Dear q:

You don’t sound like a broken record at all, not to me!

The way I see it, your emotions need the space to fully be, not suppressed, or ignored. The need full expression, so please give your emotions about your ex (and about anything at all) the opportunity to express more!

I think that peace will come when you express more.

🤍🌿 Anita

Dear q:

“Why did you doubt yourself when you said that something to that person? What was said?”- I was being very nice to this older man, trying to make him feel good, but then I got scared, thinking I was trying too hard and came across weird. I wish I was milder. I wish I said less and was less invested, giving people space.

“To be honest, the job I got recently wasn’t a good fit and it was completely not what I expected. I feel a bit deceived and things weren’t aligned with me and management so we both decided it’s best to part ways and find something more appropriate. So I feel like I’m back to square one…

“At the same time, I believe my ex has returned back from overseas for a while now and the silence from her indicates that she has no interest in us anymore…and I feel disappointed that reality is what it is.”-

I am sorry it wasn’t a good fit.

What if a change in attitude alone can move you from square one to square two..

I came across a quote today: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl.

Freedom to choose our attitudes.. square two?

🤍 Anita

Dear q:

“I like to think nobody will remember what we said to them after 24 hours 🙂”- This line made me smile for the first time today 🙂.

“I’m completely lost at what my next move should be.”- I just spent a couple of hours reading through our communication since June of this year (in your two threads), and as my habit is, I collected quotes from what you wrote over time, but then I read somewhere that you said you cringed reading your own words from long ago, so better I don’t quote your words from the past.

The relationship ended in the very beginning of July 2025 while you were unemployed for a bit over a year and looking for a job for a few months. You were often very anxious about the job search situation and about your relationship where you felt that you were behaving very needily with her, that your whole world slowly revolved around her, and that she withdrew from you emotionally and lost her attraction to you.

After the breakup you felt guilty, wanting to fix things, feeling not worthy enough, not good enough to be loved; regret, remorse (what you referred to as punishing emotions). By Oct 3, you found a new job but wasn’t happy with it. You reached out to her (she was living overseas at the time) to chat, expressing your romantic intentions, but she was lukewarm and said that she doesn’t feel confident working things out, that best she can do is be friends first. Since then she returned from overseas but you haven’t heard from her.

You had ups and downs throughout the time since the breakup, feeling calm and confident at times, thinking about moving on and meeting someone new, but then you’d feel low and missing her, ruminate about what you may have done wrong to cause the breakup, and how to fix it, and back to feeling better, etc.

You shared something on Sept 19 that stood out to me today (and I’ll take an exception and quote it here):

“I think what made me really crack a few months ago was really the people that surrounded me weren’t the most supportive. I was getting a lot of pressure from the people around me to get a job etc.”-

Today, I wonder if you were referring to your parents in the above 2 sentences, and if growing up you were pressured to succeed but were not offered adequate emotional support (We never discussed your childhood).

If that’s the case, it could explain the nature of your attachment to your ex, the anxiety, the guilt, the hope, the ups and downs.

When you talked about anxiety driving every action, about your world revolving around her, it paints the picture of someone who is desperately seeking reassurance, comfort, and stability from your ex — the way a little boy might look to his mother to soothe his fears.

I think that the hope you’re struggling to kill isn’t just about her. It’s about the hope that someone else will step in and fill the role of “mother”, perhaps.

The way forward is in learning to soothe that child within you, to become the adult who can soothe the child within. That shift — from needing her to mother you, to learning to parent yourself — is what will eventually free you. It’s not quick, and it’s not easy, but it’s the path that turns attachment into genuine love instead of dependency. (We’ve talked about it at length and you’ve already done this type of work.. it’s just that more needs to be done).

That’s why the breakup feels so devastating — because it wasn’t only the loss of a girlfriend, it was the loss of the person you leaned on to soothe your fears, to make you feel worthy, to calm the guilt and insecurity. But no romantic relationship can survive when one person is asked to play the role of caretaker.

You described a loop: I feel guilty → I want to repair → I can’t repair → I feel guilty again. It’s an unresolved guilty that keeps going. You want to repair what’s broken, but since reconciliation isn’t happening, the guilt has nowhere to go.

Guilt is your way of holding onto her. If you blame yourself, then fixing yourself might win her back. That keeps hope alive.

Guilt also gives you a sense of control. If the breakup was your fault, then it wasn’t random or meaningless — it was caused. That’s painful, but it feels safer than facing the idea that sometimes love ends for reasons outside our control. Children often blame themselves when a parent withdraws. You may be replaying that pattern: “She left because I was bad.”

You said the breakup “validated” your negative feelings about yourself. You feel guilty not just for actions, but for being who you are. In your mind, her leaving confirms you weren’t “good enough.” That’s where guilt blends with shame — punishing emotions that go beyond mistakes into identity.

But neither guilt nor shame can heal you. It only keeps you stuck in the loop. What heals is shifting from “I was bad” to “I was hurting, and I acted out of fear.”, and also, recognize that most romantic relationships end for all kinds of reasons. Plenty of employed and not overly needy men experience breakups.

Part of inner child work is revisiting childhood so to identify patterns. Personally, I suffered lots of anxiety, guilt and shame growing up. I am working on these most intensely these very days. In regard to guilt over making mistakes currently, when I find myself critical of what I’ve said or done wrong, I reframe my thoughts similar to the suggestion above (“I was bad” => “I was hurting, and I acted out of fear.”).

Only yesterday, I talked too much (in a small group setting) to someone who.. talks too much. In practice (although not in intent) giving him personal material to spread to others. later, I felt anxious and guilty about making a terrible mistake (I catastrophized it) and feeling like a terrible person for having made it. So, I reframed: I wasn’t intending anything bad, I just felt comfortable at the moment to share this or that, and I made a mental note to not repeat that mistake when in his company again.

I hope some of this helps.. q???

🤍 Anita

You are welcome, q, and thank you for the appreciation and for letting me know it’d take some time to read thoroughly, it’s the longest, or most condensed post I ever sent you, I think. 🤍 Anita