@SilverTrees You’re so welcome. Your posts are empowering and encouraging in every possible way! Like I said I love hearing from you and don’t consider anything too overboard to read through! I look through your posts very frequently. I can use all of the help I can get but as far as I’m concerned you’re wise and almost revolutionary in my ways of thinking as it is already!

I agree with your observations of what is going on in my family. They have sometimes taught me to be my own advocate in situations that call for it, like asking for help when I needed it in school and thriving with my niches and passion, but as you have pointed out, they have not been adequate in recognizing my feelings and worldview as belonging to me alone. I share many of the same musical, film tastes and some hobbies as my parents but I also have unique spins on these interests. My parents are solely rock n rollers and I love the same music they do, but I also like soul, classic rock, country and reggae to name a few. I’m a musical chameleon! But other differences are more differentiated. With my parents being doctors they can jump to a conclusion like a diagnosis or a pharmaceutical recommendation, while I like to learn more deeply about a situation more than what is happening superficially. Hard cases at work show how much selflessness a doc needs in every day life but it sometimes extends to my private life, so boundaries on what can be tolerated or not have sometimes been leaky. My folks are nearing retirement anyway with increasingly difficult changes in workflow so my parents are understandably stressed and don’t leave their frustrations in the office. When my parents have shared experiences of when they were my age, they frequently talked nothing but positive things about their parents and their gifts, but things changed with age. Both my parents had quite the abrupt transition from childhood up to the high school years to a young adult in college; they would often not keep tabs with their family until thanksgiving, Christmas or the end of semesters. That part of their life story has baffled, but that’s something I can dig deeper into. My parents are not as bad as some “helicopter parents” that are more common in my generation but they sure have had those tendencies early on both in early childhood and beyond but my instincts tell me that maybe my parents felt alone and confused at that same stage that I went though and wanted to possibly reverse that process for me. Maybe that’s explains some of the enmeshment of my parents problem solving and attitudes? We learn something new every day! The wealth of helpful people I’ve met on PC with similar experiences have brought me out of my shell.

Everything you have mentioned about being deserving of love is making perfect sense and is further reinforcing encouraging words over my spirit that is longing to hear it. I guess this is a reminder also that another persons bad behavior is not entirely my fault. It has been very disheartening to experience the worst possible luck in many of my social efforts but I do need a more concentrated focus on the people who matter the most and those who know me best, allowing me to reconnect with those who truly appreciate me and thus are friends. I have posed the question on me being unlovable to several of my family members and closest friends and they all have failed to prove I wasn’t worthy of love or respect, so that further seals things. All of my insecurities about relationships have stemmed from some pretty toxic social groups and a stressful intern, so of course I’m at a lower capacity to keeping closer relationships but weeding out superficial relationships has really done the trick. But an incident like my recent quarrel packed with my social trauma could easily turn away anybody faster than I attracted someone. I don’t think I’ll ever shake off the fear that people only expect happy unicorns and rainbows and anything less than that makes me undesirable. I don’t know if this is my history speaking or not but often in my experience people expect you to keep a happy face every second of the day to conform to a generation of people where there is never such thing as problems or strife. And one meltdown, one socially awkward moment or thing going wrong can make or break. Even then people just like using each other for happiness in a moment and then forget about their “friend” almost in the same day of introducing themselves. And that’s what hinders me from being comfortable with relationships with anybody, family, close friends, hypothetical romance and the like.

At least your posts are giving me an ice breaker and reminding me of all my positive characteristics! I believe in what you are saying because you also believe in me.