

You mentioned psychotherapy, that is a good idea, quality psychotherapy, that is. There is hope, to get your footing on solid ground, to know what happened then and what is happening now.

I hope you post again with your thoughts and feelings.

anita

Dear Lisa:

You are welcome.

Only one session? I was thinking of you individually attending psychotherapy with a quality therapist, just you and the therapist, for a few months at the least, a couple of times a week or so.

I need to get away from the computer soon. Will be back in about sixteen hours or so. Please add to your thread anything else you would like to share. I will read what you share when I return and reply further, if you’d like. Take good care of yourself, please.

anita

Dear Lisa:

I read all your posts on your two threads. The first part of this post is my summary of what you shared. The second part is my understanding of you and your situation.

First part, summary: You are 23, living with your mother, sister and brother, “a family of four”. You feel “always tired and sore”, afraid something bad will happen, often angry, “can’t separate reality and thought”, not knowing if you are overreacting, “What is going on with me? you asked.

It is your perception that your father was not able to “handle his emotions” or “control his behavior” and you are afraid that you are like him, not able to handle your emotions and control your behavior.

Another man, your mother former’s boyfriend, was violent. One time he  was choking your mother when you were ten or eleven. You yelled at him then, telling him to let her go, and you attacked him. A side table nearby fell to the ground as he let her go.

Following that attack and the experience with this man, “the family of four” attended one family psychotherapy session. Your mother did not want to attend a second session because the first was too intense. The man received a restraining order, restraining him from coming in contact with the family.

You were bullied for years, called “pinokkio”, “witch”, your nose drawn on toilet doors.

You got involved in an almost five years relationship that was “mentally abusive… manipulative” and he cheated on you multiple times. Your next relationship was also with a manipulative man: he lied to you, hurt your feelings and kicked you when you were down.

You wrote that you are loyal, and “never intentionally tried to hurt somebody or betrayed them.

Recently you spent the night with a man you met at a restaurant and later spent time in his farm house. During these interactions you felt “not good enough” and it “felt good but bad at the same time”. You were “busy in my head overthinking… If he wouldn’t contact me anymore after this night”.

You stayed a second night because the trains were cancelled. You were worried that he didn’t like you and “wanted (you) to go home already”. After the second night, when his roommate left and you were alone with him, you “couldn’t even talk to him”, “didn’t know what to talk about” and you worried he was bored with you.

You later asked him how he felt about you. He told you that he “wanted to go with the flow” and that he is moving to Spain in a month. You “read his answer” as him telling you that he doesn’t want you, that he only wanted your body. You wanted to tell him that you are not “the kind of girl” that sleeps around.

You are afraid that you “ruined every chance with him”, constantly thinking that he doesn’t want you, that you are in for another heartbreak and, you wrote, “I don’t know what’s reality and thoughts anymore. You feel “used by this guy” and angry at him, you don’t want him “to just move on now without feeling a little guilty for what he’s doing”, for not answering your texts.

Second part, my understanding: your experience of childhood was that of danger, lack of safety. Your mother’s boyfriend was violent. The side table falling when he stopped choking your mother is a symbol, for me, of the ground underneath you falling, crumbling. Without a ground to stand on, without a minimal feeling of safety, a child is frozen in time, scared on and on and on, that is, anxious.

There was no correction of the experience with that man, no adequate therapy, no adequate comforting, quieting of that fear by any of the adults in your life.

You entered adulthood being that anxious child, without a ground to stand on. You look for that ground, for a feeling of safety in men, as women often do. You show up to situations, like the farm house situation, recently, not knowing what to say, what to do. You hope, that is all. You hope that the man will make it okay, provide that ground for you to stand on, that safety. Somehow he will make it happen.

Passive, you are just there. Somehow things should be turning up okay, somehow, because you are there.

Frozen in time, since childhood, you didn’t learn to express your needs, to assert yourself, to meet a man, then learn who he is before getting physically involved with him, to state your intentions, to ask him for his intentions, for his plans before getting physically involved.

Like a child, you hope things will happen magically, without you being a direct and active participant.

The solution is for you to become a direct and active participant in your life. To not just show up to situations with men and let them take it where they will.

I agree with you, you are not a young woman who just sleeps around. You are an anxious child hoping and waiting for a man to give you that feeling of safety, aka love that you so desperately need.

Let me know, if you will, of your thoughts and feelings regarding my understanding so far.

anita

Dear Lisa:

I hope you do see a counselor soon enough, that the counseling will be of good quality and helpful to you. If and whenever you want to add to your thread here (or elsewhere, the other thread or start a new one), please do and I will reply to you again. Take your time and take good care of yourself. Healing is possible for you, finding that ground under your feet is possible and likely.

anita

Dear Lisa;

You can learn to become assertive. Assertiveness is a skill that you can learn. It requires that you notice what you need in a specific situation in life, when interacting with other people, and then, ask or see to it that you receive all or part of what you need. You can learn and practice this skill starting today. Maybe you already did, at times.

You can read about Assertiveness, maybe there are blogs about it on the home page of this website. I hope you can find good sources online. There are books and workbooks on it, I think.

anita