Dear Anita,

Yes, I understand now, that she was unable to be close to me and understand me the way I wanted. That is something I have to continue working on accepting and letting go.

Actually, I’m not yet studying to be a psychotherapist. I’m a medical student. My experience in psychotherapy has been limited to two month’s worth of placements in psychiatry, and discussions with various clinicians as both teachers and therapists. It is something I have a keen interest in, and I wish to understand myself before I begin training in a few year’s time. Currently I am working on my awareness of the thoughts and avoidance behaviours that lead me to the same unhealthy patterns.

Olivia

Dear Anita

It’s good to hear from you again!

Yes, I also felt uncomfortable and distressed, and withdrew to daydreaming alone to escape the anxiety of real life. Ironically the daydreaming is often about who I idealistically want to be in the future… feeding into my anxiety of not being “good enough” in the present.

I’m embarking on the journey of learning to be present and accepting myself as I am today. I understand now that these things people tell me I am or should be, are not valid. I don’t need to feel anxiety about meeting their expectations to please them. Often these expectations are not even rooted in reality. It’s like I think I can read their minds, and they’re just things I perceive the other person wants of me and I strive to become this image. I will be happiest being true to myself.

I think separating myself from my inner critic, the mental representation of my parents, is difficult as their voices are not so much critical as fearful and anxious. My parents had loving intentions, but their love was deeply ingrained with fear and anxiety, and their voice in my head causes me to simultaneously strive to please them and doubt my abilities. I am understanding that this voice does not serve me well.

I find that I have difficulty being present with my feelings and emotions. My mind feels disconnected from my body. For example, in therapy and talking about my mother’s childhood emotional trauma and how that has played out in her expectations of me, I feel anxiety. Yet there is underlying sadness that tries to escape my body, which is stopped by anxiety strangling my throat. I realised that despite often thinking of my mother’s pain, I have rarely allowed myself to feel this sadness… instead it manifests as anxiety, resentment, guilt, distress. Often when I try to describe how I feel, I realise I don’t know what I’m feeling, or I don’t let myself feel. I’m glad I now have awareness of this problem and more awareness of my body. How do I stay present with my feelings and let myself feel them without judgement or anxiety?

Olivia

Prash,

Thank you for your kind words.

I am able to see how my mother’s and friend’s circumstances and influences in life have shaped their reactions to me, though I admit that often I have taken responsibility for their emotions when I shouldn’t. I am attempting to set firm and healthy boundaries in our relationships – although I worry I have not been entirely kind in doing so and thus have caused some of the tension I have previously discussed. I hope that now these issues will continue to resolve.

Thank you for sharing your beautifully expressed thoughts on your understanding of God. Focusing on the things I can control and having faith that those I cannot will somehow work out – I think this lesson is one I can live by.

Olivia

Anita,

You have so elegantly and succinctly synthesised my feelings. Thank you. I deeply appreciate the time and thought you have put into your responses.

I agree with your perspective on my emotional state and the fantasy I chase. Yes, this obsession is really an addiction. Indulging in these fantasies will keep me from doing the work I need to achieve wholeness and clarity. The further my mind is from reality, the more it will inhibit my healing. The prospect of having to endure the emotional suffering is difficult, though I have hope. I have noticed that I have become better at dealing with distress, enduring through the discomfort with the techniques and mindsets I have taught myself. I agree with you that there is potential for healing in an equal relationship, when I am ready. I wish to first achieve some sense of wholeness and clarity, to feel that I can love from a place of stability rather than need.

I have gradually decreased my contact with my parents, perhaps a phone call once or twice a week now with my mother. I find myself struggling to shed my dependent child role. This has caused some tension with my mother, as well as with my oldest friend of 13 years, who have always seen me as a helpless creature needing to be taken care of, constantly needing them to fix my problems for me – a role I resented yet easily fell into. In fact, my mother called yesterday. Our relationship is loving and fun until I discuss my any sort of problem – and as I attempt to explain my feelings and she quickly attempts to fix me with increasing agitation and I try to explain that she is misunderstanding what I mean, it turns into her emotional indictment of how I have become so moody, difficult and easily offended lately, how she has to be so careful around me, how she feels attacked for being a bad mother but she read hundreds of parenting books and loves me so much and why can’t I understand this, she cries – I cry – and I reassure her that she is in fact a good mother, acknowledging that yes she had a horrific childhood, apologising for making her upset, tending to her emotional needs.

My relationship with my oldest friend is interesting as we are opposites. She is grounded, entirely focused on fact and certainties, rigid in her mindset. I have always looked to her to remind me of reality, to give me perspective from a purely logical standpoint. Now that I have less need for this, she finds the change in our dynamic difficult. She is terrified of my intense emotions. We have arguments about misunderstandings and how she views herself having power over me due to my emotionality.

It bothers me a little that in my journey towards wholeness, I have alienated two people who are important to me. I’m unsure whether this is something inherent in my personality that is “difficult”, “critical” or “annoying” that was just masked by my childhood sweetness and eagerness to please. Or if it is the development of my emotional understanding, if I am delving so far into my own psyche that others who do not have the ability to understand my emotions are left feeling lost and powerless to help. They both react to my emotions with fear – becoming agitated and defensive when they think I am critical and angry with them for not being able to understand me. I think there is also an element of their jealousy – I have since found others I can deeply connect with, I am embarking in a career they have no understanding of, and they are losing their control in my life, not least because I live far away and have my own life. I feel so strongly that I am becoming closer to my true self, but I am now someone they are finding more and more difficult to understand, someone less passive, less “easy” to deal with and control. Yet the way they treat me sometimes makes me wonder if I am acting like a toddler deliberately being difficult to achieve some perceived autonomy. I find myself apologising for my attitude, yet I am uncertain how much is really my fault. I am struggling to navigate the shifts in dynamic, wondering if our relationships can survive this change.

Your suggestion that I saw my mentor as my god is interesting. I have always admired the trust and comfort my religious friends feel in their relationship with God, how it enables them stability where their parental figures have failed them. I longed for something similar, although I have never been able to believe in a god. In moments of deep desperation, I thought about what my mentor figure meant to me, and his words of encouragement, placing him in that same role as a god, the loving parent figure I wanted. However this perception of him dissipated when I spoke to him in real life, when I was confronted with his reality, his humanness. In reality he cannot be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and I was sometimes disappointed by this. I can see the folly of equating a flawed human as a god, and my desire to grasp onto some godlike figure for comfort has lessened as I continue to gain more understanding of myself. I still however find myself wondering where to put my faith. I have a vague faith in the universe, that everything will be ok. I wonder if I will find comfort in mindfulness and meditation? Buddhism has always appealed to me and I wonder if I will find peace in continuing to explore this further. I suppose if I find ways of healing my own pain and accepting my own suffering, the desire and need to put my faith in some external god figure will diminish, much as the patient no longer needs the therapist.

Thank you very much for your perspective.

Olivia

Prash,

Thank you for your questions and insights that have enabled me to unveil a much deeper understanding of myself. I will continue working on my boundaries and self-awareness, and hope to progress in my personal and professional journey.

Olivia

Prash,

Thank you for your kind words and your very astute questions. You have definitely given me a new perspective. Do you have experience in this field yourself?

I believe you are right. I think he is highly aware of the role he plays as a substitute parental figure in my own life and part of his guidance was in fact allowing me to heal emotionally. There was one conversation very early on in which really broke the ice, where I confessed the transference I felt towards a patient who reminded me of myself and my own relationship with my parents. I discussed the empathy I felt for a patient with social anxiety who described never feeling good enough or being able to live up to the perceived expectations of her domineering and emotionally distant parents who had very set expectations, and felt that she was overshadowed by her high achieving younger sister. I was entirely distracted as I was nearly brought to tears, as the only major difference I felt in our journeys was that the patient had dealt with her distress by harming herself. I said this all with a smile, making light of my observations. He suggested that these feelings were still quite raw in me, but I denied it, saying that I only felt deep empathy.

I realise that I was wrong. I played out family relationships. The other student in our team became a substitute annoying older brother, and I became genuinely fond of him yet unnecessarily competitive, wanting to be seen as the best and favourite. I desperately wanted the validation of my mentor, but I was also on some level aware and embarrassed about it, which I think he found amusing. The times when I felt strong sudden feelings of love towards him were also times when I thought “wow, no adult has ever validated me emotionally like this before”, such as when he confided in me a work-related problem and asked for my advice, or when after telling him some dream plans he actually accepted them and added his own insights… instead of projecting his own fears and anxieties and bringing up all the potential dangers and possibility of failure and reasons why I shouldn’t do it and wouldn’t be capable of doing it and that I should live an easy, risk free life – which I could always expect from my parents and ex boyfriend.

With him, I felt free to be my uninhibited true self. I felt a sense of wholeness. For the first time in my life, these disparate parts of my personality and identity that would be hidden or emphasised to different people, felt integrated into a cohesive whole. I felt safe to be so vulnerable, because I knew he understood, coming from a place so similar to mine. It felt so healing to be so deeply understood. It gave me the courage to stay strong and pursue my own path, to not be swayed by the fears and insecurities projected onto me by the numerous anxious people in my life.

I think my attraction to older unavailable men stems stems from two different things. It’s an attraction to authority and stability, which for a long time I needed, being so unsure of myself and hungry for the wisdom and experience that I lacked. I believe it is also due to fear, as I will emotionally distance myself from perfectly appropriate people if I know there’s a chance of anything happening. I am afraid of being not understood, of having parts of my identity rejected, going back to feeling fractured and losing the sense of self I have gained.

Thanks for your help

Olivia

Dear Prash,

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

To be honest, yes I do think it is interfering with my life. He often intrudes into my thoughts, in an endless loop, particularly when I am stressed and wishing I could skip the years of struggle until I get closer to where he is in his career. A part of it is avoiding the difficulties of my own reality and the work that is required of me, indulging in the distant memory of a past self where I felt the happiest and most confident and purposeful I’d ever been in my life, under his guidance. I thought of my life as a tangled mess of threads that for a brief period were straight and it was like I could see everything clearly for the first time. I knew from the beginning that it would last only a couple of months. I know that I’m desperately clinging onto a fantasy self, which perhaps could be a reality if I really put in the same effort as I did last year, but I find my motivation lacking.

I am not particularly looking for a relationship currently, however I have found that I am often deeply attracted to older men who are unavailable because they are in a committed relationship or in a position of authority. I know I am capable of real love and intimacy, but I also have social anxiety and I am prone to anxious attachments. I think the prospect of finding an appropriate real relationship with all the uncertainty that entails is a little terrifying, particularly as I’ve been out of practice for so long. However, I tell myself that I would rather work on myself so I can become the best clinician I can be, rather than use a relationship to fix a problem.

I find myself feeling isolated at times, being introverted and socially anxious, preferring to avoid the difficulty of dealing with people socially. I have good friends I know I could talk to if I wanted to, but actually reaching out to them is difficult. My mentor is someone whom I felt strangely comfortable sharing many of my insecurities and anxieties with, because he understood my own perspective and mindset but with the benefit of two decades more experience, and his guidance and advice were on point. I have seen a few different therapists in my life, one towards the end of last year, yet no one has ever come close to the level of understanding that he has. He is the only person in my life whom I have been entirely determined to stay in touch with.

In terms of the advice I would give to someone who would come to me in a similar situation… I think I know that a real relationship is not possible, yet in some ways I still act as though it is. I treat the emotional validation I receive from our interactions as a substitute for that of a real relationship. I need to find other avenues of meeting my emotional needs, because I will not and nor I have never been satisfied enough with what I have from him – hence my deep overwhelming obsession. I also cannot be the fantasy self I daydream about without dedicated hard work. The qualities I admire in him are qualities that I know I am capable of developing in myself, and perhaps his role in my life is showing me a guiding path forward that I desperately needed. He is valuable to me in this way, but I do not need him to be the sole source of emotional validation.

In terms of getting rid of my romantic feelings, I hope that will continue to subside the less dependent I am on him and the more confidence I gain in myself. Although I don’t really know how to stop being in love with someone.