Hi, I am 30 years old. Until now, I still don’t know if job is I really want or enjoy? I had an average (with average payment) job last year, but with very good works environment. I leave it because I got better job (good payment), but the working environment is the worst. At least the worst in my working experience (horrible boss, bad communication between colleagues). I am thinking this is maybe mistakes. I could just quit but, what if I ended make wrong decision again. For now, I decided just go through with it. If three more years I am still feeling this, I could consider quitting. I want to explore more what job that I enjoy and what skills should I take if I will quit later. In my life, I still don’t know what is right for me. Every time, I think too much, it just make my stress worst. Don’t pressure your self. You could try breathing exercises, it help me a lot with my anxiety.

You are still young, 23 years old. I am older and I am willing to do anything to make myself better even quitting my job in my thirties. My suggestion is just go through with what you have now. On that process, you could discover what is your passion. I also suggest not afraid to try new thing. It’s never too late to be might you have been. If you feel the thing is right and it makes you happy, just do it. It is better not to base your feeling by other people opinion. Sorry for my bad English, I am not a native speaker

Dear gj:

“My mom was incredibly unhappy and sad”- this is a devastating experience for a child, to watch her mother being incredibly unhappy and sad. Naturally, the child tries to make her mother happy in the little ways she can. A child cannot get a paying job, cannot earn money, can not buy her mother what she wants, so a child, in practical terms, is limited to what she can do.

So what does she do, that young child wanting nothing more intensely than to make her mother happy? She may pick up a flower and give it to her mother, draw on a paper and give that creation to her mother, she may clean her room, or part of the home, to please her mother. The child does what she can do.

“I don’t think I was trying to make her happy”- you did try to make her happy, early on, you did. Maybe you stopped when you gave up, when you found out that all your efforts failed.

“I think I was trying to survive”- a child needs her care taker, her parent, to look happy enough. in control. For a child, to have a parent that may.. die at anytime because of intense misery, that is a danger to the child’s survival.

“I convinced myself I was useless… I am powerless”- unfortunately for you, in the quest of making your mother happy, you were useless, and you were indeed powerless.

Not your fault, it is just that no child has the power to make a miserable parent happy.

I see your hope as understanding this very concept, that you did fail in an impossible task. And then seeing that you can succeed in tasks that are possible.

Your interest, curiosity, passion, knowing what to do, all these will return over time, little by little if you understand better and change your core belief that you are useless and powerless.

anita

Dear gj:

Yes, changing core beliefs that significantly hinder us in life best done in quality psychotherapy with a capable therapist who is honest, hard working and adheres to the truth, to reality (not resorting to convenient/ traditional thinking). It takes being engaged in a healing process that will take a few years before you feel better on an ongoing basis, which means you keep being engaged in the process although you feel distress, you persist through the distress.

I mentioned adhering to the truth, to reality. You can start here, on your thread, start forming a loyalty to the truth, even if and when it means that you are no longer loyal to your mother. Do you think you can do that?

anita

Dear gj:

I will ask you two questions. Following your answers I will elaborate:

1. Do you believe that during all the times your mother was “incredibly unhappy and sad” that she loved you, and therefore you were a loved child?

2. If your answer to the above is yes, what evidence do you  have that you were a loved child?

anita

Dear gj:

I will now elaborate about what I mean by being loyal to the truth:

You wrote abut your family, including your mother: “We don’t really express our feelings”- it is not true. If your mother didn’t express her feelings throughout your childhood, you wouldn’t know that she was “incredibly unhappy and sad”. She expressed the feeling of intense sadness, this is how you knew she was incredibly sad.

But she didn’t express affection for you, she didn’t look at you with affection, smiling, being happy that you exist, did she- if she felt that affection for you, you would see it in her face and hear it in her voice, she would have looked and sounded happy to see you, to hear you. She would have asked you questions, wanting to know more about what you think and feel.

“knowing someone is always there for you and cherishes you. I do not have evidence for that… She never listen for us unload…detached..She does love us, to this day she becomes unsettled when I fall sick and I see that she wants us to get better”-

-this means she loves you enough to want you alive and physically healthy, but she doesn’t love you enough to listen to you or cherish you.

– does she care about strangers and animals when they are sick, wanting for them to remain alive and be physically healthy?

* I will soon be away from the computer for about two hours.

anita