Dear Daniel:

I read all of your posts in your first thread that started September 7, 2019 (the pre-pandemic era, now seems so long ago). First a short summary and then my input with quotes:

You were then 22 (now 23), living with your mother, your step father and your 2 year old brother (still do), considering living on your own, closer to campus (the plan now is that you will be moving to your own flat in about two weeks). You finished your 3rd year in Uni, medical school,  and were about to start the 4th year the month after, Oct 2019. For the next 3 years in medical school,  the plan was that you will work in a hospital every day, then go to the library and study for exams that were going to take place every 3 months, a grueling schedule. In addition to your studies, you were and still are involved in a music band where you sing. Your social life has been pretty much limited to the music band performances and outings/ parties after.

And now my input with quotes. Not all my thoughts are 100% accurate in describing your life experience, so when something doesn’t exactly fit, keep reading. I think that most of what is to follow is true to you (let me know, later):

This is what you wrote in April, being in your 4th year in medical school, working in a hospital amidst the pandemic: “I keep going to the hospital and I’m glad to help the doctors. But I’m getting more and more afraid of the pandemic. I think the worst is yet to come and I’m very concerned about the future.. I’ve ben in contact with patients with the virus and I’m probably going to catch it (I may have it already)… I had a 3 day break this week because I was exhausted and I was a bit sick. No fever and no cough though so I guess it wasn’t the coronavirus. These 3 days were strange. At first, I slept a lot. Then I realized that it’s been a while since I thought about my health. Actually, I’m always anxious these days. At home and at work. Loneliness is almost always here as well. I cried today because the weekend is the worst”-

– this paragraph is very telling. Please pay attention to what this paragraph is telling: during a pandemic, working with patients sick with the coronavirus, in a hospital, you were able to perform day after day, with an almost unaffected attitude regarding the real and present danger in your life: the risk of being infected with the coronavirus, with an almost unaffected attitude, not  being overly anxious about your health  (“I’m probably going to catch it-I may have it already… I realized that it’s been a while since I thought about my health”).

While your health was in a real and present danger, your fear/ anxiety was not about your health. Your fear, anxiety and depression were about the same old, same  old reasons as years before the pandemic(“Loneliness is almost always here”)

Having read all your posts, it is clear to me that your loneliness has been your acute very personal experience since a very young age. It was your daily reality, for weeks and months and years. And it seemed like eternity.

Let’s look at who was in your life for the first 20 years: your now 3 year old brother wasn’t there. Your father was there , a man of “a troubled mind and can get easily angry.. never really cared about me”. “My father was starting to become violent and my mom was afraid for her life and mine.. I had to see my father every weekend. It was a nightmare every time. I was anxious when seeing him. I am still afraid of him”. Last you saw him was when you were 14.

Your mother: her focus before leaving your father was.. your father. Your focus and your mother’s focus while living with your father was your father and surviving (“We both suffered a lot because of my father.. my mom was afraid for her life and mine”). After leaving your father, your mother’s focus was still your father and surviving: “When  I began living with my mom, everything revolved around surviving. She flew with me from my father’s house and we had nowhere to go. So for  a few years, we traveled from place to place in order to eventually find a place to stay. I must have been 6 when we found that place”-

– your loneliness was acute very early on, while living with your father and  after leaving him, all happening before you were 6. during those early years, no one paid much attention to you. You were very much alone and lonely, your fear intense.. alone with that fear.

Fast forward 10 years, you are 16, falling in love for the first time, had your hopes up, as in: finally you were going to no longer be alone, finally you were going to feel safe and together with another human being!

But the girl rejected you. You kept it all inside (“I secluded myself in my room and didn’t share my horrible thoughts and feelings with anyone”), and then, that recent loneliness in your room, and all the early life acute anxiety and loneliness of years,  rose to the surface and exploded in that huge outburst (“I had a huge outburst. I went crazy, couldn’t stay in one place for more than a few seconds. I felt madness took control of my body”).

You wrote that you’ve been struggling with depression since that first heartbreak. But I believe you were struggling with depression in your very early years, you just didn’t have the words then that you had as a teenager and on.

This is what you wrote about your anxiety, depression, loneliness, feeling unloved regarding the last five years or so, but I believe it expresses your emotional experience in the early years of your life as well: “the isolation, loneliness, anxiety, fear and sadness ruined my college years and my first years in uni… I always carry the burden of my thoughts on my back… I can’t help but feeling not loved… most of the time, I can’t feel (mother’s) love.. loneliness and feeling misunderstood really brings me down… My family don’t understand me and is often busy with work… My mom tries to understand me sometimes, but she can’t.. I don’t think that she can help me either”-

– you were so miserable in your early years, so needy of help, but help didn’t come. It lead to your deep belief that help will never come, that it is not possible for you to be helped.

“Inside I feel broken”- and no one is there to make you alright again. You waited for help for so long, that you can’t imagine help arriving. “I am alone struggling with this and I feel that no one can really help in the long term”- the loss of hope to be helped is deep. Again, you waited to long for help that didn’t arrive.

“I am almost always disappointed by others. Maybe I expect too much from them. That’s why I tend to think that I should  rely on no  one but myself.. I feel close  to no one and feel like no one among my friends really care about me (even when they tell me they do?”)- this is you re-living your early- and ongoing- life experience. Your mother tells you that she loves you- and I bet she feels love for you- but her words don’t undo your real-life early life experience of being anxious, alone with no  one to help you. It is your real life experience that convinced you that you are unloved and alone (not her words). And so, you still don’t believe words people tell you.

You wrote repeatedly about not being able to connect with others, not feeling cared for by others, feeling distant from others, disconnected- this is you re-living your early childhood, this is how life was for you in those early years, and with some better times, at best, this has been your life experience ever since.

“When I meet someone for the first time, I feel that  I always meet them too late”- too late because for what seems like eternity, you did not receive the love and the help that you needed.. and now, after two decades of no love, and no help.. now, it seems too late.

My last words for this post: it is not too late for you to be loved and to feel loved, to trust those people who are worthy of your trust, to connect with others.. not too late, but it takes healing from the devastating real-life experience of your early years and onward.

anita

Dear Daniel:

You are very welcome.

“but it is true that I have suffered a lot and now I need to understand and accept what happened in order to move on”-

– understanding and accepting what happened is very important for the purpose of moving on. Part of the understanding you need to have is that you are lovable and that a loving, romantic relationship with a woman is possible for you.

You wrote about your mother: “I think she did the best she could”- reads to me that she did her best. I am impressed that she made it possible for you to not visit your father at 13, immediately when it was legally possible for her to do so. I suppose she is a good mother to you.

What I tried to explain it to you in my long post to you yesterday is that your mother’s best (however impressive) was not good enough for you because the proof is in the pudding, so to speak: your emotional experience early on in life and onward was one of anxiety, depression, loneliness, distrust, etc.

My goal is not to turn you against your mother. My goal is to help you understand and accept that sometimes a person’s best is just not good enough. I believe that the healing process that you have to go through will be outside the context of your relationship with your mother.

anita

Dear Daniel:

“Do you think that I need to be in a romantic relationship with a woman to understand that I am loveable?”-No. A man can have 1000 romantic relationships and still believe that he is unlovable.

“Or is there any other way?”- there is only one way, and that is healing. When any living thing gets injured, it needs to heal.

By suggesting that the healing process needs to happen outside the context of your relationship with your mother, I mean the following:  most recently, you had a long talk with your mother about your childhood. Your conclusion as stated in your post before last was: “I think she did the best she could and I don’t blame her for anything”-

– healing will require that you focus not on your mother, not on whether or not she did the best she could, not on whether there is something to blame her for.. but on you: on whether or not you had a good life as  a child, and how to make your life better than the life you had so far.

In the context of a child (of any age) and his mother, the child is too  close to his mother, and he focuses on her. His empathy is for her. Healing requires that you focus on you, and that your empathy is for you.

Don’t look for answers asking your mother. Answers are in quality psychotherapy away from your mother, without sharing about it with her. In other words, keep your healing and your relationship with your mother separate.

anita

Dear Daniel:

I understand why it bothers you t be interrupted in mid sentence, especially by a person paid to not interrupt his own client!

“What should I look for in a psychotherapist?”- someone who will wait until you stop talking before he starts talking, someone who will listen to you attentively. Someone who will clearly express to you empathy, showing you that he (or she) is there for you, and willing to work hard to help you.

Regarding the letter to your father, if you want to send me a draft of it, or type  it away here, on your thread so to get my input, please do so.

anita

Dear Daniel:

You are welcome. I understand that your letter to your father is very personal, and that you don’t want to share it here- thank you for being honest and clear with me, asserting yourself well.

I wouldn’t wait for Y to message you, if I was you (and if I was able to stop waiting). I do hope you find a good therapist- he or she can make a huge difference in your life.

anita

Dear Daniel:

I wish she answered your questions. I wish there was a way for you to ask her those questions and go from there. Is there any way that you can do that?

anita