Dear anonymous33,

I hope and pray that the situation in your country starts improving soon, and that foreign help has arrived and keeps arriving.

I share your sentiment of feeling frustrated at people who refuse any protection measures and even refuse to wear masks, claiming they’re harmful and a sign of oppression and suchlike. Unfortunately there are such people everywhere, in every country. I’ve had some debates with such friends and acquaintances on social media, but over time, I’ve realized there’s no point in trying to convince them, they’re so deep in their belief system and end up believing quite ridiculous things and conspiracy theories.

I’m not angry at them any more, but I don’t think I can be close to them any more either, because I’ll always be looking at them at someone who showed a profound lack of compassion for others. And even though I know it’s because of their own fears and unsolved issues that they behave like that, it would be hard for me to pretend that nothing happened and have the same kind of relationship with them that I had before the pandemic.

Dear Elie,

also, how are others wanting to “directly hurt you on their own” – could you give some examples of that?

Dear Felix,

you’re welcome. You say you’ve had trouble swallowing since you were a child. Do you remember (or have your parents told you) when it started happening first? Is it related to one specific incident, or it has developed gradually?

It’s understandable you don’t like to eat, since it causes you problems with swallowing. But I don’t think it has any effect on your height. Your height was probably caused by your genes. How is it in your family? Are your parents/grandparents/siblings also of a smaller height?

If you like to brag about things and show people how good you are, it indicates there’s an insecurity in you, a lack of self-esteem, and you need other people to affirm that indeed you’re good and worthy. If you were more sure of yourself, you wouldn’t need so much outer approval. It doesn’t make you a bad person, not in the least. It just means that in your childhood, you didn’t receive enough validation and appreciation, and that’s how your insecurity developed. I still think there must have happened some kind of rejection, even if ever so slight.

For you, it’s painful and unbearable that you cannot brag about your height. Somehow you associate your worth with your height. Short height – low worth. Have you been teased a lot about your height? Or you saw that some taller guys have more success with girls, or something like that?

You know how some girls attach their self-esteem to how thin they are? Well, it seems you’ve attached your self-esteem to your height. It’s pretty unfortunate because you can’t do much do become taller, a miracle won’t happen. So you’re stuck. However, if you could attach your self-esteem to something else rather than your height – you’d suddenly have a number of possibilities how to feel better about yourself. Your situation wouldn’t seem so hopeless any more.

If you could say to yourself: I am good enough and lovable and amazing and special – just the way I am – life could be so much better.

Dear Maria,

you’re welcome. I am glad you acted quickly and already found a therapist and had your first session – that’s amazing! I hope you’ll be able to get the clarity and support you need in dealing with your issue. Write again whenever you feel like it, I’d be happy to hear more from you. <3

Dear Kibou,

thank you for sharing some more about your life.

Honestly speaking, some of the things I wrote in this reply, were simply done because of the things inquired in your replies. I do not mind sharing, but I also do not know as to how they matter to have been mentioned.

The reason I asked you about Japan is to try to understand what makes you happy. You said that thinking of Japan makes you smile, and now I understand that it’s related to Japanese cartoons that you liked very much as a child, and also to a Japanese friend you met while living in Cuba, whom you remember fondly, but lost connection with (These moments were shared with people dear to me, which with all I grew more apart with my constant moving and lack of communication.)

I guess Japan brings back pleasant memories of having a good friendship, feeling connected to someone, perhaps feeling like you belong. That’s something you rarely felt, since you and your family moved a lot. You shared how after you returned to your birth country, after 7 years in Cuba, your old school mates hardly wanted to associate with you, and that was very painful. (I had people pretend they did know me, or avoided me or neglect me upon returning; that is one of the things that left scars behind.)

You’ve also mentioned that you always excelled at school but didn’t really care if your performance dropped. However, when your peers started to laugh at you when you didn’t perform at your usual level, you stopped slacking off. Perhaps you wanted to be more approachable and more similar to them if you drop your performance, but it didn’t really bring you popularity, on the contrary, it brought you their judgment. Am I guessing this right?

You said something interesting about that experience:

I never blamed anyone for their behaviour, since I knew where they were coming from (many people share what’s on their heart with me and I do ask sometimes for clarification.) How to express I am hurting from other’s behaviour, while knowing their story has been hard for me; they are not bad people, they are hurt people who are more prone to hurt others and need time and healing themselves to change not so pleasant behaviour.

You’re saying that already at that age, as a school girl, you understood that they behave in hurtful ways because they are hurt people, and so it was difficult for you to be hurt about their behavior. That’s a pretty mature understanding for a teenager. I don’t know if yourself came up with that explanation, or you were told to be understanding towards people who hurt you because “they are hurt too”.

But what you did there was a rationalization: “I shouldn’t be hurt, offended or angry because these people themselves are hurt. I need to understand them and perhaps even forgive them”. Is this what you were taught by your parents, or how did this thinking formed in you while you were still quite young?

You also say you’ve healed the hurt from those betrayals:

Now I have found a stories for each drifting apart and value for each friendship I made. It still hurts those kind of experiences but those scars have healed if that makes sense.

Since you’re still suffering from a sense of abandonment, and loneliness, I wonder if you truly healed those wounds or have in part rationalized it?

You also say:

I tend to understand and empathise with others and logically understand how others weren’t possible to be emotionally there for me.

It is the same kind of thinking you displayed as a school girl: you understood your friends logically, but that doesn’t mean your wound isn’t still there. The wound happened when you were a child, and the inner child in us feels hurt and angry and betrayed. It’s still inside of you, but now covered up with layers of compassion and understanding. I’m not saying you haven’t done a lot of healing – because you have, obviously – just that there might be still some work to be done around healing the wound of abandonment, betrayal etc. And I guess this wound didn’t start with your school friends, but earlier.

You said something really important:

During the darkest time of last year, I wished there was somebody who would put me first, who would prioritize my needs first, but at the same time I knew that is not love (not meant in a romantic way).

This is the inner child in you speaking: “I wish there is somebody who would put me first, who would prioritize my needs”. It’s a legitimate need of a child, and I believe this need wasn’t met by your parents properly. So you’d need to heal your inner child and give it love and attention, and also allow it to express anger and disappointment at those who didn’t meet her needs properly. You cannot heal the abandonment wound without first getting angry (in a safe, therapeutic context) at those who abandoned you.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.

Dear lk09,

I am glad that your friend’s father is recovering and has been released from hospital. Thank God!

I know the very idea of an arranged marriage is repelling to you, and it would me for me too. Luckily I haven’t grown up in a country where this is expected from girls, and where one of the key role of parents is to marry off their daughters. And where girls are expected to follow that tradition and respect and obey, and compromise, even sacrifice their happiness, for the sake of the tradition and parental and societal expectations. Frankly, it’s sad and disturbing to me, but it’s easy for me to say, not having been brought up in that system.

There is no standing up for yourself in such cases, either you make the people who took care of you all your life sad and disappointed or you make them happy. Either way I won’t be happy.

Well, these people gave you away just because you weren’t a boy, and your mother had to sneak out to visit you on your birthdays. This is how much they loved you. And then, they never protected you from your sister’s bullying, moreover they told you to accept and tolerate her bullying because “it’s just her character, she cannot be helped.” What your parents did was put a roof over your head since you were 5 years old, and provide for your material and educational needs. But they haven’t provided for much more, based on what you’ve shared here.

You don’t owe them anything since you didn’t choose to be born. It was their decision, and they had a responsibility to take care of you. But they didn’t even do that – they rejected you because their own parents and the society told them they should reject you. And then, when your aunt changed her mind about adopting you, your grandfather finally allowed that you be brought home.

I am not writing this to cause more trauma to you, but to express how appalled I am by such treatment of women and girls in India. It’s just so unfair and cruel, and then you’re expected to accept it and live by it, because you’d cause your parents pain and disappointment. But what about pain and disappointment that they have caused to you, and that millions of parents have caused to their daughters??

I wish you, together with other brave, intelligent young women, would stand up against such treatment and such tradition. Are there such civil organizations in India, which promote equal treatment for girls and breaking free from harmful traditions? You’re intelligent, you have a job and now even your own apartment – why would you need to settle for less, for a potential life of misery with someone you don’t love?

You should have the right to choose your own life partner, and also, to make mistakes before finding a suitable guy. In the least, you have the right to have the same treatment as your sister, so they should give you 5 more years.

What’s clear to me is that succumbing to their pressure and outdated traditions is not something that a person with your intelligence, insight and sensibility, should put up with.

Dear Ryan,

I think my issue is more that I feel a sense of guilt/shame when I hurt or disappoint women. It feels as though women see me as something that I may not always be: A good man or a better man than most. I try to live up to their expectancies but often don’t.

Right, so this would be a problem of feeling not good enough, even though e.g. your ex was singing your praises how good and amazing man you are.

But if we don’t feel good enough – if we feel there’s something inherently wrong with us – no amount of outside praise and convincing will do. Sooner or later we’ll do something to “mess up”, and it will be a proof to ourselves and our partner that we indeed aren’t good enough. Self-fulfilling prophecy….

Earlier we talked about your lack of self-worth, and this is similar, feeling not good enough, perhaps feeling unlovable? It all has to do with your childhood. Did your mother frequently criticize you? I know she scolded you for not using proper language, but did she criticize you a lot? How about praise – did she ever praise you? How about your father?

If you’d like, describe a little bit your relationship with your parents, specially your mother, because I believe that’s the key to understanding your current problems.