Dear Felita,

I don’t know why people refuse to give problems like these attention. People struggle with kind of inner turmoil constantly yet they are often ignored by others. I’m so sorry I took this long to respond.

You are not a bad person. Simply the fact that you are looking for help proves this. You don’t want to have these negative, self-centered thoughts so there is a part of you who is very good and hates to see you be like this. While I understanding the jist of what you wrote and what you mean, I want to clarify a few things and ask a little deeper to find a possible cause for these habitual thoughts.

1. Who was the person you had the non-mutual relationship with? Also, why do you say that it was non-mutual? Did you end it? Or did they?

2. Can you attribute your thoughts and behaviors to how your parents raised you?

3. How would you rate your self-esteem? High or low?

Just from what I read though, it sounds like you might be grieving over the loss of that person and it is affecting your energies in a way that makes you judging and callous. I hope you can feel better about this and I will do what I can to help.

Dear Felita:

You wrote that you were raised normal, “Just normal”. Normal, as in usual, ordinary, regular as far as raising children is far from being the best way to raise children. It is so, I believe, in every culture.

In the incident you shared about you asked your mother a question. It was an innocent question. There was no evil intent behind or underneath your question, no pretense. It was 100% honest.

Her answer to you was it not the same as if she phrased it this way: you, Felita are lying to me, to your own mother!

And if so, is it not an evil daughter who  would lie to her own mother?

anita

Dear Felita,

Thanks for being so open about those questions, it leads me into some further  questions about your views of normal.

1. You mention “Chinese conservative”. What exactly do you mean by this? Is there a level of filial piety within your family?

2. Regarding your voices, the voices you describe seem to be from guilt and shame. They don’t really tell you to do things, do they?

Hi Felita,

The location of the thoughts is important, in determining the root cause.  For example, you may predominantly get the thoughts on the right side of your head, in the centre, or from a location outside of yourself. However…

What you are describing sounds a lot like ‘intrusive thoughts’. Intrusive thoughts are usually experienced by people who have extremely high morals.  They are obsessive in nature (typical in OCD) and trigger a strong emotional reaction. The more distressing we find a thought, the more likely we will continue to experience that thought and an escalation of it, because we resist how it makes us feel.  The more we push away a thought, the more power we give to it.

The good news is, the cycle can be broken.

The first step is removing the power the thoughts have over you.

This is often prescribed in CBT – Write this down on a piece of paper, carry it with you and say this 10 times a day:

“I’d prefer not to be experiencing this thought, but I don’t demand it. It is bad, but not awful and I can tolerate it…Because it is only a thought.  Just because I have this thought it doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it, it only means I am a human being, capable of good, bad and neutral thoughts.”

It is not evil and you are not evil. You are simply having an emotional reaction to thoughts that you cannot identify as being as your own, because of your strong morals.

Please let me know how you are…

Emma