Dear niike

To me, it sounds like you struggle with self-worth and confidence. Maybe it would be helpful to be less hard on yourself. You’ve accomplished a lot! You got into an art school – be proud of that. Believe in yourself and do what you love.

As far as your anxiety in social and intimate situations: that too usually stems from not loving oneself and therefore not being able to love anyone else. It’s a long and hard way until you love yourself fully, but you will get there. Maybe some counselling or anything like that would be helpful?

All the best to you!
Namaste

Dear niike:

You are welcome! It’s been a long time since I read what is in the website I listed for you. As in any other source of information, some may be true to you and some will not be true to you. It is about you selecting what is true in your case. From what you shared above, your father being critical of you in your FORMATIVE years has probably been very powerful in the creation of your “learned helplessness.” It doesn’t matter that now, as an adult you understand that “he is only human”- what mattered then is that as a child, he was not “only human” to you- he was everything and he was extremely powerful to you as the child that you were and now, as the adult suffering the consequences of what happened then.

It is a good thing that your relationship with him is much better now but again, what happened then- I hope you do address that in therapy. This kind of insight is necessary for healing and changing behavior to the kind that will be effective in your life. In the term “learned helplessness” there is the word LEARNED, which means you were not born to be helpless as an adult, to give up on things etc. You learned that.

If you would like to google or so the term “External locus of control” versus “internal locus of control”- and the moving on the continuum from the external to the internal is what healing is about.

anita