Hey,

I've been working on my mental health and emotional well-being for the past five years. I saw a therapist for three years before I had to give up my job due to physical illness. For the last couple of years, I've still remained in contact with my T via texts and email as she agreed to be there for me even though I cannot pay her for it right now. I've even seen her a few times.

I've come such a long way from dissociation to feeling my emotions more and more. I've grieved childhood losses due to my parents being emotionally unavailable and even abusive. I'm starting to feel like I'm nearing what my T calls our 'natural state' now - joy. But this is where I feel stuck.

I'm scared to be happy. I'm scared someone will take it away from me. I think this goes back to my mum who didn't want me to be happy. I'm guessing it was too painful for her to see other people happy when she feels her dad trampled on her dreams when she was young. Her marriage to my dad has also been an etremely unhappy one.

I feel for her, but right now, right here where I'm at, I'm thinking surely, it's not my job to keep her happy by remaining as miserable as she is! Surely, I can be happy despite whatever her emotional state may be?

As a child and growing up, I did everything to try to keep my mum from losing it. When she was unhappy about something, she'd fly into these terrifying fits of rage. I did everything to try to keep that from happening. I feel I lost myself in the process, or never found myself at all as she was so controlling. I'm almost 30 now and still scared out of my mind of admitting, even just to myself, when I like something. It's like, happiness isn't for me - because mum might get mad..

But surely, happiness is for everyone? Even her - the problem is, I think she's given up. She's not going after what she wants anymore. But that cannot rule my life, right? I think I want to be happy even if she doesn't like it. I'm done being her emotional dumping site! It'll finish me off if I carry on with it.

[JustJenny]

Hi there, d.o.a. A lot of people seem to have some issues with their mothers. I moved away from mine around 10 years ago. I cannot say anything bad about her - she raised me alone, she worked hard, she was always trying to keep me satisfied when I was a child. Nevertheless, we seemed to work on "different frequencies" and would fight very often. Now I find it extremely challenging to stay at hers for more than two days and the last time she came to visit me for more than a week we ended up in a huge fight where crying was involved.

I am almost 30 now and I am still trying to figure out what exactly is going wrong between us, given that neither of us is a bad mean person on our own. And yes, at times I feel that it is my fault that she is not living her life in its fullest extent. I tried to help her with some things, but it would either make her angry (because my right way of doing things is not her right way of doing things) or she would reject the offer.

I think she's given up. She's not going after what she wants anymore. But that cannot rule my life, right?

Right. Have you thought of giving her some space? She might get bored eventually and start looking for things she can do. My mother was concentrating on me a lot in the past (I didn't like that), but now she is going to a language class and she is very much into it.

What I learned from my own experience:

1. You cannot make somebody truly happy. You can cheer them up, you can brighten their day, you can help them deal with their bad emotions at this specific moment. But you _cannot_ make them happy. This applies to both, you and your mother. You cannot make your mother happy, she has to figure it herself. And you _should_ be happy, because everybody has the right to be happiness regardless of their environment.

2. Physically moving away from your mother helps. I don't know about my situation, whether you two live together not, but once I moved away from my mother I gained this personal breathing space. I was alone and my life was my life, my happiness was my happiness. It took me around 6 months to adapt to living alone: it felt awfully wrong in the first weeks.

3. Gaining financial independence helps a lot. When I got my first part time job that paid enough to pay my bills - changed things. I was no longer dependent on my mother and it helped me to become mentally independent. I saw you wrote

I saw a therapist for three years before I had to give up my job due to physical illness.

Is there any job you can do? Maybe you can get a job that you can do from home?

As a child and growing up, I did everything to try to keep my mum from losing it. When she was unhappy about something, she'd fly into these terrifying fits of rage. I did everything to try to keep that from happening. I feel I lost myself in the process, or never found myself at all as she was so controlling.

I am really sorry to hear that, it must have been really hard.

I'm almost 30 now and still scared out of my mind of admitting, even just to myself, when I like something. It's like, happiness isn't for me - because mum might get mad..

Again, it's not her task to decide whether you should be happy or not. If you think you can be happy, don't let anything or anyone inhibit it.

I hope that at least some of this was helpful. Take care!

[Thunder Bow]

Your good awareness, shows you are healing. It may seem scary, but Joy will be a part of your life, even if it is the Joy of healing.

[PianogirlPlays]

I am too am struggling with allowing myself to be happy. It seems like all too often something comes along that steals it away. This seems to have created a great deal of anger and self punishing thoughts in me. The pain is real. It has some roots in childhood but even more significant to me are the current painful events in my life. It is all about family. People outside of the family seem to care , love and respect me. Needless to say it hurts. I have kept trying to be close but maybe a little distance is best.

[JustJenny]

PianogirlPlays, can you identify what is keeping you from being happy? Do try to distance yourself from it even if it is not easy.

[PianogirlPlays]

Originally Posted by JustJenny

PianogirlPlays, can you identify what is keeping you from being happy? Do try to distance yourself from it even if it is not easy.

Incidents! It feels like I start to get happy and then rejection, feelings of neglect , hurt feelings come in and I feel robbed of my happiness. These events have added up and now I feel stuck in the pain of feeling convinced that I can't be happy and fatigue I guess from all the attempts to climb up again day after day. I do realize though that you have to keep trying because giving in just means even more and worse pain.

JustJenny, thank you SO much! I'm touched by your thoughtful reply

I'm sorry to hear you've had problems with your mother, too. It must be hard when you're not able to pinpoint exactly what is wrong in order to maybe fix it.

My mum was really unhappy about me going to therapy, so I went almost completely no-contact with her for about three years.. I needed the space and did not need her guilt tripping me all the time.

At the moment, though, I'm living in a flat she owns. She offered it to me last year after my flat mate decided to move to another city, and I was struggling because I was unable to work. Here, the rent is really low so I'm able to manage it even with the small benefits I've been getting.

I have to say she's been a lifesaver in the past year, I never would have been able to cope without her help. It's always been this way, she takes care of me physically if I need it. It's the emotional side where it seems there are nothing but problems..

What you said about giving her space sounds really good. I think I need to let her go, too, because like you said, I cannot make her happy. It's not even my responsibility. I guess I've just always felt that if she was happy, she wouldn't have such a problem with others being happy, too. But I can't help her if she doesn't want help!

I've been wracking my brains to figure out a job I could do from home, but I have no real training for anything so I feel really insecure about trying anything on my own.. Work-at-home jobs seem to be really rarely on offer here if you want to work for a company.

Thank you so much for encouraging me to go after happiness! It really does help to hear it from someone else and not just try to convince myself of it all the time..

PianogirlPlays, I'm so sorry to hear you are struggling, too. It is so painful when it's family members that don't care. It's only recently I've begun to understand my parents are 'only human', too.. They should have made better choices, but they did the best they could with what they had (which wasn't very good). It doesn't make anything OK or the pain any less real - but it has helped me accept a little bit that their abuse and neglect wasn't my fault.

I know that feeling so well when you do everything you can to be happy and it always falls flat for one reason or another.. It is SO exhausting trying to climb back up. I actually hit a wall with that. I started to surrender to the pain and exhaustion because I began to feel like the only way out is through.. I just wish it wasn't so hard.

[JustJenny]

Originally Posted by PianogirlPlays

Incidents! It feels like I start to get happy and then rejection, feelings of neglect , hurt feelings come in and I feel robbed of my happiness. These events have added up and now I feel stuck in the pain of feeling convinced that I can't be happy and fatigue I guess from all the attempts to climb up again day after day. I do realize though that you have to keep trying because giving in just means even more and worse pain.

I try to see happiness as a bowl filled with pieces of joy. You will be fully happy when your bowl is full. The pieces of joy can be small, big, tiny, or so big one would fill up the whole bowl. Unfortunately, the pieces of joy don't stay there forever. If you received one small piece of joy today, it might not be there tomorrow.

Joy comes from things outside of your control. Like winning a lottery or making a new trusted friend. Joy comes from being nice to other people, like making a surprise present for a friend when they least expect it. Joy comes from within ourselves when we achieve something important for us.

The first source of joy is completely out of our control, we cannot always expect other people or circumstances to do something nice for us. The second source is within our control but requires input.

Having this said, we are more likely to be happy if we are willing to work on it. It might help you to list all the things that bring you joy.

[JustJenny]

d.o.a., there are some jobs you can do from home without any education for it. A job I tried once was making illustrations for children's books. It didn't work for me back then - I was too young and I didn't stick with the job. Is there anything you are good at? Can you draw or write columns?

You can apply for open positions, that's one option. Another option is just pick a potential workplace and contact them directly and ask them whether they would have a job for you. If you are good at writing try contacting the local news papers. I got my current job just by asking, but it took me many tries. The worst thing that will happen is that they will say "Sorry, we are not hiring".

I don't know about you, but I find having a job as a huge self-esteem booster. Right now I am on sick leave and I am feeling bad because most of the people around me seem fine with their jobs. I am very worried that I will not recover soon enough and that I will lose my job.