Day's One Line A Day

I'm tired lonely, can;t focus. I feel like I'm going to flunk from how little I can function. Going to try to go to the gym tomorrow and trader joe's. need to leave the house do something. Try to work on the paper 10 minutes at a time tomorrow.

Felt really triggered the past two days. I think I will go to panera tomorrow maybe and sat and sunday too. And the gym again. I have been really feeling lonely and triggered and ruminating a lot about the situation and doubting myself and her kind of launching an onslaught of criticism at me and taking no responsibility and not respecting or even understanding boundaries, kept saying I shut her out.

I feel so lonely and tired of my life today. I know I didn't take the right path bur now I have to live with it. I miss b so much I can't believe he stopped talking to me indefinitely. I miss him so much

I really regret not telling him about my cat but it was also very personal and I did my best and that's OK. I'm human and it's OK even though now I am frustrated but I can't change it now and I did my best.

I feel so angry. I feel really *** off for being viewed as not logical when berating your child is not a logical response, it is in fact an emotional response. Me knowing how to respond calmly is much more logical. I want to defend myself again because I don't appreciate the implication that I am overly emotional when I am highly educated and logical person, but I value being able to keep my cool and respond in a way that is both calm and kind. Lashing out at your children is not logical. Having huge fights in front of your children is not logical. Yelling at your wife for missing one turn while driving is not logical. In my opinion, you are expressing anger but there are often many emotions underneath that you don't know how to express like being worried. I think by having  a lack of self awareness of your emotions and lacking the ability to communicate that you are upset in a calm way leads to the lashing out behavior. This behavior can happen because your own emotions were not attuned too as a child and perhaps someone taught you that emotions are weak, but this actually leads you to respond in a highly activated way of lashing out because you are not able to communicate that you are frustrated more calmy. All human beings have emotions. If you bottle your emotions can cannot ask for your needs in a more calm way, you are prone to lashing out. I also have extensively researched and studied these issues and honestly believe I have a greater understanding and knowledge of these issues. In my opinion, taking on the role of being a parent includes the responsibility of healing from your childhood and past traumas to show up as a better parent. If you continue to deny those things and insist that things are fine now, you need to understand that it will be difficult for things to improve. As an adult, I get to choose who to connect with and huge priority is how that person responds when I raise concerns and whether the person can be humble enough to actually recognize that they need to work on themselves. I believe I deserve to be heard and to be taken seriously and I want deeper issues to be addressed instead of assuming things are fine now. If there was a pattern of having fights in front of your kids for 30 years, that shows there are deeper issues in your marriage that really need to be addressed; it's not enough to just say we are trying to not say the wrong thing. Again, I have been familiar with counseling and done a lot of research about these types of issues, and maybe for once I would like you to take my expertise on these issues seriously and be open to using counseling to work on yourself. I felt angry that my experiences were denied and flipped. My experience and memory and concerns are just as valid as yours and I feel angry that my experience was dismissed because again I know I am smart, have a good memory, and have done a lot of research about family trauma and I believe I know what I am talking about and deserve to be taken seriously. If you are wondering why I don't want to connect more, I feel like now I have been very clear that I have asked you to go to counseling to address deeper concerns and the causes of behavior patterns that lasted many years and are still a concern for me, and you have refused, so that is the main reason why I will not be connecting with you more and if you want to change that it is on you to make the choice to show me that you take issues in the family seriously.

Dear Dad,

I appreciate you coming to family counseling, but I feel quite frustrated with your responses, so I wanted to write my concerns in a letter so that you can just take that in and not dismiss or deny my experiences. It took me a lot of courage to bring up my concerns about issues in the family with both you and mom. If I am taking the time to do that, I hope you understand that what I brought up are not small issues but big concerns that are part of longer term patterns that have been going on for many years. I believe I am an intelligent person and I have heavily researched many psychology topics including parenting and family trauma and believe I have a level of expertise in this and I felt like I made many valid points that were dismissed. I understand that it is difficult to admit that you may have made mistakes as a parent, but to me in a healthy connection, I should be able to raise my concerns and have that be taken seriously and addressed. If you care about me, I hope that maybe one day you are able to put your pride aside and seek professional help so that you can work on yourself and your patterns that have hurt me. I think it is the responsibility of a parent to heal from issues within their own childhood that cause them to react certain ways. In therapy, I have learned about something called attachment theory, which means the way you were raised affects how you show up in relationships. I am attaching a quiz you can take that will help you understand more about it. I believe you may have something called avoidant attachment.

I understand that you feel like things are better now and you have tried to be more amiable, but I think that longer standing patterns need to be addressed by a professional. A big issue for example has been the relationship with you and mom and having heating fights in front of me and my brother. These issues have been taking place for 20-30 years. I have dated some people and have never had the types of extreme conflicts that I saw growing up. As a child, these fights were very scary and disturbing. Also, I was put into the role of being my parent's couples therapist; for example mom would complain to me about you walking too fast and wanted me to comfort or validate her. That is an extremely unhealthy and inappropriate role for me to play. Even in my own counseling session with her, she complained to me about you again. As an adult, I am extremely fed up with this issue not being taken seriously when professional help is a simple solution. Having heated fights in front of your children for 30 years shows that there are deeper issues. Mom mentioned seeing her parents fight growing up, and I know your parents were divorced. If you do seek professional couples counseling, it will help you to break that pattern and learn how to have a healthier marriage for the sake of your family as a whole. However, if the attitude is still that things are fine now, you can expect to not see much of me. I deserve to be in a positive environment with mature people who exhibit harmful behaviors.

I also think that both you and mom have issues of low tolerance to stress, poor emotional regulation and lashing out at others in times of stress. These issues also have been happening for 20+ years, so again this needs to be addressed at the level of healing from childhood wounds with a professional. I think most likely you grew up in an environment were someone was not attuned to your needs and someone taught you that emotions are weakness but the result of that is to bottle your emotions and then lash out under stress instead of learning how to express your needs in healthier ways. I believe that I have a lot to offer the world and I work hard to contribute and help others. I deserve to receive kindness, comfort, and help in return. It is not okay to yell at me. It is not okay to put me down. I may make mistakes sometimes but everyone is human and it is not okay to lash out at me or put me down. I treat others with kindness when they make mistakes and I deserve the same in return. I feel angry and resentful at the implication that I am less logical than you as I am highly educated and logical and I would not be where I am if I wasn't a highly intelligent and logical person. The implication is deeply insulting to me as somebody who is going to be in the role of a doctor. I actually think I process most situations in a highly logical way and focus on problem solving, but I cannot accept someone criticizing me and yelling at me as okay in the name of "logic". I deserve to be treated better. It is fine to want to help me in practical ways, but yelling or lashing out at your children is not acceptable, and I need to stand up for myself. I believe in comes from your own discomfort with emotions and perhaps being told that emotions are weakness growing up. It is really not ok to put me down. I value being calm and communicating with maturity, and I often feel like I am alone in the family since I have been to counseling and learned communication skills to communicate calmly and maturely. To me, your behavior pattern of lashing out in signs of stress, shows that you actually are very emotional but have difficulty expressing your emotions in a healthy way. I also feel frustrated that I feel like I am also expected to comfort or provide emotional support for members of the family, but when I express my need to be treated better, to not be yelled at or put down, it is dismissed. It is really unfair for me to be expected to provide emotional support and receive mistreatment in return. I need to save that energy for friends who treat me better and are more positive and encouraging to me.

Again, while I know that the two of you love me, I have to ultimately stand up for myself and how I want to be treated. I only want to connect with people who take me seriously and take my concerns seriously. I am not going to just give in to what you want if what I want is different.

Got upset this weekend because of date disappearing on Friday. I thought I had plans and would have gone dancing. Tonight went and nobody there. I guess it is  only on Fridays now. Still upset about my dad and parents overall. To know that I cannot count on them anymore. Maybe I could get help with moving but I would have to tolerate them. I feel super lonely and struggle to feel like I have people I can truly trust. I just don't know. i am anxious about the brunch tomorrow but I hope it will be okay. I feel like I should wear pants because it's cold out. I don't really trust any of these guys. The girls are nice though. I hope they actually follow through and meet with me. Anxious about my avoidance of the externships. Kind of dont know where to start. Do I really want to go to Florida, what do I want to do. what about a 2 week or one week one in January. I just don't understand the whole system. It makes no sense to me.

At lpc. Feeling a lot of feelings. Brought up missing people from the summer, also feeling lonely. The uncertainty about my career and love life is hard to cope with. Will I find a spouse. Am I making a mistake moving too much. Where should I go. What if I do something wrong. But I can only do my best and I'm juggling a lot. Feel lonely at night and wish had a friend or bf to talk to at the end of the day.

Hi, I am confused as to why you think the sessions went well. I felt like I made a big effort to organize counseling sessions. I would only do that if I have some very important concerns and believe there are very important issues that need to be addressed. From the first session, I felt frustrated and upset because, both of you were very defensive and dismissive of my concerns. It seemed that you have a lot of deep insecurities and admitting that you have things to work on as a parent is a huge threat to your self esteem and you had a difficult time hearing my concerns or showing compassion and empathy for me. I felt angry and frustrated at the lack of accountability and lack of ability to understand the impact of your behavior on me. Your behaviors in recent years and throughout my life have deeply harmed my mental health and wellbeing and have made it more difficult to ask for help when there is a history of such hostile and judgmental reactions. The problems I brought up are big issues and areas of dysfunction in the family including the verbal attacks, yelling, conflicts with dad, overbearing behavior and frequent criticism and judgment. It really blew my mind that you were not at all able to consider the impact of marital fights on your children or view this as not okay, when to me this is common sense for someone with basic empathy. It seems that unfortunately you are in a place of struggling to meet your own needs and are often oblivious of other people's needs and feelings and the impact of your behavior on others. This type of dynamic is deeply unhealthy for me as your daughter. As someone who has been in a fair amount of therapy and who has heavily researched mental health topics, I believe these behaviors stem from your childhood trauma where you had many unmet needs and developed unhealthy ways to try to meet your needs. Unfortunately, many parents may have children without healing from their past and may be lonely and unhappy and think the child's job is to help them be less lonely and make them happy. I am sorry you are lonely and grieving and have unmet needs for attention, but I cannot take all of that on. I feel a deep sense of resentment at the expectation that I provide emotional support to or spend more time with people who have harmed my mental wellbeing so significantly and who unfortunately have showed very limited ability to change and to show empathy for how much I am hurting and struggling as a result of your behavior.

The ball is really in your court to take these issues truly seriously and to take responsibility for healing from your childhood with a professional. If you really truly change, things might change between us, but if you continue to be dismissive and just want to sweep things under the rug and pretend like my concerns, feelings, and needs are no big deal, unfortunately I really cannot be happy connecting a lot with someone who views my concerns as no big deal, and at the end of the day my priority is my mental wellbeing and happiness. I may be in contact briefly for some holidays or some emergencies or practical circumstances but only if I cannot find help from someone else, since your help comes with the price of sometimes being criticized or verbally berated and I will choose to ask for help elsewhere with people who treat me with more respect.

I don't intend on changing my mind since I have now had significant mental health support to empower me to stand up for myself, and I can no longer be a submissive people pleasing daughter. I do not wish to discuss this further unless you have made significant progress with a professional.