Hello Sonia 🙂

I read your new post and our communication in your first thread earlier this year, and what came to mind was the image of a boy (your friend) when he was a child, “feeling that he is not taking into consideration” by his parents, a boy who “was getting upset very often” but kept it inside, no place safe to express it.

Fast forward, he found that safe place in you and he took advantage of this opportunity and expressed himself a lot, “hours of stories”.

Another image: a girl feeling responsible for a parent’s feelings, rushing to make them feel better, being the best emotional caretaker she could be.

As to your questions in the last paragraph:

It’s clear to me that you are not a bad person for setting self-protective boundaries, for not over-extending yourself and for feeling happy about it (when guilt doesn’t overshadow the happy).

But you sometimes feel guilty, like you are a bad person because by putting yourself first, you feel that you are neglecting a responsibility to put him first?

👧 👦 Anita

Hi Sonia:

You are welcome!

“I stopped feeling like I need to help him see his value”-

That’s progress, that’s healing. Because you are his friend, not his mother, or his emotional care-taker, right?

👧 Anita

You are welcome home. Sonia.

Leaving this role is not easy. When you feel like a bad person for doing what’s good for you.. that’ difficult.

Recently I came across the term “moral guilt” vs “trauma guilt”. The first is when you feel guilty because you really did say or do something that harmed another.

The second happens when you feel guilty not because you did anything wrong, but because of early emotional trauma of some sort.

Setting healthy- helpful boundaries may inconvenience another person. They may not like it, but that doesn’t mean you harmed them.

You can’t make everyone like everything you say and do. No one can get only ‘likes’ and zero ‘dislikes’.

👍 👎 Anita