Dear Ginn, I would like to say how amazing you are. Finding a passion is not a simple thing. In reality, it is exhausting and time-consuming to try new things every day and not take the easy route and just play it safe. I am sorry the uncertainty is causing panic attacks. I would love to say there is an easy answer to how to leave behind a pattern of behavior or a way to find out what you were destined to do in your life.  The only easy answer is this. First, ask yourself these questions

1. what in the past has made you smile, laugh or find joy in your life? In hard times it’s hard to remember what brought you joy in the good times. If you don’t like designing what do you like to do? Is it everything about designing that you dislike? What about Drawing or Painting? Do you like Buildings or history.

2. what in your life can you not live without, if nothing comes to mind then maybe find something to smile about. Is there a type of tea you have to have every day without fail? Finding small things every day that makes the day feel calmer or brighter helps lower stress.  My favored way to break out of a panic attack is peppermint tea or mints.

3. is there someone you can talk to about dreams and goals someone who can be a sounding board to bounce ideas off of? Sometimes we get stuck in our heads and can’t get out.

4. Stop measuring self-expectations based on others people’s lives. They could be just as envious of your life and you would never know.

5. Worrying about money to pay the rent and not having any way to earn just adds to the pressure of being in a cycle. If you are unhappy in a job don’t let that job be the central focus of your life. Before work goes for a walk and get a coffee or after work go to the bar etc. Find ways to get out. Passion will come with time.

Sorry if that was not very helpful.

Donna

Ginn it’s understandable that in hard times to forget what brought us joy when times were well. Understanding that we once felt joy doesn’t have the same effect as feeling joy in creating or living life fully. I am first off sorry that you feel like your friends and family are tired of hearing about your troubles. If it helps any from a complete strangers point of view I believe they still care for you. It’s just hard sometimes for loved ones to see the ones they care for struggling with problems they are unable to help prevent or solve for them.
From my own relationship with friends and family I know that sometimes they want to help but they just can’t understand why I am struggling with this situation when the answer is clear to them.

I apologize for the lack of insight in how to fix this issue. Its one I have struggled with for years myself.  According to my family I just need to be content with mundane living and not look for passion.
I want to feel something more than listless boredom while working at my job and to have both my mind and spirit impassioned with the work I do. Instead I feel bored and lacking something powerful. I end up quitting and looking for something new to feel needed.  I truly am the worst to tell you how it can be fixed.

Its good that you have tried so many things to see if they are what you want to do in life.

You said that when you try out new passions they fade out of interest in a weeks time. What would you say is the most common cause of your weakening interest? Boredom or is it more of looking for passion from a logical perspective and money wise way?  That for me is my number one cause ironically.

It good that you had someone to talk to in the past about these things.  Although the fact it was too expensive and hardly helped isn’t good!

Sorry if this doesn’t help. I’ll be a ear for you though.

Donna

Dear Ginn,

Sometimes family means well but falls short of their intentions. While money concerns can weaken passion, I think it’s the fear of failure that is the true death of passion.

“I guess the most common cause of my weakening interest is I don’t feel like achieving anything instantly? and of course, money wise too.” 

My question is this why do you have to have instant results? Every time I took up a new passion or interest with the hope of instant results I’ve failed.  The only thing we have control of is when we give up. What in life do you believe is as essential to your livelihood as the air you breathe. What can you not live without?

In your post with Teak, you state that you regret lying to your parents about not going to piano practice because you were afraid to fail.  Who were you most afraid of disappointing? Yourself or your family?

I believe you can get past this loop you are in and succeed at your life way beyond the minimum required to be functioning!

Listening to you,

Donna

Dear Ginn,

Wanting to help your parents enjoy their life is a worthwhile goal! The best way to do that is not to forsake yours though. I have no doubt that your dad loves you. Even if you did live your life different than his expectations he still would love you.

Breaking out of a tower moment is hard to do quickly, to be honest, it will take a while. Small goals are better at the beginning than large ones. My suggestion is to figure out the monetary side first if you figure out how much you need to live and have time to spend on passion while helping your parents.

If your goal is to help them retire then how can you help? Is there anything you actually can do to help with bills? Do they talk about going on vacation anywhere?  My suggestion is to talk to them about retirement and how you can help.

I know that parents can be uncomfortable talking about such things and can make statements of  “it would help if you had a stable career so we don’t worry etc.” but talking can help bring understanding.

I would also write down five things you would love to do.

For example, my goals involve.

1. Taking the JLPT exam in December

2. Going on Vacation to Japan

3. Having My Own Apartment.

4. Sewing a Complete Wardrobe

5. Owning my own Business

I also have monetary goals too. but you get the idea.

Dear ginn:

“They have been through a lot of hardship…. To be honest, I don’t care about the money, I just need it for my parents so they can have a better life. So, I can freely chase my passion“-

– Reads to me that for a long time, you felt very, very sorry for your parents for having lives of hardship, so you decided early on to postpone your own life, including your passions (whatever they may be), so to give them a better life first. You figured that after you give them a better life, then you will give yourself the permission to have your own life, your own passions.

Fast forward, you did not succeed in giving your parents a better life, so your own life is still on hold. Did I understand correctly?

anita

Dear ginn,

I’m sorry if I’m expressing this a little messy because I’m not sure what’s wrong to my life and my thoughts are a little bit jumbled. Hope we can piece it all together and figure it out. Thank you all very much indeed for your time, from my bottom of my heart.

you are very welcome, and don’t worry, you aren’t expressing yourself messy. Our lives are complex, there are many factors to take into account, and it takes time to get a clearer picture. But I too hope we can piece it all together is figure it out.

My parents are always supportive for everything I want to do in my life. That’s why I really appreciate them and want to help them to retired earlier. Because I was among the many children, I was the best academically, in terms of overall performance. So my dad has highly expectations on me. But my dad did always criticised me when I didn’t do well in anything. When I cried because I was stressed about small things, he would criticised me that why I was being so weak and useless, how could I achieve bigger things in life if I can’t even handle a little stress and small obstacles. I believe he is trying to comfort me and telling me it is okay, not a big deal.

I think I understand it a bit better now: your father had high expectations on you, considering that your family was rather poor and you did the best in school amongst your many siblings. You were the hope for the family to have a better life, if I understood well. Perhaps your father was specially focused on you and your performance (more than your other siblings), wanting you to be at the top of your game academically, and criticizing you when you did something wrong. He also criticized you when you were stressed and crying about smaller things, telling you were “weak and useless”, and that you will never achieve anything in your life if you can’t handle such small obstacles.

His intention was to toughen you up, so you wouldn’t be so vulnerable later in life. However, such attitude can be very damaging for the child, because they are constantly criticized for not being good enough and not meeting the parents’ expectations. When a child cries – even for a small thing – they need consolation, not to be told they are weak and useless.

You said you rather skipped the piano exam than potentially fail and embarrass yourself:

I ran away from piano exam when I was twelve because I don’t want to fail it and embarrassed of myself.

You also said:

I hate myself because I didn’t being honest with my parents, maybe they could support me and let me know is okay to be fear

Considering that your father used to criticize you for showing fear and weakness, I don’t think he would have supported you if you were honest with him. You knew he probably would have criticized you for being so weak and afraid, and that’s why you didn’t want to tell the truth.

I think you had (and still have) a very big burden on your shoulders: to be a high achiever and lift your family out of poverty, and also to be tough and strong and unafraid – like a soldier. Anything less than that isn’t good enough. Those are quite impossible expectations, specially for a sensitive female child. No wonder you can’t meet them, and why you are getting stressed and feeling trapped…

It seems to me you would need to 1) allow yourself to be weak and vulnerable (let go of the expectation on yourself to be tough and self-composed), 2) know that you are good enough, even if the inner and outer critics tell you you’re not.

From that place of self-compassion and trust in yourself, you will be much freer to think about your life (I believe that my family and freedom are indispensable things in my life.), your passions, and how to proceed.

How does this sound?

Dear ginn:

Please take your time reading the replies you are receiving, take your time considering and taking them in, one at a time, not all at once. No reason at all to rush. Here is my input today:

Your father made a couple of mistakes which he still repeats. He wanted to toughen up his child, to make her strong (so that she will be successful and earn enough money to help the family, and for him to retire early), but instead he made his daughter weak.

He thought that if he criticized you for “being so weak and useless“, you will think something like this: oh, I didn’t know that I shouldn’t be weak and useless, my father doesn’t like me weak, therefore, I should be strong, and now that I know, I will be strong! And then, because you had this thought, and because you don’t want more hurtful criticism, you would become strong and useful.

But neither a thought nor fear of hurtful criticism can make a child strong. After all, you had these kinds of thoughts many times during your life, as a child and as an adult, and you feared your father’s criticism since early on, and yet, these did not make you strong!

Here is what he should have done so to make you strong: when you “cried because I was stressed about small things“- in a gentle fatherly voice and with a kind look in his eyes, he should have told you something like this: I understand, my precious daughter. It is difficult to ____ (example: study 50 pages in a book for a test in two days). I will help you and we can do this together. You are upset right now, so I will make you hot chocolate and you can drink it while watching ____ (your favorite TV show) for half an hour. After that I will sit with you as you study the first page. I will then leave you alone to study the next 4 pages. When you are done, call me and tell me what you learned from the first 5 pages, and we’ll take it from there, together.

If he said something like the above, you would have felt supported, like you are not alone when something is difficult. If he carried on the plan in the example above, and you managed to study the first 25 pages that evening, and 25 pages the next day, and on the third, had the test and succeeded, you would have felt successful. You would have learned that when a task is difficult and stressful, you can do it anyway because you are not alone, there is someone to help you, someone to make you feel better and help you make a plan that works!

Alone and unsupported- we get weak, Together and supported- we get strong. This is the case because as humans, we are social animals. And just like other social animals, we need the help of others, we need to feel that together feeling.

So, you see, what you needed was more than the thought: I should be strong! What you needed was that together feeling and a workable plan.

Fast forward, you are not earning money to help the family because of his repeated mistakes. It is the consequence of his words and hurtful criticism. You can think of it this way: let’s say he picked up a lamp and threw it to the floor. The lamp breaks, no light. Who made it happen, who caused it?

Good thing that you are a person and not a lamp, because a broken lamp can’t fix itself, but for a human, it is possible.

You wrote: When I cried because I was stressed about small things, he would (say)… how could I achieve bigger things in life if I can’t even handle a little stress and small obstacles?

He didn’t understand that Rome wasn’t built in one day. To make a child successful, you have to start small and build up. When he said the above, he minimized the importance of the “small obstacles”. These were small obstacles in his adult mind, but not in a mind of a child. For you, these were big obstacles. He should have validated to you that the obstacles you faced were indeed big, but when faced together, with kindness and support, you can successfully face these obstacles. Together, they are not too big.

You needed kindness and togetherness, not hurtful criticism. Your teacher made a similar mistake when she did the following: “My teacher criticised  in front of the whole class and told me that she was so disappointed in me…  and half of the girls in the class boycotted me“- parents and teachers should be very careful when criticizing a child. Criticism should be gentle, aimed at correcting specific mistakes without shaming and humiliating the child! All children need support and that together feeling, not being isolated/ boycotted!

“I was too impulsive and wanted to be successful overnight…  always thinking of achieving bigger goals overnight“- because your father presented to you the belief that small things don’t matter and the “bigger things in life” (his words) are all that matter, you believe it yourself, avoiding the small things and wanting the “bigger goals overnight” (your words).

“I like being creative about design, but the design process- I don’t like. For example: I like to stir-fry food, but I hate chopping or cutting the meat“- chopping the food is the small task, the small obstacle, but stir frying the food is the big task (correct?), and in your mind, the small tasks are of no importance.

“I don’t know what’s my passion“- find worth in the small tasks, open your mind to the reality that small tasks and small obstacles do matter, they are important! Believing this will make it possible for you to feel interest and passion in doing small things, things that … really are not small at all. This, I think, will be the beginning of you no longer “feeling stuck, repeated pattern” (the title of your thread). Focusing and finding worth and renewed interest in the small tasks can be your new pattern, and the miracle that will spark and change your life (“Like waiting one day, miracle or a spark will change my life”). We can talk about how to achieve this spark later.

anita