Dear Kshitij:

You are welcome. I am glad you felt it comforting to type down your recent post. For as long as it is comforting, please type down your thoughts, anytime and at any length!

“I feel emotionally exhausted by having either intrusive or enraged thoughts“- the rage in the thoughts is especially exhausting because the intense anger (rage) prepares the body for physical action (the heart works harder, for one, in preparation to fight), and when there is no action, the preparation lasts so long, heart working hard for so long, that the person gets exhausted.

(I am adding the boldface feature selectively to the quotes): “I had felt this intense grief when I was facing the issue with scholarship and it has remained within me, refusing to fade away. Never in my life I had felt such an intense pain, such an intense grief (not even during the time I was in the worst of my health…)… Hurt because the entire situation was uncalled for, it was because a bureaucrat found it satisfying for their  whimsical reasons to keep my application pending…. that officer deliberately withheld my file”-

– Reads like you believe that it was not a mistake on the part of the particular bureaucrat/ officer, but a deliberate attempt to hurt you, and that the officer found it satisfying to hurt you. What do you base this belief on?

In the above paragraph, you mentioned these emotions: intense grief, intense pain, and hurt, but you didn’t mention anger. Unexpressed, unresolved anger is powerful emotion, it adds intensity to other difficult emotions and make them last.

“I felt a darkness around me… I lost all hopes… whenever I get into a spiral of intrusive thoughts, I imagine myself depressed, I imagine myself isolated, drowned in misery and weeping on my condition“- I am getting in touch with my own lifetime, unexpressed anger, Kshitij, this is why in this post, I am focusing on your unexpressed anger. I am thinking that if you find a non-harmful way to express your anger directly, the anger will not intensify other difficult emotions as well as depression, and make them last for a long time. Maybe you can type down your anger in your next post..? (I intend to express my anger in my next post in my own thread, doing for myself what I am suggesting that you do).

“Now about my problem with father. I think that my relation with him did not make me think that I can never succeed because I could not succeed in having a good relation with him; I gave up on that long ago. I think his problematic behavior ended up showing in my self esteem, in my self worth (remember I mentioned externalization of self worth?)… During the scholarship issue or even before it happened, I think I attached my self worth with this opportunity... my self worth took a great hit and that contributed to my problems as well as my anxiety that went out of my control. I think that is one area where my father’s past behavior definitely impacted me because it had already damaged my self-esteem as a child”-

– What I understand from this paragraph is that currently, and for some time, you no longer hope that your father approves of you: you no longer see your father as a source of self-esteem. You see academic and professional success as a source of self-esteem. Now I understand better why the scholarship application issue was so devastating to you. The officer who mishandled your application, was just about to remove your hoped-for source of self-esteem, which is what your father already did via his sermons.

anita

Dear Robi: I will read and reply in about 14 hours from now.

anita

Edit: – where is her divine love when she is constantly critical of you, snaps at you, and has a very foul mouth?

Dear Robi:

* I am adding this comment after having completed typing what follows. I realize that In asked you more than 10 questions, and it may distress you to be asked so many questions (last you posted you were already quite stressed!) So, please feel comfortable to answer or not answer, read or not read. I would like you to be as calm as possible during this one more transitional time.

You are very welcome, and thank you for your appreciation!

“Recently. Very often I told myself I don’t want to go back there (Romania) because I feel afraid of falling back on the old programming/ on the old patterns etc. In the last 4 years, I’ve spent about 2 to 3 months a year living there. It didn’t really feel like I was disappearing again, but I often felt uncomfortable around my parents“- I didn’t know that you spent 2-3 months straight with them every year. You say it felt uncomfortable, but it didn’t feel terrible? Those 2-3 months per year didn’t hurt your quest of “growing up- becoming adult” (title of your thread)?

Or perhaps the 2-3 months per year felt worse than uncomfortable, but you let the worse slide off from your awareness (just as you let the t slide off from the adult, in the title of your thread, lol)?

“Having their words of disappointment and discouragement is quite literally the last thing I need right now“- What words of disappointment and discouragement have they said to you during the 2-3 months you’ve spent with them in the last 4 years? How did you feel hearing them?

“If I stay here, I won’t be spending time with my girlfriend–  and I understand that her company is the kind of company I want around me. I feel lonely without her“- again, seems to me that living close to, or with your girlfriend is the right thing for you.

“… In order for me to be there (without work) I would have to be supported by my family. I was thinking it would make more sense for me to go there for the period of searching for a job rather than depending on them financially while abroad. I would save money by being there and in many ways it makes more sense.. No?“- you are thinking about going to Warsaw (beginning of June) to look for work, and then to Romania to live with your parents while waiting for a job in Warsaw to materialize?

And your reason is that living with your parents, they will not need to pay your rent in Warsaw before you can pay it yourself?

Are your parents able to pay your rent in Warsaw, and if so, for how long?

I read that it’s 4 days by train to get from Transylvania to Warsaw, so that doesn’t sound realistic. I suppose it’d be your parents paying for you to fly to Warsaw from Transylvania by plane? Repeatedly? I wonder they’ll pay more on air travel for you than they’d pay for rent for you in Warsaw.

“Or maybe I just saw the opportunity to take action and go back and be close to my girlfriend“- seems like it to me.

“Ideally I’d go to Warsaw and find work right away.. that would probably be the best way things could play out“- I think so.

“It really sucks knowing that my parents are in a way, a threat to me. But then again.. that has been very often the case in the past“- it’s the sad case for millions of people, parents being a threat. Amazing, isn’t it. An emotional threat, most often.

“Or maybe until I build a more solid foundation and stronger boundaries I’d have to steer away from them?“- I think so. When you have a more solid foundation, you probably wouldn’t want it destroyed.

anita

Dear Kshitij:

Today is exactly 3 months since your original post of Feb 18. I am re-reading your posts to see if I can add anything that maybe, maybe will be of some help to you.

“I made significant recovery in my physical health by the end of 2022… But, when the scholarship issue came, it shattered me… I began feeling that just when things started to become better, they went for worse… I began to think that its pointless to keep hopes…” (Feb 19)-  you made significant recovery, experienced personal success in regard to your physical and mental health recovery, had some hope for continued success, but when the scholarship crisis happened, you lost that hope and became hopeless, believing that you are doomed to No Success aka Failure (so why try..)

In this belief there is the unrealistic expectation that once success is achieved, it will continue for a long time, maybe forever; no more significant setbacks or challenges.

“I felt that no matter how much I tried, things would always get worse” (Feb 19)- this belief is in the core of the problem.

“When I would use to think as a child that everything is aright between me and him, there used to come another ‘sermon’ or an incident of his bad treatment“(April 18, exactly a month ago)- this is the basis of your belief that you can’t succeed, that you are doomed to failure: you tried to get your father to approve of you, to like you, and you failed again, and again and again, no matter how hard you tried for years!

It is true that you failed to get him to approve of you, but it was a situation where you had zero chances of success because he projected his father into you very early on.

Imagine you try to pick up, not a small rock, but a whole mountain: zero chances of success. A mountain is too big and heavy for any person to pick up. Now imagine, after failing to pick up a mountain, you decide that you will fail at anything and everything you do in life..?!

Q: Is picking up a mountain comparable to getting your father to like you? A: Yes, because your father has never seen you when he looked at you. He was seeing his father all along, and he’s very angry at his father.

When you tried to get your father to like you, you were (unknowingly) trying to get him to like his own father: zero chances of success.

His criticisms of you were his criticisms of his father. He didn’t see you; he saw his father. He placed the wrong mirror in front of you, showing you a reflection of someone else. Please look in a real mirror, and see yourself as you really are, approvable, likeable, a good person who can succeed in spite of setbacks and challenges, such that we all face.

anita

How are you, Lulu? (sorry for the double anita in the above post of a week ago, I just noticed).

anita (just one of me)