Well as almost every Monday I went to my therapist today.  It's been almost a year now that I'm going to this lady, I started with sessions twice a week, and now I'm on once a week.  She helped me a lot, by letting me talk, and giving advice sometimes.  Most of all she answers my questions.  And she said I had a bright mind and that I would be a great therapist myself, once I sort out this major depressive disorder that I'm struggling with since ten or more years.  And deep down inside, I knew she was right.

I have already told her a lot about my family and my relationships, probably even most about my family.  The way I was raised, what I have been through as a child and how I felt in those early years really has a major impact on my life as it is now... and it took my parents (especially my mother) a long time to realize that.  And the double edge here is that I can't even explain it to them, because I never learned to discuss feelings at all; it was just an emotional wasteland here.  It still is; emotions are completely out of the picture.  And since I am an emotionally very deep-feeling human being, of course I am now very confused as an adult.  My role-models (or at least my supposed role-models) are not behaving at all like I want to behave myself !  And this has been going on for 32 years !  No wonder I don't only have issues with my past relationships, but with my parents also.

It's hard to say that your parents have not raised you well.  Even if you feel it, it's still hard to say in those words.  I did it today, and it was very difficult.  I almost immediately apologized to myself for saying it.  And yet I just meant to say that they have made me into the confused person that I am now, so I wouldn't call that much of a success in child-raising.  On the other hand, they did and still do everything they can for me in material, physical point of view - but just not psychologically and emotionally.  That's just the way they are, I'm going to have to learn to cope with that.

I'm already glad that I'm learning to set boundaries towards my mother.  She is the one I have the most difficulties with - because she talks all the time but never gets straight to the point, or because there are so many things that I would want to say but I just can't, out of fear of rejection.  That fear of rejection is very strong in me, towards my parents and towards men in my life. Even towards girl-friends.  I should stand up for myself more than I do now (I used to be good at it, and at work I was still good at it, but as I explained to the therapist, I always kept my work-life and private life very very separated).  But now that I realise it, my last boss (Shibasaki) could walk over me too - the former couldn't (Van der Spiegel), because I was not so deep in the depression at that time.  I really became depressed when working for Shibasaki, in the beginning of my second year as his secretary and all this stuff with Alicia happened.  That was really the point of breakdown, and my therapist noticed it.  I stopped working in April or May - I think it was April, I stayed home on her orders and after my sick leave I didn't want to go back.  My therapist said that if I had continued to work for one more month, I would have been ready for the mental hospital.  So I was just in time to seek help !

I have a lot of self-esteem issues.  Contrary to what my mother believes, my self-esteem is way too low, and not too high as she thought before.  I explained her once that persons with too low self-esteem just don't go and talk and mix with other people because they are afraid. Fear of rejection again, fear of being ridiculed, of being thought of as "not interesting"... These are issues she never suspected in me, she thought I didn't want to talk to people because I thought they were lower than me... while in fact it is exactly the other way around !  Luckily a talk show on TV about this kind of problem helped me to explain it to her.

But there is still a lot of work to do !