[Benjamin Fry]

Roona,

Firstly I am struck by what a touching, eloquent and intense piece of writing your post is. You are clearly a highly intelligent and creative person which fits with your work as a web designer. I suspect that you are also someone who experiences life very intensely ñ perhaps much more intensely than most other people. This would explain your passionate nature and why life can seem so hard for you. However your intensity need not be seen in a negative light. It can be the most wonderful source of joy but it perhaps needs to be understood. There is a book called ìraising your spirited childî view on-line at www.amazon.co.uk which I would recommend simply to see if you recognise in it yourself as a child. If so then you will see how special you are and how important it is for you to be with people and in environments that understand and nurture this quality.

There are two other points that need to be addressed and perhaps taken seriously. One is your relationship with men, and the other is your relationship with money. Both seem to come easily to you and both seem then to disappear from your life leaving you feeling miserable, lost and panicked.

My own journey of self examination was born largely out of the same kind of confusion you experience, hence the title of my book ìwhatís wrong with me?î It was something I would think a lot. In finding an answer that worked for me I reached some interesting conclusions. The core to these ideas were working my way back logically from the reality that there were situations and relationships in my life that were repeating themselves.

I would suggest that these recurring situations are brought about by your own unconscious mind taking you to people and placed that suit its purpose. This purpose is not to ruin your life but to stimulate within you certain emotions that need to be eviscerated. (the word e-motion implies a movement out ñ what needs to come out are frozen feelings, most likely the result of the normal trauma mechanism of the body) You will recognise these emotions. They are the feelings that you experience each time your prince turned into a frog and each time you lost your financial security. These emotions will be tied back to a lost experience earlier on in your life where similar emotions were frozen by some (or a series) of traumatic events. These events could be as simple as being left to cry yourself to sleep at the age of two months old. You would never remember it. No one in your family would remember it either since it was the norm at the time. However if you are indeed a very sensitive and spirited person, for you it may have been a terror beyond imagination. You may have felt lost, abandoned, helpless and genuinely feared each moment for your life since you lacked any resources of your own. (or it could have been anything else ñ this is just an example)

Having all of these frozen feelings trapped by trauma in your system reduces your ability to live a truly happy and free life. Therefore your wise unconscious mind sets about helping you to release them. It doesnít care about the agenda that you are conscious of. It doesnít worry about relationships, cars and flats. It just wants to return you to the state of grace and innocence that you were born with. So, you find yourself inexplicably getting into the same trouble over and over again despite your earnest conscious efforts to avoid it. (the unconscious mind is much, much more powerful than the conscious mind ñ think Obi Wan Kanobi versus Jabba the Hut)

You are right to worry what will happen now. You recognise your history and are perceptive enough to suspect yet another dreaded episode. But the good news is that you can work to avoid it. These episodes only serve the purpose of stimulating these lost emotions. You can work to resolve these frozen feelings actively yourself, without the need to unconsciously turn your life upside down. But you must work at it, and it is work. Therapy, yoga and the myriad of other cognitive and spiritual practices will all be able to make a contribution. What works for you is a very personal choice and only you can discover that. (Oddly for me, films often triggered a major emotional release.)

If you work at nurturing your spirited nature (like you did when you instinctively made a choice to try to find a more spiritual way of living) then you will find that these other problems in life evaporate like mists on a sunny day. Suddenly they wonít seem so real to you and youíll even wonder if they really existed. That is because nine tenths of it exists in your mindís interpretation of reality. Once you start to look after your mind on your own, these unconscious projections are no longer so necessary.

To answer your final questions: you are a very spirited individual who other people will see alternately as an inspiration and a pain in the arse. You are a great person. You donít know what to do or say because you are just waking up to who you are and have not yet been properly introduced. You may not know yourself yet but that doesnít mean your boyfriend canít know you. You may repeat your cycle again if you turn away from your instinct to nurture your spirited self (incidentally, something you are doing very well by writing in this forum). Finding yourself is the work of perhaps many lifetimes. You canít chill out because (a) thatís not your type of personality and (b) you havenít yet found the life that perfectly fits you. Because of all of this you are naturally insecure about yourself.

Your practical steps to helping yourself are:
1 Let your feelings come and go as freely as you can. That is your whole project with all of this drama.
2 Donít judge yourself or your feelings negatively. That would just get in the way of the previous point.
3 Nurture your nature. Listen to your instinctive choices (usually the ones that feel calm but that you wish would go away) and live the life that suits your spirited soul.

You could sit around waiting for someone to help you, but frankly people as gifted as you are can quite adequately help themselves. You just need a little direction.

And finally you may have to learn a little about patience. Twenty three is just the beginning. Donít expect or need it to all make sense any time very soon.

All the best,

Benjamin