Dear Charity,

I don’t know why exactly your husband doesn’t want to invite his friend to your house. There can be a number of reasons, maybe even that his friend is a womanizer and that’s why he wants to keep him away from you. Or he might be using bad language or makes inappropriate comments, or something like that. So the reason might be that he doesn’t want to embarrass himself in front of you for having such a dumb or impolite friend… who knows. The problem is that you immediately jump into conclusions that there is something wrong with you:

I feel hard to love. I feel worthless. I feel like I’ll never be with anyone that can love me and respect me the way I believe a wife should be. Am I being dumb? What is so wrong with me?

The reason for this is I believe your childhood wound. This is from your previous thread:

Because I am pro-choice and support gay marriage and people living their lives the way they want my brother and his wife have said they do not want me around them or their children. It’s been over a year (almost two years) since I have had any contact with them. I feel like I should have healed and accepted this by now, yet my daily thoughts always go back to their rejection. Almost like I cannot allow myself to be happy until I am accepted by them. None of it makes sense to me though. I love them but every time I was around them I was the butt of the jokes. I always left in tears and feeling less than because my brother loved to make fun of me so much. I am constantly telling myself that this is the week I focus on being happy and finding joy in my life yet my thoughts always go back to the rejection and the raw pain I still feel.

You feel rejected by your family, believing there is something wrong with you. And now you feel rejected by your husband too.

You said about your ex husband:

I spent 12 years begging him to respect me and love me and be honest with me but he could never do that. My emotions were funny to him.

Again, you were begging him to respect you and couldn’t leave him for 12 years, and I think it’s because a part of you believed you don’t deserve respect.

So I believe you’d need to work on healing that wound – of being undeserving of love and less than.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Tee.

Sure, go ahead…

Dear canary,

Thank you for speaking with me, I appreciate everyone that has commented. I feel much better and at peace after speaking and being honest

You are welcome, and I am glad you are feeling better now. And that you see that you are enough and don’t need others to validate you:

I realize that whenever I feel inadequate, I need to bring the attention back towards myself. I need reminders of who I am and what my strengths are. I don’t need others to validate me and agree with me.

And also, that you don’t need to take advice from people who are harsh and criticizing:

I know that the only opinion and advice that I should take is from those I look up to. Someone who I look up to will never criticize me in a hard way because they are loving and gentle.

These are all important realizations!

In this last post of yours it also transpired that your father was rather a bully in the family, whom everyone feared, including your mother. You perhaps received less of his yelling and open aggression than your siblings, but still you grew up afraid and hiding your anxiety and your school problems from him, because you were afraid of his anger (My father would never see me cry, only my mother would. I didn’t speak to my father about my anxiety as a child, so he didn’t know what I was dealing with. I was too afraid to ask him for permission to remove my facial hair because I assumed he would get angry and say no, so I never did.).

Your mother was afraid of his anger too:

She did not agree, she was willing to let me remove my facial and body hair but she was afraid to speak to my father about it because he would become angry.

She was afraid of him, he thought he knew better how to raise children, and she didn’t dare to say anything.

I wouldn’t say my dad lacks empathy, he is very emotional and loving but he was just blinded by his own mindset at the time.

Well, he certainly wasn’t emotional and loving when you were a child, since he kept you all in fear. Your mother didn’t dare to mention that you have problems at school and that you were being bullied. Neither you or your mother dared to say anything to him, lest he explodes in anger. Your siblings were terrified of him, even more than you were, because he yelled at them much more.

So you grew up with a bully father, and I believe you’d need to acknowledge it. Even if he has changed since, he did inflict a wound, and I believe his behavior contributed to your anxiety. Because if you needed to hide your fears, if you couldn’t speak openly about your feelings and about being bullied, no wonder this would exacerbate your anxiety and your sense of helplessness. If you were told to be strong and not a crybaby, while this terrifying man is looming over you – how else would you react? And you knew that your mother couldn’t protect you either.

It is very difficult to bring all the focus towards myself because I realize that I care about everyone’s opinion of me. Even a stranger’s opinion of me matters to me, and I’m not exactly sure why.

Maybe strangers’ opinions matter to you because you’re still subconsciously seeking approval from people who remind you of your father – from fear inducing, judgmental and strict people? From people who lack empathy? Or just in general, you seek approval because growing up, you never received it with a father like that?

If you had to hide a part of yourself (your weak, vulnerable, fearful side – which every child has), of course you didn’t feel validated and appreciated. Of course you felt unseen and not completely understood.

It’s much clearer to me now where your sense of not being seen, understood and appreciated is coming from. It’s from your father. It’s fine that he’s changed since, but your mental health is suffering now because of how he treated you in your formative years. You’d need to be aware of that in order to heal it…

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Tee.

Dear Speaklow,

I have found myself in an unhealthy relationship which started 3 years ago. I am 32, and he is 39. A gulf exists between us, exacerbated not only with drastically different lives but also cultures.

I think that the relationship is beyond salvaging. Sometimes one must know when to quit, and actually stick to it. Too much toxicity, too much pain, and he won’t end it, so I must for us both to hopefully heal.

I agree, it does seem like your relationship is beyond salvaging, and the very setup in which he is your life and business partner, but he refuses to divorce his wife is unhealthy. You work full time in both of your business, and he doesn’t work at all but is taking out the money though? (I work in both full time; he is currently unemployed and has been for months, but does not put in effort beyond what seems to be mostly criticism. I take on most, if not all, of the mental load in both businesses because if I didn’t, no one else would. A further update is that I see that he is starting to draw money out of both businesses politely)

He wants to sell you his share (although at a too high price), which means he too knows the end is approaching and he is preparing for that. And he wants to extract as much money as possible from you, so I believe you’re right when you say: “I no longer feel like there will be any kindness or fairness, not even basic respect and residual love from him anymore”. He knows you want out, so he wants to maximize his profit, even though the deal might not be fair for you.

Even posting here, makes me feel like I am in some way betraying him, because I am talking about him to others. It’s something he seems to feel keenly about; that I cannot talk about him to others, because he is a very private person. Him saying he has been backstabbed by me this time, is not the first. My heart is heavy, my eyes are swollen, and my tissue box is running low — if I am the horrible partner he is making me out to be, then why didn’t he leave, and why am I finding it so hard to leave?

Well, it seems to me that he has been a lousy partner all this time, both as a romantic and a business partner. He refused to get a divorce, and you tolerated it. Also, he was minimally engaged in your businesses, and yet was drawing income? And now he is accusing you of complaining to someone about his bad behavior? Now you are the bad guy, and he is innocent?

No, you’re not a horrible partner, but a too tolerant one. You allow yourself to be blamed, when the blame should be on him. He didn’t leave because it suits him to draw money while not contributing to the business at all. I think he didn’t leave for selfish reasons.

why am I finding it so hard to leave?

Because you don’t respect yourself enough and a part of you believes that you indeed are to blame?

Dear Felix,

I think my sense of worthlessness develops throughout the year because i experience numerous scenarios which triggers it.

You seem to not want to see how your upbringing and your mother’s treatment lead to your sense of worthlessness. You get triggered in even the most innocent situations, so it’s not the situation that’s problematic, but it is how you react to the situation.

Dear canary,

My father did send me that message. In fact, the main reason I got bullied was for my body & facial hair. My dad told me that having facial hair is normal, that I should deal with the comments and he believed that not allowing me to remove the facial hair would make me stronger as I got older.

What did your mother say? Did she agree with your father? It’s interesting that on one hand, you were allowed to skip school (your mother allowed it, perhaps without even telling your father about it?), and then you weren’t allowed to remove your facial hair because that will “make you stronger”. Could it be that your mother was too permissive, but not really able to help you deal with your fears, while your father was strict and lacked empathy?

If your father had the last word in a rather female problem of removing facial/body hair, does that mean that your mother didn’t really have a say in your home? And she “protected” you by allowing you to skip school in secret? If your father knew about it, he would have forced you to go to school, without showing much understanding for your anxiety?

I think the outbursts were a mix of things. Unrelated to the bullying, but the bullying was the source of my outburst. For example, I was insecure and did not want to take pictures with friends, or want to be filmed, because the bullying contributed to my insecurity. When my friends would do that without realizing it, I would react and be upset, that they posted a video or picture of me without my knowledge.

Right. Those outbursts were the result of bullying – you didn’t want to appear in common photos or videos, because you felt so insecure about yourself. A part of your insecurity and frustration is that you weren’t allowed to remove your facial hair, due to your strict father. You were forced to “toughen up” in a situation where a more permissive attitude (allowing you to remove the unwanted hair) might have been a better approach. At the same time, you weren’t taught how to become emotionally less reactive and “toughen up” in a healthy sense, by developing coping skills for your fears and anxiety, or by dealing with the bullies.

It seems to me you got poor parenting both from your mother, who was permissive but powerless, and your father, who was strict and lacking empathy. Would you say that this is true?

I was taught that being sensitive and emotional was bad and weird. I tried so hard to get rid of that part of me, but when I knew I couldn’t I learned to accept it. I just don’t feel appreciated for being myself.

Being emotional and sensitive isn’t bad – it’s necessary for empathy. However, being overly emotional and unable to control our emotional reactions isn’t the best. As I already said, it seems to me you weren’t taught how to deal with your fears and anxiety, and then you were criticized for being so emotionally reactive. You were criticized for something that wasn’t your fault.

You don’t need to get rid of your emotional, loving, gentle side, who gets immersed in the beauty of nature. What you need though is better emotional regulation, which will allow you not to be so insecure and sensitive to people’s reactions. And you need to know that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You just didn’t get the proper upbringing and proper tools….  but you are making up for it now.

Dear Felix,

I’ve tried praising that little boy, it did worked as i’ve stop posting from social media and now it came back due to other people’s actions AGAIN…

You praised yourself for not posting… but when you started posting again, or someone else posted a photo of you, this same wound (of not feeling loved, of believing there is something terribly wrong with you) got opened again. You still need to appreciate yourself (and that little boy) and accept him just as he is, even if he is short and thin.

it really hurts when your no 1 weakness gets exposed like that in social media.

People who know you in person know that you’re short. Your height isn’t something new to them, so it didn’t really get “exposed”, because it wasn’t a secret in the first place. Your friends and acquaintances accept you as you are – they don’t mock you, do they? It’s just your mother who mocks you and doesn’t accept you as you are… and consequently, you don’t accept yourself either.

I feel like i shouldnt have attend that gathering… if i didnt i wont think like this today.

As I said, you won’t solve the problem by hiding from people and being a hermit…

I know i should love and praise that little boy, but it’s just too much for him to bear… it’s suffocating…. Especially when this adult life is so dull. I dont know how i can keep going forward in life with this issues.

It’s suffocating because your adult self is quite weak, and when the wound gets activated, you’re pretty much completely identified with that little boy. That’s why you cannot soothe yourself. On top of that, you still live with your parents and are exposed to their criticism and belittling. Your mother is doing that to you all the time – she told you you’re only receiving salary because you are your father’s son, not because you deserve it. Now she mocked you again, telling you you look like a girl… You are exposed to this same treatment your entire life. This is how you have been programmed. And you completely believe your mother, you believe her words…

That’s why I told you it would be very important for you to become more independent from your parents, to move to a different place, for starters. I know it’s harder at the moment due to covid, but a part of your healing will definitely be moving away from your parents and sparing yourself from their mocking and belittlement.

Dear canary,

you are very welcome, and I am happy to hear from you again. It was beautiful to read this about you:

I am so sensitive to little things, I constantly get lost in the beauty of the world. I find beauty in everything, especially little things. I have such a deep appreciation for little things that most people don’t really think about. I enjoy thinking about these things, it makes me so happy. I enjoy being emotional too, when I get happy I feel like I am the sun. When I get sad, I allow myself to feel and make art to express myself. I’ve always been doing that. Some people may call me an overthinker, but I don’t consider myself to be an overthinker, I think deeply about little things, and it does not harm me it just brings me joy. Also, this is unrelated to my anxiety because I know anxiety makes me overthink but I was not talking about that.

I also feel like everything falls into place and everything is connected and I love thinking about that!

You are very sensitive and perceptive, and you notice beauty in details. Seeing that beauty fills your heart with joy. You see a bigger picture and how everything is connected, and this makes you happy. That’s so precious!

Now compare that with this:

I was always told that being sensitive, emotional, and thinking about the deeper meaning of things was a bad thing. So I always felt out of place because that is exactly like me.

I’ve been taught that my traits are actually weaknesses, and whenever I see someone that is somewhat like me, being strong and confident, I get so inspired and I look up to them.

You’ve been taught (by your parents, teachers or both?) that being sensitive, emotional and thinking about the deeper things in life was a bad thing. It’s almost like being told that the core of who you are is bad. No wonder you started feeling less than:

I can appreciate every individual and realize that everyone is unique and have their own beauty. But it’s so hard to do that for myself sometimes. I don’t feel special, unique, or appreciated.

Also, it seems to me that your parents and other authority figures (teachers, counselors) didn’t show enough compassion and understanding for you:

I feel like some people in this world get so caught up with themselves and their lives that they forget how to empathize and be compassionate towards others. Some of my past counsellors were like this, as well as teachers, and it was disheartening for me because I realized the world is a cruel place sometimes.

I just need someone to empathize with me and understand me.

In your earlier posts, you said your parents, specially your mother, loves you and supports you. But based on what you said, in your childhood she didn’t really know how to help you with your fears and anxiety. I wonder if your mother too (or both of your parents) somehow sent you the message that you shouldn’t be so emotional and sensitive, that you should just ignore the bullying, sort of toughen up and don’t take it to heart so much? And when you couldn’t, you felt that there was something wrong with you?