Dear SereneWolf,

Bună Tee

Is that Romanian? Had to look it up but am still not sure…

You always give great examples. Thanks!

You’re welcome!

It was actually just recently few months ago. I started the swimming classis and after that I told them. So my parents wouldn’t argue with me.

Oh I see, it was recent. What would they argue with you? That you shouldn’t take swimming classes because it’s dangerous?

Heck they’re even worried that I’m letting a stray cat inside my place. They be like she might have diseases and blah blah blah.. I’m like I’ll go to the vet and give her vaccination. So, you don’t have to worry about that. Literally no one in my family grown up with a pet. So I did see that coming.

Yeah, it does seem they are a little overprotective. I wonder how they’ve survived you leaving home at the age of 16 and living alone, if they are so worried about you even to this day? How did they even allow it?

But it’s right I did act like an overprotective, critical father! Not all the time but still…

Yeah, and there might be a similarity with how your parents acted with you (and are still acting with you). Overprotective, trying to control you (although not succeeding), and doing it “for your own good”…

Or is it just like my parent thinks they still have to care about me like even though I’m not a kid anymore…

Yes, it does seem like that… that you tend to behave in romantic relationships a little bit like your parents behave with you…

Striving towards Perfection (specially with Humans) isn’t a wise thing to do I guess… and I tried to make them “perfect” the way I wanted even though at that time I just saw it as a care and concerned about their health.

Yeah, it’s pretty destructive for the relationship if you see the person as “lacking” and try to make them “perfect”. The person feels not good enough, whereas you put yourself in a superior position, and basically judge and criticize them for “underperforming”. Of course, you can say it’s all with a good intention, “for their own good”, but it’s not a healthy, equal relationship.

In a healthy relationship, we accept the person as they are – we don’t try to change them and mold them into something that we would like them to be. It doesn’t mean we need to tolerate and accept some of their bad habits, however fundamentally we don’t try to change the person to be something they are not. It’s like we look at them with love and acceptance, not with a measuring stick that says “not good enough”.

But it’s right I did act like an overprotective, critical father! Not all the time but still…  And after that I get exhausted and give up on the relationship.

Yeah, no wonder, because it’s like you’re in a war with the person, trying to make her do what you think is right for her, and she wouldn’t… And maybe you think she doesn’t love you if she resists, if she has different priorities and preferences than you? And so you conclude it’s not worth the trouble because things can’t be the way you want them to be?

External environment could be the big reason as well not just my friends but like everywhere I see it just that all be like it’s lot of mind games and complex – not like clear communication as it should be. So yeah it’s like a confirmation bias

Yes, it seems some of your friends tell you you need to “play the game”, which makes it look like some kind of competition, like who is going to outsmart whom… Whereas a healthy relationship is not a competition, but a loving and supportive co-existence (or something like that, I can’t think of a better definition now 🙂 ).

The way I perceive my past relationships. Like Did I even had a healthy relationship before that I’m longing for it again?

So because of these reasons, I just feel more hopeless and I just feel not excited for dating. Not more than Maybe just some time spending and physical pleasure.

I imagine you haven’t had a healthy relationship so far, because of those emotional wounds and programming that stem from your childhood. So no wonder you fear more of the same… But what you’ve experienced so far isn’t what a true relationship looks like. Trust that you too can have a healthy relationship, but you’d need to heal some of your patterns before that’s possible.

And yeah what about you? Did you celebrate valentine week?

Well, not particularly, I did get flowers from my husband. But we’ve never really paid attention to that date, so I don’t consider it important. But we do have a very good and strong relationship, and that’s what matters most 🙂

Dear SereneWolf,

Omg yeah It wasn’t easy! and they tried lot of things to make me stay. But I was really stubborn about it and figured every answer to their worries. And still, they’d call me every day for more than two months.

It seems you were pretty resourceful, already at that age. And really self-confident in a sense, because you knew you could make it on your own, without your parents’ protection. The fact that they worried and called you every day is normal I think, because you were a minor when you decided to live alone… so I wouldn’t call that excessive worry.

In fact, I am thinking now that their biggest mistake as parents wasn’t excessive worry (because you sort of gave them the reasons to be worried 🙂 ), but rather, it could be the criticism and judgment that you grew up with. Feeling constantly criticized (e.g. your father was very harsh with you when you didn’t hand him the proper tool right away), always compared to others, perhaps always feeling that something is wrong with you and that you’re not good enough? Like, being seen not with loving, accepting eyes, but with strict, judgmental eyes, who always evaluate you and seek a reason to criticize you?

This seems to me the greatest wounding that you’ve experienced. I’ve experienced the same from my mother. She took my good results at school for granted, never praised me for that, and at the same time she looked for every opportunity to scold me. There was always something wrong with me, in her eyes… and so I grew up with the belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with me. My self-esteem was zero.

Children who grow up being heavily criticized develop the harsh inner critical voice (which we’ve talked about already), but they can also develop the outer critic, as the flip side of the inner critic. According to Pete Walker, the outer critic is our defense mechanism against getting hurt in intimate relationships:

“CPTSD typically include an attachment disorder that comes from the absence of a sympathetic caregiver in childhood. When the developing child lacks a supportive parental refuge, she never learns that other people can soothe loneliness and emotional pain. She never learns that real intimacy grows out of sharing all of her experience.

To the degree that our caretakers attack or abandon us for showing vulnerability, to that degree we later avoid the authentic self-expression that is fundamental to intimacy. The outer critic forms to remind us that everyone else is surely as dangerous as our original caretakers. Subliminal memories of being scorned for seeing our parents’ support then short-circuit our inclination to share our troubles and ask for help.”

The above is the excerpt from Pete Walker’s book “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving”. It could be that you felt very unsafe and criticized when you showed vulnerability or weakness in front of your parents. This might have given you the message that being anything less than “perfect” means being judged and rejected. It also might have led you to believe that the person you are in the relationship with is there to judge you and criticize you.

You might even subconsciously believe that this is what relationships are all about: competition, who is better, who is more successful, who is more “perfect”. If so, you naturally want to either win in that competition (be the “more perfect” one, and judge the other person for her supposed deficiencies), or you want to leave the competition altogether (not be in a relationship at all).

Would you say this is true for you? I have more to say and I’d also like to answer your questions, but let me know if the above resonates with you?

Dear SereneWolf,

I totally agree like you mentioned (and even others told me) I was resourceful and pretty much self- reliant. But the thing is that for my parents and grandparents they never saw that as my good accomplishments. They were always like look what he did at this age? Look what he accomplished? Mainly my grandfather and father (Both are very “perfectionist” nature) So instead of praising they were criticizing me and that made me realize that no matter what I’ll do I wouldn’t be good enough for them. (I realized that years ago)

Good that you’ve realized it at a relatively young age! But the imprint stayed, and so their perfectionism became your own perfectionist inner critic. Which is telling you that you’re not good enough, not accomplishing enough at work, not earning enough money etc etc. It’s sad that both your father and grandfather were perfectionists, so you received a double dose of criticism.

Not only that, but it seems there was no male role model who could have served as a positive father figure (“My neighbors are like that, older relatives etc because they grew up in competitive environment“). So you were surrounded by bad role models…

Yes, I can totally relate! I know that feeling, but it must have been hard for you. In my case it was my grandfather. And even though I had good grades, It wasn’t enough! I felt literally pressurized to be in the Top 3 students! and yet I still made it as a Top 1st student till the end of high school. Just to feed their ego. So he can talk others like “look my grandson has always been the 1st”.

Right… so for your grandfather, it seems you were a tool to boost his vanity and pride. He boasted to others with your accomplishments, while at the same time he wasn’t really proud of you, but kept criticizing you. I can see how damaging it was for you, and how toxic. I understand why you wanted to get away ASAP…

But Because my mother and grandmother never criticized me for that and just loved me without any expectations from me. so It was kind of sane place for me. Otherwise, I swear I’d have to run in the jungle much earlier and never return.

It’s good you weren’t criticized by your mother and grandmother. However, I get the feeling that they didn’t protect you from your father’s and grandfather’s criticism either. Your mother told you to take your father’s criticism silently and “maturely”, so basically she never challenged your father to change his approach. My father never protected me from my mother’s criticism either. That’s why the damage done by my mother was much bigger than it should have been. Because my father allowed the abuse and didn’t say anything. I think something similar happened to you too?

And sometimes I think how self-confident, fearless and full of hope kid I used to be. Because of the criticized father and my inner criticism over the years my self-confident and self-esteem is still quite low, and it did affect my career and relationships quite a bit. So I still have to work on my self-esteem and self-confidence.

Yeah, and I think there is even a difference between self-esteem and self-confidence. Self-esteem is a basic sense of self-worth (which doesn’t depend on any skill that you possess), whereas self-confidence is related to various skills we have. Say a professional athlete may have a lot of self-confidence that they are good at sports, but once they get injured, they may feel worthless because their self-esteem was based on their skills and not on a deep inner sense that they are worthy as a person.

Perhaps you too feel self-confident is some things, but what is missing is a deeper sense of self-worth, of being worthy simply because you exist?

Yes I believe I can resonate.  Because those lines hits me. As you know in my previous relationships, I wasn’t being my true self and shielded my heart.

Right.. and it seems to me that you’re very cautious with relationships not only because of your father’s (and grandfather’s) criticism, but also because you weren’t protected enough by your mother. So relationship might seem like a very scary thing, where no one is on your side?

Okay so I’m not sure if my subconscious mind believes in that but I’m sure that my conscious mind doesn’t believe competition in the relationships. It was mostly fear of judgments, criticism and inability to express my emotions properly.

Okay, you’re afraid to be judged by your partner. So to protect yourself, you rather judge her and make her seem deficient, so to feel less vulnerable? Like, you first judge her before she can judge you?

This part could be true though. Conscious and subconscious both levels

Okay, so you don’t want a relationship to be a competition and a power struggle. You hate it. And that’s why you’d rather not go into it. But the problem is that a part of you believes that relationship is a power struggle. Or at least that being in a relationship means being judged, criticized and hurt. That you can’t show your weaknesses, or even your spontaneity (like dancing while cooking lunch) without being criticized. Right?

And if you approach relationships from that vantage point (which is a vantage point of fear), then I think it’s better not to date. Because you’ll likely get more of the same. But if you work on slowly dissolving that fear, on realizing why it’s there and then dissolving it… that’s when you open yourself to a different kind of dynamic in a relationship. To a possibility of a healthy relationship.

That would be my answer to your question whether you’re ready to date (You think I’m ready? Or I still need lot of healing even to start dating someone?). I think you’re ready to date if you can let go of some of that fear of judgment in the relationship. We can talk more about it, if you’d like to…

Dear SereneWolf,

Yes the IMPRINT! That’s the thing I’m working on

Yes, and the imprint is carried by the inner child… that’s why it needs inner child healing.

Yes I can say that’s really similar what happened to me. But what do you think what stopped your father and my mother from protecting us?

Well, my father had his own emotional wounding related to his mother. I think he was trying to get love and validation from his emotionally distant mother. He repeated that in the relationship with his wife, i.e. my mother. So he always tried to “please” and “appease” my mother, and he never wanted conflict with her. It was important for him that my mother isn’t angry with him. That was his priority, not my well-being or even his own well-being. And so he stayed silent and endured what he shouldn’t have endured.

With your mother, there could have been also cultural factors at play, maybe that women shouldn’t object to their husbands? So perhaps that contributed to your mother staying silent?

I totally agree with you! I do feel like I’m missing deeper sense of self-worth. And recently quite a lot

I see… yes, if you’re missing a deeper sense of self-worth, it’s very likely related to that incessant criticism that you’ve heard from your father and grandfather….

Right! and that’s the reason why I also still have fear of commitment. It feels so scary.

Right… because the closest relationships for you were a source of stress and humiliation, not a source of encouragement and support. And also broader relationships weren’t too supportive either, because as you’ve said, it was all about rivalry and who is more accomplished, who makes more money etc. No wonder you didn’t want to show any vulnerability, or your true self.

But do you know what Henry Cloud’s definition of intimacy is? Intimacy = into me see.

We need to allow the other person to see us, to see into us, otherwise there can be no intimacy and no real relationship.

It could be that your inner child is still afraid to be seen, because he believes he’s not good enough, not worthy enough? But if you can truly believe that you’re good enough and have so many good qualities, and that you don’t need to be perfect (unlike your parents and grandparents told you!)… then you might allow another person to “see into you”. As we’ve talked about before, you don’t need to spill out all your deepest secrets on the first date, just maybe share one vulnerable thing and see how she reacts…

For spontaneity I don’t feel criticized. Because in my previous relationships I received lot of good compliments about it and I myself believe that without spontaneity relationships are much less fun..

I said it because you mentioned earlier that you fear they might judge you for your spontaneity:

I know I’m in touch with my inner child and I still do lot of things that an adult actually doesn’t do like I turned into a kid when I’m with kids, Different kind of bicycling, Singing and dancing for no reason (Lot of times while cooking, Watching Anime and Cartoons and lot of things like that) And I kind of fear they would judge me for that and not actually understand.

But it’s good if you feel you can be spontaneous and playful after all!

I want to get out from this fearsome repetitive cycle. So, I will date and experiment till I have the success.

Good! I guess you can now be more mindful while dating and observe yourself, and notice if the fear arises… which is already a big step!