Dear Mermaid:

It is a hell of a thing to change core beliefs such as you have. Old beliefs gone, new beliefs not established yet, hence the conflict, confusion, fear, paralysis… Do you see a good therapist? I think it is necessary for you, someone skillful to guide you at this very unique process that not many people go through- change 15 year old religious beliefs. This is not easy stuff. Changing core beliefs is like a tsunami in the brain. Old beliefs gone, new beliefs not formed yet, beliefs to replace old motivations.

If I was you, I would pretend I was a two years old again, just starting life. At two or three I wouldn’t travel to Australia, I would start at the playground, not a far away land, close by. Start with the small things, the daily things, looking at those things you already are doing with a BEGINNER’S MIND, as if you are seeing things for the first time. In a way, you are. Without the old beliefs you are seeing things anew. So see them where you are, in what you do every day. Make no big changes or decisions.

Therapy and small scale steps, this is what i would do.

anita

Dear Mermaid:

I missed it where you wrote in your original post that you are seeing a therapist. I think that therapist may not be good enough for you. I think she should have been working with you starting with the practical problems of the present (and if they are stabilized, then go backward if needed).

Notice, I didn’t suggest “doing nothing.” I suggested doing the same things you are already doing, but looking at those things with a beginner’s mind, including what you are doing right this moment, reading these very words. Nothing is too small a thing-to-do if it is a part of The Way for you to go: healing.

After writing to you yesterday, I thought to myself that Australia may be a good idea, the break you need, the opportunity to see things a new… the newness that your brain needs. It may be.

Obviously, you feel that you need to be elsewhere and do something else. Probably a good idea, move elsewhere. And away from parents is always a good idea, as far as I am concerned because troubles most often do start in that context: the early years of living with parents.

Moving out and away, probably a good idea…
anita

Dear Mermaid/ Reader:

I studied your seven threads from July 2014 to December 2015. This thread is your 6th, ending with my reply to you, one you did not respond to. The purpose of my study is to better understand myself/ people, to learn something new today. I don’t like reading finished, edited and re-edited (and re-edited yet again) books, neither of the fiction genre nor he non-fiction genre, because I don’t trust that the real story can survive all that editing. On the other hand, your threads, written over time, give me the opportunity to look into a real story with minimal editing.

Next month, May 2022, you should be 37. At the time of your first thread, July 2014, you were 29. There you shared that you used to be a “devoted Christian” from the age of 16 to 29 and had an “on/off for about 6 years with big breaks relationship” (age 23 to 29) with a man who lived in a different country (He lived in France; you lived in the UK).  The breaks in the relationship were about the distance, and about you feeling “so darn guilty” as a Christian being with a non-Christian. (The Christian faith does not allow having sex with or living with a man who is not your husband).

In May 2014, you had a “kind of epiphany moment of wanting to totally change my belief system. I read ‘The power of now’ by Tolle and it all made sense, I felt I was awake and able to do the things he suggested, I felt so happy and alive“, and you “said, ‘screw it!’ I’m just going to go and be with him“, so you moved in with the man in France, but living with him, you experienced the following: “I love being with him… but I can’t feel at ease, I feel down and worry I made the wrong decision to get back with him… I have always had a tendency to be indecisive…  doubts and questions (are) 24/7 right now… I get extremely anxious and feel so guilty for having doubts, feeling like I’m lying or something. I do wonder whether being on my own is best, doing what I want and not having these doubts and uncertainties… I don’t feel settled“.

In your second thread in August 2014, you shared that you were still indecisive: “My problem is I don’t know if it’s the relationship making me unhappy or other factors. I love my boyfriend but… I am thinking and analyzing allllll the time, I just can’t BE and let things flow. I feel so, so, lost, and I don’t know what to do… I have such tension in my head like it’s being squeezed in a vice or something and I know that is stress related“.

You shared that you were “rediscovering” who you are “without Christianity defining me anymore“, that you are therefore in turmoil: “I feel like there’s a monkey on my shoulder constantly throwing me doubts and questions… I keep thinking ‘just go back home, go back to the UK’ (I am English), because I am missing dear friends and family, but I am also not sure running away is the answer“.

In your third thread, in September 2014, you shared that since your previous thread, “I have since moved into a small studio flat on my own to have some space and create my own life in France…. but there’s so much tension in my body… I have these feeling like a foreboding that ‘I’m just not right/me’… Like you’re living your life but floating above your body“. You tried to meditate and breathe, but it was unhelpful. “I can’t decide if it’s my heart saying ‘end this relationship and your life here in France and go home’ … I keep panicking thinking these depressed feelings will cause cancer or something… I love my boyfriend, but my mind seems to fire a thousand questions at me ‘is this what you want?’ ‘What about being young and free?”

In your fourth thread, November 2014, you shared that a few weeks earlier, you moved back to the UK, but “thing is, the peace I was longing for hasn’t come, the excitement and joy I felt before going to France hasn’t returned and I am 29, have moved back with my parents in the middle of the countryside and just feel STUCK… I am very sad about the breakup with my ex… I just feel so lost, I don’t know how to ‘find myself’ again”.

In your fifth thread, 11 months later, October 2015, you shared that you were offered anti-depressants but resisted taking them, that you “have so many surface reasons to feel happy, but inside is deep emptiness and anger that I can’t ‘fix things’“, that you feel shame.  You recalled that in April 2014, a month before your 29th Birthday, and after 4 years of suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (2010-2014), you “decided to stop being a Christian after 15 years of being heavily involved in the church… never feeling good enough and extreme guilt. When I made the decision to not be a Christian anymore and believe in such an angry God, I felt euphoric and alive and so much better physically, I felt like a completely new person. Now over a year on, I feel deeply depressed, anxious and lost… like nothing feels the same, I’m not the same…there’s the constant feeling that ‘nothing’s normal’“.

You addressed me: “Anita, your words were most helpful to me, reminding myself to be kind to myself as I transition through this massive change, which makes me feel like I’m going mad“.

In your December 2015, sixth thread, the one I am typing into right now, a thread titled “Decision paralysis… I feel like I’m going mad“, you shared that you were living with your parents in the countryside, that your relationship with the man in France was still ongoing, but in limbo. You were feeling “depressed and anxious… so desperately low“.

You shared that while you were a devoted Christian, you “have done loads of things, travelled and lived abroad, studied, but all the time dealing with the guilt and turmoil that my faith brought with it“, and you therefore missed “the experiences of ‘freedom’… to go off and explore“. You were afraid to commit to the man in France and then regret not having explored life before committing to him. You were considering traveling to Australia.

You’ve been seeing a therapist for the purpose of working through “losing my faith and my identity“, but “she keeps wanting to work with memories from the past, saying that I adapted myself way before religion came along… Anita – yes as mentioned above I am seeing a therapist, but not feeling it’s helping yet, she is working with ’traumatic’ memories from the past as opposed to dealing directly with the trauma of loss of my religion which makes me question the usefulness of it“.

In my reply to you on this thread, right above, Dec 6, 2015, I suggested to you that your “trauma did not originate from the changing of religious beliefs fifteen or so years ago. But way before that… maybe, if elements of abuse and neglect are ongoing with your parents, move out. I don’t know…  There are things from the past you are refusing to see because you imagine seeing those things will cause you more pain than you can handle. Someone has to guide you through seeing what you need to see”.

You did not reply to my Dec 6, 2015, post, but two days later, you started your seventh and last thread where you shared for the first time something about your parents and about your childhood. You shared that your parents (with whom you were living at the time) “are amazing human beings who have always loved and encouraged me and never told me ‘I must succeed’“, and yet, growing up, you “felt an enormous amount of pressure growing up… the overwhelming pressure to be everything to them and to be perfect… responsible for everyone (including my parents’ happiness)“.

You felt guilty about feeling that pressure and responsibility and being so troubled otherwise even though you never had an abusive or neglectful childhood: “I feel guilty because I never had an abusive or neglectful childhood… I have such guilt for even saying I struggle with being an only child because obviously I had all the love and care and limelight I needed, but I think that in itself is a problem because you can never escape the attention…

“My Mum is highly anxious and has always worried what others think of her and whenever we have people round it’s always so stressful as if 50 were coming round when there were only 5! She has also always strived to please others and I think I have absorbed that too, I suppose it’s not always what we say verbally is it that gets absorbed by children” – those were your closing words.

My thoughts today, six years and four months later: in therapy, you wanted to deal “directly with the trauma of loss of my religion“, but your therapist wanted “to work with memories from the past… before religion came along“. You became a Christian at 16 and lost your faith at 29. Your therapist wanted to work with you on your memories before religion came along, that is, before you were 16, but you didn’t want that, feeling that “it’s not helping” and that it is not useful (“makes me question the usefulness of it”).

You did not want to explore your childhood. You wanted to explore Australia… life out there in the future, not your childhood, and not your adult life here and now, being that you were still living with them at 29.

You were an only child. You lived in a serene countryside location in the UK, but inside the house, you grew up with a very anxious mother: “My Mum is highly anxious and has always worried… it that gets absorbed by children” – you absorbed her high anxiety and worry as a child. And living with her at 29, you were still exposed to it.

“I suppose it’s not always what we say verbally is it that gets absorbed by children” – you absorbed her anxiety, and you absorbed her tension: ” I have such tension in my head like it’s being squeezed in a vice or something and I know that is stress related“. Your mother didn’t physically abuse you by squeezing your head with a physical vice, she squeezed your head with a mental vice simply by being highly anxious around and not containing her anxiety.

The English term “stiff upper lip” is useful when it comes to parenting in this context: a highly anxious parent should not show her anxiety, but hide it, contain it, because it harms children. And in private, in the office of a professional, treat that anxiety by medications and/ or psychotherapy.

“I felt an enormous amount of pressure growing up… the overwhelming pressure to be everything to them and to be perfect… responsible for everyone (including my parents’ happiness)” – a highly anxious mother is a very unhappy mother, so you desperately wanted to make her happy. That was your number #1 priority and sacrificing yourself (placing yourself on the back burner) felt worthwhile, when what was on the front burner was seeing her happy!

“I feel guilty because I never had an abusive or neglectful childhood… I have such guilt for even saying I struggle with being an only child because obviously I had all the love and care and limelight I needed, but I think that in itself is a problem because you can never escape the attention” –

* “I had all the love and care and limelight I needed” – you also had all the high anxiety that you didn’t need.

* “you can never escape the attention” – you can never escape her anxiety. If you go for a walk in the serene surrounding of the house, you are always back to the anxiety when you re-enter the home.

* “I have such guilt for even saying I struggle with being an only child” – your struggle has not been about being an only child, it’s been about being a child to a highly anxious mother who did not contain her anxiety.

*I feel guilty because I never had an abusive or neglectful childhood” – your mother was not abusive, she was “only” highly anxious, and she expressed her severe anxiety; that’s all it takes to mess up a child.

You didn’t mention your father, so I am guessing he wasn’t as powerful a figure as was your mother. Her high anxiety affected you much more than anything he expressed.

I am guessing that you took on religion at 16, so to have a strong parental figure, aka god… to substitute your highly anxious, restless, agitated, unhappy mother with a calm, content god, a god that will allow you the freedom to live your own life, to explore, to be who you are?

I will add to this post within the next 24 hours.

anita

Dear Mermaid/ Reader:

Having studied your thread in the last three days I learned more about how indeed damaging it is for a child to grow up with a highly anxious parent, and how important it is for parents to treat and manage their own anxiety best they can, so to minimize its expressions.

A highly anxious person in every relationship needs to take responsibility for his/ her personal anxiety and work on lessening it with professional help when needed, because anxiety in one person increases the anxiety and stress in the other person. But it is especially important to do so when the other person is a child. There is a term for the years of childhood: Formative Years. To put it simply, the Years-long anxiety expressed by a highly anxious parent becomes Formed in the brain-body of the child.

Put in another way:  years of exposure to highly anxious parent => a highly anxious child => a highly anxious adult.

The highly anxious child, now adult can move out of the parents’ home, as you have done, Mermaid, live with a man in another country, live on your own, travel, etc., and yet wherever you go, there’s the high anxiety, that “I’m just not right” feeling, as you put it.

When a person feels I’m-just-not-right, nothing feels right: living with a man feels… not right, living alone feels… not right, living in another country feels… not right, living back with parents feels…  not right, religious life feels… not right, leaving your religion… feels not right.  Nothing feels right.

A child needs to grow up with parents who seem okay, in control of themselves, because the child needs to feel that she is in good hands, so to speak, that the people in charge of her are dependable. When a parent seems all over the place, restless, unsettled, the child feels that she has no one to depend on. Without a calm-strong parent to care for her, the child cannot rest. She becomes restless. Restless within herself, nothing feels right.

Restless adults who have been restless since childhood resist addressing the origin of their restlessness and prefer to address their restlessness within an adult romantic relationship, at work, and/ or elsewhere, but not in childhood. I think that the reason for it is that children of a highly anxious parent (parents who may be abusive or not) do their best to remove their awareness from their painful childhood experience, and this removal aka dissociation becomes a habit that carries on into adulthood.

But the painful reality of one’s childhood continues to be the reality of one’ adulthood regardless of dissociation, nothing felt right then; nothing feels right forever more… unless serious healing takes place for long enough time.

An anxious person shrinks from life, anxiety is about constriction. To grow, to expand, to explore, a person needs to be free from excessive anxiety. Any and all kinds of freedoms start with this one basic individual freedom: the freedom from excessive anxiety.

When a highly anxious person experiences a temporary disappearance of the anxiety, a zero anxiety (when taking a particular psychoactive drug, when a big change takes place, such as getting into a religion, getting out of a religion, falling in love, falling out of love, winning the lottery, reading a particularly inspiring book, etc.), nothing feels better: “awake and able… so happy and alive… euphoric and alive and so much better physically, I felt like a completely new person“, you wrote.

The tendency when that happens is to think that the anxiety is gone for good, and that the euphoria will last. It never does.

You wrote that you had “so many surface reasons to feel happy“, but you had one reason to feel unhappy and that was… years of growing up with a highly anxious mother, her high anxiety Formed within you.

You last posted, in December 2015, four whole years before anyone heard of Covid-19 (December 2019), before the most alarming 2020 & onward escalation of climate change, before the global political radicalization and move toward autocracy, culminating in the current ongoing tragic war in Ukraine, before all these things, while physically healthy, living in a serene countryside, wanting for nothing material, you were highly anxious, and your mother was highly anxious. Why?

My answer to my own question: the world was never right, too much wrong in it, too much abuse and waste, selfishness and ignorance, greed, indifference and short sightedness. As a result, people are highly anxious, and highly anxious make poor choices that lead to more abuse, waste and destruction.

Lessening the current and expected miseries in our world begins with the individual taking responsibility for one own’s anxiety and lessening it. With lesser individual anxiety, each person can think and choose better, have a far-sighted view of the consequences of one own’s and others’ behaviors and misbehaviors, and calmly move toward practical, long-term individual and global solutions.

You asked: “What about being young and free?” – excessive anxiety shrinks and constricts us, it ages us, it imprisons us; it is the opposite of youth and freedom. To become young and free (at any age), take on the process of significantly lessening your own personal anxiety long-term, freeing your mind, heart and body from that “tension in my head like it’s being squeezed in a vice“.

anita