I can relate, though at the moment, can't think of a clever analogy. I came from an abusive background, but I got help and I got out. I discarded much that didn't help, including a lot of what you could call malware, negative messages that had infiltrated from my parents.

I lived a relatively balanced, healthy life after that. I worked, was self-reliant, married well, enjoyed pleasures like travel and had a fairly balanced life; not perfect but comfortable.

Once I had a child, I began to lose balance: old subroutines from my parents were activated and I struggled to be the mother I wanted, feared to fail, but increasingly had the sense I was becoming like my own mother.

I lost my sense of balance: two family calamities compounded that, a life-threatening illness and a job loss, along with my husband and daughter having a difficult relationship.

By the time I made it to therapy, my affirming programs were in sleep mode: I had given up yoga, school (which I love), creative writing, even reading. I had no more pastimes, and no more time for myself whatsoever, I'd lost the sense of how important it was to take care of my CPU, was just running on backup battery.

My therapist helped me do a system refresh! We looked at what wasn't working, one element at a time, and began running apps to help me function more efficiently, prioritize the important things again and get rid of the pop ups telling me I had to spend everything I had on meaningless junk, like staying up hours late to clean house instead of getting the rest I needed. It's been a grueling process to go even further and start looking at the viruses themselves and slowly, painstakingly eradicate them. I'm still in the middle of that work.

So, you're not alone! (Also, I don't understand computers perfectly either, so... go easy on me you IT pros! )