Dear Dandan,

I have had this huge interest in going to a europian company with a job offer and to work there.

[learning German and learning about German culture] created some interest in working in a different country , mainly European country and precisely Germany.

I wanted to go out to get the international work experience. To work with people around the globe. Also to be independent in a different country. Living by choice and freedom.

The above seem like your genuine desires, something that your soul is calling you to do, not something that has been imposed on you by your parents or the society. Is that right?

But then, something stopped you from going after your desires. It’s your fear of being alone and stepping out of your comfort zone:

I didn’t have the guts to move away from my comforzone here.

But after getting the offer, I only can think about negatives. Like how lonely I will get there. I am a sensitive person. My friends also told I might get lonely there.

You changed your mind because of fear. This fear is quite common when we’re about to do something that requires us to step out of our comfort zone. We’re creatures of habit, we like the known, even if we don’t feel good in it. We fear the unknown and the possible challenges that our new circumstances might bring.

Which will prevail – the fear of the unknown or the excitement about the new opportunities – largely depends on the way we were raised. If your parents were fearful and didn’t really encourage you to try out new things, or if they expect from you to always be there at their side and take care of them, you’d naturally be more reluctant to leave, even for a limited time. Maybe you haven’t developed the sense of independence, required to live on your own in an unfamiliar country, and to cope on your own, emotionally, when your family is away?

If you’d like to share some more about the way you were brought up, it might explain better why you have such a hard time giving yourself a chance to experience something new in life.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Tee.

Dear Dandan:

You are welcome. My goodness, it is you, I remember the thread you disabled and of course, the ongoing thread of your ex-girlfriend. I want to re-read some stuff there before I reply to you further, in about a couple of hours or so.

anita

Dear Dandan:

You shared that you grew up in a small town with parents who were loving and caring, and “so sensitive”-  too sensitive, they “get scared easily”.

Your father reads like a good man, working hard in a bank so to take care of you and your sisters, and see to it that that you got a good education from a good school. It was not his fault that he was so sensitive/ too scared, not wanting you to “do anything much mischievous or dangerous” and get hurt as a result.

“I derive energy and vibes from the people around me”, you wrote. As a child and onward, the people around you were your parents, and you derived/ obtained your fear from your fearful parents.

“I hate being alone most of the times”, but you are also afraid of being with people who are “dull company” because when around dull people, you “automatically feel low and depressed”.

“I get all the energy from people around me, who are more positive and enthusiastic, self sufficient and bold”- such people are very different from your parents who were negative and subdued, not at all bold.

“I feel always low for no reason.. I am mostly low and depressed, for no reason”- when you were a young child, like all young children, you fiercely loved your parents, and you fiercely wanted them to be happy. When you saw your mother being depressed (“My mom.. feels low most of the time”), you felt so badly for her, that you felt low most of the time too, like her.

For you to feel happy and enthusiastic, confident and bold, you needed your parents to feel/ be those things first. If they were happy and bold etc., then you wouldn’t worry about them. But knowing that they are unhappy and subdued.. you’d feel too guilty to be happy and bold yourself, wouldn’t you?

“My mom too is like me. She feels low most of the time”- it is not that (1) you and your mother are two separate individuals and it so happens that the two of you are alike, or that (2) the low feeling was carried on from her genes to yours. What happened, way more likely, is that you were very sad to see her sad, and you felt too guilty to be happy yourself. You needed her to be happy first, before you could allow yourself to be happy.

“If I am with a dull company, I automatically feel low and depressed” – this is what happened to you as a child and onward, growing up in the company of your dull, depressed mother: you automatically felt depressed yourself.

Maybe part of your fear and negative thinking about the offers to work and live in Germany was that you felt too guilty to live a better life than your parents’ lives, too guilty to allow yourself to be happy and bold while your parents are unhappy and subdued still. I imagine that you’d feel like a bad son, and a bad person, if you turned your back to your parents, and chosen a happy, bold life for yourself.

About your recent ex-girlfriend, you wrote: “I am thinking a lot about her. Imagining the happy moments and how happy we would be, like literally new scenes keep running in my mind”- but you’d feel too guilty to be happy in real life, would you?

In your earlier thread, you wrote about her: “When I break up with her.. I value her and miss her. But when I start talking to her back, I get the stress and bad feelings… This cycle has been going on”-

– the stress and bad feelings may be the guilt I am talking about, and this guilt is feeding the pattern you mentioned.

“I am a weak person and now I am even weaker”- if I am correct  in my understanding so far, I suggest that you think of yourself as a very loving son: you have loved your parents so much, for so long (three decades so far), that you refuse to be happy before they are. Such a strong, fierce  love makes you not a weak person, but a strong person. Only a strong person is capable of such a strong love.

See this strength within you, acknowledge it, and you will be able to use this amazing strength for you (and no longer against you), and you will make better and better choices, and know peace and love.

You are welcome to reply to me anytime, if you would like.

anita

Dear Dandan:

You are welcome. Your recent long post indicates to me that your distress is often acute, and that indeed, for you, “Every single day is a nightmare”.

I believe that your first priority needs to be to lower your distress level repeatedly every day. Do so by  (1) doing daily aerobic exercise such as a fast walk of 30 minutes 1-3 times a day, whenever your distress level is particularly elevated, and/or download an aerobic exercise video to do at home,  (2) when you notice your distress has been elevated while working in front of the computer, get up and walk around, look outside the window, drink water, or hot tea and then go back to the computer, (3) consider downloading  slow pace yoga videos, as well guided meditation audios that start with slowing down and focusing on your breathing.

The second part of my post can be useful to you only if you are calm enough and in the state of mind to consider what I will be posting. Therefore, if you are not calm right now, read the following later, when you are calmer and more focused, maybe after you return from a fast walk (if it is safe).

I will now retell some of what you shared, retelling some of it in my own words (paraphrasing). If I get anything wrong, please correct me:

Your mother didn’t like to be at home with her husband and her children, which includes you. She didn’t enjoy your company, so she distracted herself by watching a lot of TV. She was happy when she left the home, going to restaurants, long drives, tours and movie theatres. For her, home was like a prison she wanted to escape, either by watching TV or physically, by going out.

During your childhood, your family had lots of debts, which caused a lot of stress for your parents, your sisters and you, sometimes you locked yourselves at home, hiding from a debt collector who knocked on the door. One of your sisters attempted, or made suicide gestures at home many times throughout the years. Overall, life was miserable for the entire family of five. But within your stressful life, you had a few passions: crushes on girls, bodybuilding and dancing. (The two latter passions were mostly neglected after high school).

After 2 months away from your very stressful home, while living in a strict hostel during your 11th grade, you were home sick, “thinking about home all the time.. desperate to run away” and go back home. When you succeeded and went back to living at home, during your 11th and 12th grade, you “started smoking and drinking” with older boys, and you cut your hand (“I have used a razor blade to mark cuts in my hand. Plenty of them. Lot of blood”).

After you graduated 12 grade and joined a reputed university for your undergraduate education, you drank and smoked a lot, and you entered your first romantic relationship of three years. When the two of you fought, you felt “normal and okay”, but when you did not fight and you felt “so close, so much attached” to her, you felt “too close.. something weird, as in something too much (to) handle”, something that made you “so much mad”. The relationship ended after 3 years, when you joined a college for your post graduate education.

In post grad you had your second relationship and some interactions with the first girlfriend (“lot of things happened”). The father of your second girlfriend did not approve of the relationship, you talked to him but was unsuccessful in changing his mind. Your parents visited her father and were mistreated. Eventually, the relationship ended and she married another man. You drank a lot, went back to the first girlfriend, but did not want to marry her, and you flirted with women although you were not serious about them. In 2018, you met your third and most recent girlfriend, now broken up.

My thoughts today: earlier, in your second post,  you wrote, “My parents are so loving and caring”. Your parents means your father and your mother. Focusing on your mother, the parent you spent most of your time with growing up, while your father was at work, your statement then means that your mother is “so loving and caring”. Unfortunately, from what you described, this is not a true statement. Her behavior did not express love and care.

“I get zoned out and get depressed for no reason.. I feel always low for no reason”- to zone out means to lose focus or stop paying attention to something, usually unintentionally. I think that as a child you zoned out of the reality that there was no love and care for you. And I think that you felt low and depressed because there was no love and care for you. (Not for you and not for your sister who attempted and/ or made suicidal gestures repeatedly for years).

I understand the stress in regard to having debts and that it was a nightmare, as you put it, for all of the family members. But if there was love and care in the home, the financial difficulties would not have  made your lives a nightmare.

When you were with your first girlfriend and the two of you were close, it felt “too close” for you. It felt “something weird”, something that was “too much (to) handle” because, seems to me- it reminded you (without being aware of the memory), how much you loved your mother and how much it hurt that she didn’t love you back. The hurt and anger at your love for your mother not being reciprocated came back in the context of your first romantic relationship, and it made you “so much mad”.

At this point in your life, at 31, there is no way to fix your problems by fixing your relationship with your mother. Even if she started to love you back at this time of your life, it would be too late because the damage to you was done when you desperately needed her love as a child.

To heal the damage done, you will need to start with (1) acknowledging that it is not true that your mother has been “so loving and caring” (such untruth is keeping you unwell), and (2) grieving this reality, allowing yourself to feel the great sadness, and anger, and whatever feeling comes up at knowing this sad truth.

It is not possible for a child to acknowledge and grieve such truth, but it is possible for an adult. Once you achieve these two goals, you will be on your way for a much better life, a life where you will be busy living and loving instead of zoning out and regretting.

anita

Dear Dandan,

First, I am glad that both you and your family all recovered from covid!! I’ve been following the news and am hoping that things will get better soon in your country…

Thanks for explaining some more about your mother and your situation at home and while growing up. It appears you were and still are your mother’s favorite:

She likes me more than my siblings. She always takes extra care of me. Even now. Treats me special, prepares juice , extra snack food for me. If I am not normal , she will be disturbed too.

My mom still loves me a lot. My sister says that my mom is liked obsessed with me. My mom wants me to be happy every single second. But i don’t know I couldn’t handle too much love.

One reason you could be her favorite is that you’re a boy, which is in many families in India more appreciated than having a girl. I don’t know if it’s true for your family. But beyond that, I think there’s another reason why your mom likes you the best:

She likes talking. She has complained a lot that dad doesn’t talk at all. she hasn’t had anyone to talk and share at all. But I have listened to her a lot.

Two days back when tehre was some fight, my mom was dull, she seeks me all the time. She wants me to be around her. She tells that my presence gives her some strength.

Your mother had two major problems, I believe. One is that she’s sad and depressed by nature, so she‘s a person with low energy and quite needy. She needs others to lift her up, and she also needs movies and other events to lift her from her lethargy.

Emotionally, she’s a needy person, with a propensity to easily slip into depression. Even if she took good care of you and your sisters physically, and walked twice per day to your school to give you lunch and snacks, it doesn’t mean she was able to give you the same amount of emotional care and nurturance. In fact, it appears she needed you, her son, to provide that emotional care for her.

She felt lonely in her marriage and didn’t have an emotional companion in your father, which means she didn’t have emotional support from him. He worked a lot, trying to ensure the best future for you, and he also wasn’t someone who talks a lot. I assume he wasn’t really emotionally responsive, didn’t understand her emotional needs. As someone needy and fragile as her, your mother needed someone to nurture her emotionally, and that someone was you. She talked a lot with you. Perhaps she sometimes complained that your father was so silent and unresponsive?

In any case, it appears the roles were reversed: instead of her taking care of you emotionally, you took care of her. You tried to make her happy but it was difficult because her unhappiness was much deeper and you could never make her happy. But of course, a child wouldn’t know that.

In the 11th grade, when you transferred to that strict, Spartan like boarding school, you did pretty well in the first couple of months, you even consoled your school mates when they felt homesick. But when you went home for holidays, I guess you saw how your mother was sad and depressed, and how bad she felt without your emotional support – and you couldn’t bear that. You faked stomach problems so you could come home never to return to that school again. I believe you didn’t do it because you were weak and needy (or at least that wasn’t the main reason), but because your mother was weak and needy. She needed you, and you couldn’t bear that she’d be without you.

This goes on to this day – she seeks you to console her when she has a fight with your sister. She seeks you to put cream on her legs, even though she could do it on her own. But she likes your caring and your proximity too – as she says, you give her strength. More precisely, you give her emotional support, like you always did.

She was so fragile amd needy of that emotion I felt. I did apply and massage. I do that many times. But that day as she was needy of that emotion, I felt so heavy inside, it was too much to me. Felt like crying, I don’t know how to explain that. When someone shows too much of emotions , emotional need are is so fragile around me, it makes me very weak and I feel like crying.

Yes, you feel heavy, because it’s a heavy burden for a small, needy child to take care of his needy mother. You could never give her what she needed, and at the same time you never received what you needed from her. It makes you feel desperate. You are dependent on each other, you’re still attached to her like with an umbilical cord. And that’s why you couldn’t accept that job in Germany – because your mother needs you. You can’t leave her, because she’s needy. She’s even more needy than you are. It feels hopeless for you.

So you’d need to learn to emotionally detach herself from her, and find happiness and fulfillment regardless of her inability to be happy and fulfilled. You’d need to detach that umbilical cord…

After you detach the umbilical cord, you’d need to focus on fulfilling your own unmet emotional needs. Only then could you have a chance of having a healthy romantic relationship. So there are steps, it’s a journey, but it’s doable and it’s worth it! Because as you start untangling those knots, things will be become clearer and you won’t feel at such an impasse like now.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Tee.

Dear Dandan:

You are welcome. The more you share, the better I understand. You shared previously: “My parents are so loving and caring”, and most recently: “I know for sure my mom loved all  of us”.

Let’s talk about a mother’s love in general: a mother’s love, when it is really love, on an ongoing basis, it makes for a mentally healthy child. Let’s look at the mental health of your sister and you (you did not describe your other sister):

1) your sister: “my sister used to attempt suicide many times and my dad used to hold her tightly and not let her. This happened for years”.

2) you:  “I hate being alone most of the time…I feel always low… mostly low and depressed… I have used a razor blade to mark cuts in my hand. Plenty of them. Lot of blood… I used to drink and smoke a lot”, etc.

The proof (of a mother’s love) is in the pudding (the child): if your mother truly loved you and your sister, where did that love go.. why is it not in you and your sister.

Also, if your mother really loved you and your sisters, how is it that when you first mentioned the word love in the context of your mother, it was not about her love for her children, but her love for going out and being entertained: “She loves going out, eating out in restaurants”, etc.

If she loved her children where was her happiness about spending time with the children she supposedly loves so much: “my mom is.. low and depressed.. most of the time when she is inside the home.. Once we plan to go out somewhere, she becomes more happy and enthusiastic“- she was not happy inside the home with her children, she was happy to go out and enjoy restaurants etc.

Your sister’s suicide attempts or gestures, you cutting yourself, feeling low most of the time, having a very low self-esteem, having many crushes on girls and women (being desperate for love) all these do not indicate a mother’s love.

The reasons and excuses for why your mother did not love her children (“she didn’t have good education. She did not go to college.. My mom has social anxiety… isn’t mature enough… inferiority complex… she wasn’t capable… She has faced a lot of mental trauma herself) do not change the fact that she didn’t. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding: if she loved you, where is that love, where did it go?

“She likes talking. She has complained a lot that dad doesn’t talk at all.. I have listened to her a lot”- you were your mother’s friend of sorts, a substitute husband perhaps.

“She was dull if we were dull. She mirrors our feelings”- for any child, the mother is the mirror for the child’s feelings. The child looks up to the mother for emotional understanding and guidance.

“For her, it is something emotional when I apply and massage her legs when she is in pain. She was so fragile and needy… I did apply and massage. I do that many times. But that day as she was needy of that emotion, I felt so heavy inside, it was too much for me. Felt like crying, I don’t know how to explain that” (May 1, about your mother).

– Earlier (April 30) you wrote about your first girlfriend: “whenever we were too close.. as she was so soft and fragile, I used to feel something weird, as in something too much, too much that I can handle in my mind.. being so close, so much attached, it was something that made me so much mad. I don’t know how to explain”.

Do you see the parallels between the above two paragraphs, one in regard to your mother and the second in regard to your first girlfriend?

You wrote that your first girlfriend was “soft and fragile” and your mother was “so fragile”, but your mother too was soft. You repeatedly, over the years, as a boy and later, as a man, massaged her soft legs, looking up at her face, seeing her smiling with pleasure, enjoying the physical, fleshly pleasure that you gave her.. that experience felt weird, didn’t it, too close, too much to handle in your mind…?

Wikipedia on covert incest: “Covert incest, also known as emotional incest, is a type of abuse in which a parent looks for their child for emotional support that would be normally provided by another adult… The effects of covert incest are thought to mimic actual incest though to a lesser degree, and Kenneth Adams, who originated the concept, describes the victims as having anger or guilt towards parents and problems with self-esteem, addiction and sexual and emotional intimacy”.

anita

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by .