Dear Lily: Pardon my english. It is not my native language. I am not an expert in psychology, either. I just read your post and felt completely identified. And I just wanted to tell you that you are no alone in how you feel. I have gone through various therapies throughtout my life and have never been able to feel happy. My body tells me so. It reminds me that I my mind is and soul are not healed whenever I think I am in control of my life..I had a bad adolescence. My mother married again with a narcissist man and her unconditional love of him turned her abusive on me and let my stepfather his huge share of abuse too. I’ve told to let my past go, that it tights me to suffering and that only looking forward will let me start over. But I can’t. I feel like a bent tree. I have barely overcome the torture of seeing how my parents gave everything to my brother and sister (their own children) and never valued my own success. I kept wanting to keep this family for me and became so dependent that I started to believe I was nothing, not lovable and, using the tree metaphor, started to wither. I made enormous efforts to try to find myself, to love myself, to build my own family, but failed every time. I blamed myself because how could an intelligent, pretty woman not be able to overturn her own life..For the “nth” time, I am going through a terrible breakup. Once again I hooked up with the wrong man. What hurts the most is that this time I thought it would be different. I thought I had finally chosen someone who respected me and loved me for who I am. I did not give great importance to the fact that he is still married, even though he leads separate lives with his wife. She made him promise he would no divorce her, says she won’t give him the divorce, and every time he has come up with the possibility of talking, his grown daughters fight with him. Now she is fighting with cancer and he is stressed up with guilt and so every time I come up with wanting to clear up if I should just align with being the “lover” (and adjusting my role in order to keep up a life where I don’t deny myself completely), he fights with me and says that he doesn’t need more problems in his life. Worse of all: he is my boss. To make this story short, I know I could receive 1000 solutions. But the thing is I am very tired of life. Thinking of him leaving me (which will probably happen soon), or me leaving him and my job to start all over, after a life of having to start over has worn me off. I swear nothing lifts up my spirits, it is no depression, it is dispare. I am 45 and see no future for me after all. I was a famous anchorwoman, today I am almost jobless. I have no children, very few friends who are dealing with their own lives and my family finally broke up. My mother and stepfather separated. I am a messed woman. I don’t know what it is to be loved, unconditionally loved. So I don’t know how to put boundaries and limits. I can’t recognize what actions and words are abusive so I can hardly put a stop to them. I am so desperate to be loved by a man that I am willing to take the crumbs. My father was never there for me. So I believe you..mess up a child and the adult that will grow will probably be impaired. This is not for everyone, I know. But some of us – it may be genetic – cannot recover from the damage. Regards, Lily. And you’re not the only one who feels lonely dispare.

I’ll add a tidbit here. Since you like to write, I presume you like to read. This could make a nice read on where to begin and find how to sustain and meaning in your life. https://www.7cups.com/7cups-for-the-searching-soul/

Dear Lily:

I understand you feel the way you feel, but our feelings don’t always indicate reality. In the very beginning our feelings indicate reality: we feel scared because we really are in danger, we feel hurt because someone really hurts us.

Later on in life, following the early years, our feelings often do not indicate reality: we feel fear when there is no danger, we feel hurt even when no  one is hurting us. You feel that you “cannot recover from the damage”, this is a feeling that does not indicate reality. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) this is called Emotional Reasoning. It is a category of distorted thinking, believing that what we feel necessarily indicates reality.

There may not be a complete recovery from what you experienced. There is none for me, a living after as if significant damage did not occur. But there is a whole lot of healing available. Healing is a power in nature. If you walk in the woods, you will see those bent, or broken trees that Margarita mentioned and you will see that although the trees broken remain bent, there is a whole lot of growth happening after the break.

In nature, if a plant or an animal gets injured, healing immediately starts happening, right after the injury. Same for us, if we avail ourselves to that healing process.

anita

* Thank you, Stephen.

anita

Anita: I am so sorry! I dido not know there was a personal thread! How could do that so that we communicate? Thanks…