Dear James:

In the very last line of your post, you wrote about: “this repetitive cycle I’ve been stuck in my whole life.”

What started this repetitive cycle, what put this cycle in place is what you wrote in the beginning of your post: “I have a completely neurotic, smothering, overprotective mother and a father who didn’t know how to be a father…I was never good enough in his eyes and we had extreme, sometimes violent fights. He would lose it because I didn’t do things how he expected them to be done. Instead of showing me or explaining to me, he would snap and completely lose it in rage. My mom when then come in to ‘rescue’ me. These situations would leave my traumatised and confused. This dynamic continued throughout my teenage years with my parents clashing often.”

No wonder you feel anxious when faced with tasks, starting in middle school and all the way to the present in the work place: when you did something that wasn’t good enough in your father’s eyes, he raged at you. This is very scary, distressing and overwhelming for a child, to have your father rage at you. So you shrink from anything that will bring about those scary experiences of his rage: you shrink from doing anything much. You started a new year in school excited but the anxiety wore you down.

In your brain a connection was made between your imperfect execution of a task and a severe punishment: a rage attack.

And your mother did not rescue you from your father. He continued to rage at you and her fights with him only increased the rage in that home of your childhood, adding to your distress.

Did you attempt psychotherapy? So to adequately heal the injury done to you by your father and your mother? That injury was done to you through no fault of your own. You were not born too sensitive or emotional or faulty in any way. The injury was done to you and not caused by you. There is pain involved in realizing that indeed you were a victim as a child. Once you realize it over time and healing work, you will be able to reclaim that innocent child that you were, to understand there was nothing wrong with you then or now, that punishment of the kind you suffered is no longer reality (except in the neural connections in your brain, still vibrating the old, real fear that was then and still is…)

Thoughts so far…?

anita

Dear James:

I understand. I agree: many therapists are not good enough. It took me decades before I came across an empathetic, hard working, dedicated and generous therapist who didn’t check the time of sessions and gave his time in between sessions without extra charge. He was also the first therapist who thought about me in between sessions, planning for the next and communicating in between.

Please post here anytime. Be kind and gentle with yourself.

anita