Hi Clara

It sounds like you talked about a lot in one session with your therapist.

I’m sorry to hear that your father had an explosive temper growing up. And made some harsh comments about your sexuality during a disagreement. Your sexuality is a very special part of who you are and you a perfect how you are.

Sometimes when we grow up with someone who has an explosive temper, certain things get normalised and seem like normal behaviour. And we absorb a bit of that into our personalities. Not as severely, but still a bit.

It takes time to identify when things that we have absorbed from other people arise in our minds. But once it is identified it is much easier to let go because it easy to see that it does not meet our values.

You don’t strike me as someone who wants to overreact. It happens sometimes when you ignore how you are feeling.

You seem like a kind and loving person. It is a good thing that you picked up on that you stopped going on dates and celebrating. Weekly dates are essential for fostering a pleasant relationship. They don’t always need to involve spending money. It is just about spending quality time together and being kind to each other.

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏

Dear Clara:

Re-reading your yesterday update, we have this in common: I too grew up with a very explosive parent, a mother in my case.

“he would go head to head and gets very confrontational, or explosive…  also very judgmental… he called me useless and loser because I didn’t get married. It was so hurtful for me, I almost ran away from home that time“- it’s amazing how words can hurt. Judgmental words from a parent hurt the most.

“So from young I have learned to hide my emotions“- you learned to suppress your emotions/ push them in. To not express them/ let them out.

“when she came home late, I don’t often text or call he during the time, because I didn’t want to upset her. Once she gets home, she realized I was upset and she was caught by surprise“- you suppressed your anger while she was at work (an under-reaction), and when she got home late, your anger within you exploded (an over-reaction).

That’s what suppressed emotions do. My mother suppressed her emotions a lot in-between explosions. Fast forward, I suppressed my emotions, and my suppressed emotions exploded in all kinds of ways, even without an outward display: they just felt unbearably intense.

“All I have to do, is to stay calm and collected… I guess that probably should be my stance when I meet her. Be open-minded and see what comes up“- I think that your best bet as far as your relationship goes is to indeed stay calm and collected and that will take changing the habit of suppressing your emotions => expressing them, every day. You are welcome to do so here, on your thread: to type them away, from the gut, to the outside (the computer screen).

anita