Dear Felix,

I’ve stopped commenting after a while because it was painful to read how much you’re suffering, and yet there was nothing that I (or anyone else here) could say that would help you alleviate your pain at least a little. In the last cycle that I interacted with you, I suggested a website with sustainable companies, because you complained about interviewing with all those soulless corporations. But you haven’t responded to that, and in your next post, you kept complaining about those companies who expect you to be a genius and demand so much from you:

I have 6 interviews in the next 4 work days and I am terrified to bomb every single one of them. I am not bad at what I do, but these companies are looking for geniuses. This is causing so much anxiety. I am feeling like I am literally going to have a breakdown and kill myself.

In spite of their high, impossible demands, and them being profit-oriented soulless corporations, which you despise, you still want to get hired by them:

But yeah, I do have a good plan. I’ll eventually get hired. I’ll eventually get my exams done. I’ll eventually start to feel better. But until then I have to survive somehow.

And now, it seems you’ve decided to do 18-24 months of additional training, so you can finally get hired at a company which you basically despise, and earn “crazy money” which you previously said you don’t care about?

This is how you’re working against yourself and your core values. You believe you have to, that you have no other choice. You believe you live in the “world that is unforgiving, cold, brutal, and much worse.” And so you need to do everything to survive in that brutal world, you need to adapt to it and play by its rules, even if it means you drop dead in the process.

I tried explaining that this whole belief – this whole idea that the world is brutal, cold and harsh – is your perception, and it’s the same how you see your parents: brutal, cold and harsh. If you would work on your childhood wounds, you could change your perception, and would be able to have a very different experience of life.

But you’re completely rejecting this possibility. You refuse to consider that you’re creating your own reality and fighting unnecessary battles.

I’ve realized in the meanwhile that you’re completely identified with one part of your personality, which is called the Protector. According to the Internal Family Systems theory, there are three main parts of our personality: one is the Inner child (which is our hurt and wounded part). Another is the Protector, which seeks to protect the inner child from pain but does it in an unhealthy and unbalanced way. And the third is the Firefighter, which is the part of us that gets addicted and soothes the pain with addiction and all kinds of acting out.

We’ve spoken about the inner child before, and you admitted that your inner child is sad and wants to be loved. But that was it, you quickly went back to your usual litany of how things are horrible but you’re not giving up. This is the Protector speaking – the fighter in you who’ll do anything – even sell your soul to the soulless corporations – just so you wouldn’t have to feel the pain of your wounded inner child. You’d rather choose a career path you despise rather than get in touch with your true self, and do things that would make you happy. This is how strong your fear is of meeting that inner child and feeling his pain.

I believe this Protector is also full of spite, trying to prove to your parents that you can do it, that you’re not weak:

It’s not about the money, it’s about proving to myself that I can, it’s about proving to others that I can

It’s about proving to your parents that you can make it, that you can play by their rules, worshiping the money gods, and win. But in the process lose your soul, and maybe your health too? Is that what you really want?

Dear Felix,

good to read from you!

I know there are decent companies out there and I will NEVER work for another evil company again. No amount of money will make me do that.

It’s good to hear you’re not compromising your core values. For a moment, when reading your previous post, I thought you decided to accept a high-paying job in some company you despise. But you haven’t – you stick to your principles. That’s great.

I do like technology and I enjoy studying so I can take these exams. I am not studying and hating every second of it. Not at all.

This is also good. You’re not hating the field you’re in, in fact you like it. So there’s no need to look for something else. IT is a huge field and everyone needs IT services, so I believe you should be able settle in a decent company (or even a school or a public institution – are you eligible for that being a foreign citizen?) and earn decent money, to have a decent living.

Every company cares about profit, but there’s a difference between a company that also cares about its employees and one which exploits its employees for a bottom line. I hope you can find a company or institution where you’ll earn decent  money and feel respected rather than exploited.

If I don’t take care of myself, if I don’t get paid enough money, if I don’t study my a%% off, I’ll be in trouble. That’s the world we live in and not my perception of the world. … The world is unforgiving.

It’s true to a point – America is pretty hard-core capitalism and it’s probably harder to make it there than in Sweden or some more socially sensitive Western country. And it’s not socialism like the former USSR, which was in my opinion not a good system at all. In fact, it was a much worse system than free initiative and entrepreneurship that you get in capitalism. However, it could be that workers’ conditions are harder in the USA (I know there’s almost no paid maternity leave for example), so perhaps that’s one of the reasons you’re experiencing more of the “unforgiving world” than you would in some other country. I can’t really tell because I don’t live in the USA.

I get it and I appreciate your breakdown of the personality thing. I am not sure I fully understand it, but I get it. And you’re probably right. But I live in this terrible reality (terrible in a sense of the reality of capitalism, competition, greed, etc.) and I don’t know what else to do.

Try to understand that there are decent companies, who do care abut their employees. That America is not just soulless, greedy, cut-throat capitalism. Open yourself up to that possibility. I know it’s hard for you because you base your conclusions on your so-far experiences, and your negative experiences go far back into your childhood and youth, where you didn’t get help from your parents and were left to tend for yourself.

Your experience of the world started forming very early when you were a young child, when you experienced your parents as cold, brutal and lacking compassion for you. This was a base for later experiencing the world exactly the same: cold, brutal and unforgiving. The way you experienced your parents defined how you later experienced the world. Can you accept that notion?

Your experience of the world is colored by your experience of your parents. It’s as if you’re looking everything through a filter that distorts and skews the image, because it magnifies certain (negative) experiences, and leaves out other (positive) experiences. You get a distorted image, because of that filter. If you’d remove the filter, the image of the world would change.

I know the Universe doesn’t conspire against anyone, even though it feels like it sometimes, but what the hell is this? Why am going through all this? When does it end?

This is the result of the filter. It skews your perception. It feels horrible. You’re only experiencing negative things. It feels like the universe is conspiring against you, it feels like the universe is cold, harsh and lacks compassion (like your parents). It doesn’t give you any good news, it doesn’t give you a break. If you’d remove the filter, it would give you a different image.

I have pain in the kidneys. I am sure it’s nothing serious, but it’s still bothering me.

It’s most probably nothing physical. The adrenal glands are above the kidneys, and they produce adrenaline and cortisol – hormones of stress. They’re produced when we’re in the fight-or-flight, i.e. survival mode. You’ve been operating in this mode for quite a while…

I am struggling, but I am not giving up. I will never give up. I just wish that there was some, just a little tiny bit, of good news. Just anything that’s positive would help me. But it’s mostly been the other way around. 

What I’ve been trying to say is that you’re struggling against the skewed image of the world. If you’d remove the filter, you wouldn’t need to struggle that much.

What do you think? Can you accept that you might need to remove the filter, so you can experience a better, more positive reality?

Dear Felix,

And in regards to my parents, they weren’t looking at the world like it’s a bad dark place, they just didn’t care about me.

Right – and because they didn’t care about you, your outlook on the world is that it’s a cruel, cold and unforgiving place. But since you did receive love from your grandparents, you’re now not depressed and suicidal, you haven’t collapsed, but are keeping on keeping on… Still, due to your worldview it’s very difficult for you, you feel exhausted, you feel like an overstressed engine that might break at any moment.

And emotionally, you feel lonely, you “crave intimacy and closeness like drug addicts and alcoholics crave their vices.” You feel on the verge in every aspect, saying things like “I might die”, because you feel that your current condition is not really sustainable. You hope it will be better, but at the same time, you say:

“I don’t know how [to love myself], considering I hate my self quite a bit, but I will learn.”

Do you really want to learn how to love yourself?

There is a filter that is skewing my perception of the world and my parents had some part to play in it because they ignored me and didn’t show love, and didn’t help me to build my future, but I’m not a little boy anymore. I want to stand up on my own. I am being my own parent right now, I am trying to look past the filter, I am trying to be a little bit more open minded.

The little boy is still inside of you. When you say “I’m not a little boy anymore, I want to stand up on my own”, you’re disregarding his needs and going into the Protector mode, which tells you that you can heal and thrive without tending to that little boy. Without tending to his pain. Without being a loving, compassionate parent to him – rather than a strict boot-camp coach that is pushing him to achieve and “keep fighting until you die.”

You’ve been a boot-camp coach to yourself, you’ve been pushing yourself to the limits, you’ve been “struggling, but not giving up”. It does seem you’re being a little gentler with yourself recently, such as what you mentioned in your points 1-3. That’s a good development – keep that up.

However, true healing will require some deeper work, the kind of work where you can be a compassionate, not a boot-camp parent to yourself. Where you can meet that boy, comfort him and tell him that he isn’t alone. That’s when you’ll start truly loving yourself…

I’ve been telling you all this before, don’t know if it will reach you now. But that’s the only path to self-love that I know works, and it works long-term. It’s a deep, transformational healing.

Dear Felix,

I have a need to share something else with you, it’s about the kidney pain. It might be related to the fear you’re feeling at the moment, regarding everything you’re going through – existential fear related to your job, fear because of your dog’s illness, fear because you don’t feel supported by your parents (“my parents are monsters”).

It’s okay to feel fear. You’re not weak or less worthy because of that.

I am checking out of feeling sorry for myself and trying to figure things out.

You don’t need to feel sorry for yourself. However, it would help if you could feel compassion for yourself.

I think the difference between pity and compassion is that in pity, you look at your misery and see no way out, and you dig yourself even deeper. With compassion, you look at your misery, you see how you’re suffering, you feel empathy for yourself, but also, you know there’s a way out. With compassion, there’s always a way out. There’s hope. With pity, you stay in your pit (no pun intended…).

I wonder if you can sense the difference between self-pity and self-compassion? If so, do you think you can feel compassion for yourself right now? Just sit with your pain and feel compassion for yourself?