Hello Anita, thank you for your reply.

As I remember, my mother was a very selfless person. Perhaps it may be my family culture that we don’t remind each other what we have done for each other. However, I grew up noticing how giving and selfless my mother is, to many people including myself.

I am glad I learnt to offer help to people when they need, which is very easy for me to take care of others. However, when I am in need of giving confrontation (e.g. delivering my honest feedback to people, claiming some matters to correct, saying no or even asking for help from friends) I feel the anxiety of rejection first or guilty of bothering them. 🙁 Even though I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t know why I get scared.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Dahn.

Hello Anita,

Thank you again for your reply. Yes after when I hit after 25, I was frustrated to see my mother exhausting herself taking care of others before taking care of herself.  Can I ask why we are focusing on my mother? 🙂 I want to stop blaming my parents but independently improve my selflessness / fear of rejection issue.

Hello Anita,

Thank you for your reply. I read your previous message again and you are right. I struggle to be assertive with myself and to ask for help.

I watch my parents helping their friends and our cousins and families, even me and my sister feel its too much sometimes. I moved to another country (Europe) after 19 so often my sister felt the pressure to help our cousins because my parents asked her to.

I am a second child of the family and have an older sister. I am the active and outgoing one whereas my sister is calm and listens to my parents. We are an Asian family. While I was growing up, because of my rowdy personality for Asian culture, my mother often told me that my personality is too strong or aggressive, so I was always told to soften my personality. I got compared a lot with my sister too. (later I heard my mother did the same to my sister) So from my early 20’s to mid 20’s, I struggled to accept myself because of the external pressure from my mother’s pressure and the surrounding people I had back then. So self-reflection, self-blame and self-guilt became my habits.

Since I have different friends now who accept and support me and also being far from my family, I regained my confidence and improved my self-esteem. But it was definitely significant that my mother and my old surrounding friends pressuring me to change myself. (well, with friends, usually I used to get upset because of their racist and ignorant behaviour.)

Since I am happy who I am now, it would be even grateful to forgive my mother’s hurtful messages and independently improve my issues. I love my family and my mother is still a great life role model for me, I want to stop projecting negative on her. I really want to learn to believe in myself more and stand for my voice to everybody.

Hello Anita,

Thank you so much for your advice 🙂 Writing a plan and having the courage for execution sound like a great idea to start. Since I have identified this issue, it has been easier to accept when I deserve to be assertive. Also communicating with you has helped to release out my frustration a lot. I will try my best to practice as you suggested until I get my confidence back.

Thank you,

Dahn