[wendy]

Hi, I canít believe I much I connected with your book. Everything you said about your Mother, I related to and underlined and associated with my Dad.

My Dad died when I was 12 years old. He had been ill for a short time but I wasnít told what it was (actually a brain tumour) and I didnít know he was seriously ill and just came home from school one day to find he had been taken into hospital. The next morning the hospital phoned to say he had died. I remember my mum being hysterical and I just felt totally overwhelmed. I was an only child and I quickly settled into a role of being strong for my Mum (the man of the house) and nobody (including my Mum) EVER acknowledged that I might be hurting too.

For around 10 years, the only words I ever spoke about him was to occasional people who didnít know he had died and would ask about him and I would then say, ëMy Dad is dead.í They then seemed to know to change the subject and never mention him again. Sometimes I feel angry that all the adults in my life (Mum, teachers, neighbours, relatives etc) thought that the right thing to do was to never mention my Dad and hope I wouldnít remember him. Other times I think times have changed since 1980 when death was even more of a taboo than it is now. Many years later, I found out that teachers at the school assembly when I was at my Dadís funeral said my Dad must never be mentioned to me in case I got upset!!!!! Would that have been so terrible? It surely would have been better than the deadening of my heart which is what happened.

The next 10 years I started to mention him a little bit more but whenever I said to anyone that maybe I missed my Dad they would look at me incredulously and say but it was over 10 years ago!! So I learnt that no-one was really interested in my story. I sometimes think my Mum could have helped me more but she did her best, probably given her own traumatic childhood of her Dad and brother dying. In other ways my Mum showed me a lot of love and attention and even when she eventually found a new partner, I always knew I was Number One in her life.

It was probably when my Mum died in 1999 that my long suppressed emotions started to thaw. I remember reading a leaflet on bereavement that mentioned it often took 2 years to grieve a major loss and I made a conscious decision I wasnít going to íwasteí 2 years of my life grieving. Life was for living. My unconscious mind had other ideas and my grief for my Mum was quite normal, although obviously rightly painful, distressing, upsetting, depressing etc and it was around 2 years before I felt OK.

I then realised that I had never gone through this process with my Dad. I am now 37 and despite trying two lots of counselling and reading alot of self-help books, my conscious desire to be married with children has not happened.

I agree with everything in your book about releasing suppressed emotions but I just donít know HOW. In counselling I talked freely about my Dad but I felt NOTHING. Just wondering should I try hypnotherapy to try and thaw my emotions? Interestingly I tried a sweat lodge a couple of years ago and all I could see in the darkness was my Dad and I got scared and left so maybe I should try that again and see it through this time.

My external life appears idyllic with loads of friends (including good friends from my childhood), lots of socialising and different interests, good job, nice house, and even loads of dates and relationships (although I mostly end them after 6 to 9 months). I just want to heal enough to progress to a loving, long term relationship and hopefully have a child too. Once again, thanks for your book and making me feel I am not totally crazy.

[Benjamin Fry]

I think the first thing to recognise is how well you are doing. Your cultural background was unfortunate. It taught you not to talk about your very strong and difficult feelings about the loss of your father. This was not healthy. You have, on your own, begun to reverse that. Thatís a great achievement in itself.

Perhaps what you are wanting now is a way to accelerate the process? It seems that perhaps the biological clock is a factor in that. Relationships are the real fault line of psychological health. You can run but you can not hide once you start to get close to someone. This is mainly (I think) because the security of a relationship starts to allow insecure thoughts and feelings to finally emerge. 6 to 9 months is about the length of time to incubate this process so it would seem like thatís whatís going on for you. As soon as the honeymoon period is over and real intimacy begins on a deeper level, you need out. Thatís because of what it brings up for you; most likely the feelings that you didnít reach in counselling.

Thereís nothing easy about these feelings. Having a man securely by your side will bring up all the repressed feelings about the loss of the first man in your life; and with it the fear of loosing the one you now have.

There are not really any short cuts here. You can only go through, not around. If you want to be able to bear having a long-term relationship, you will have to find ways to be able to bear yourself. It wonít be easy. It wasnít for me. But it is do-able.

I wonder what you do to help yourself though all of this in general? Usually there is a compensating behaviour, which could be as obvious as being an alcoholic, or as subtle as being vaguely punitive in your relationships. If there is something, then perhaps you could use this as a springboard to accelerate your process. As you know from the book, I came to a point in my life where I realised that I needed extra help and had to take the plunge. I canít proscribe what that would be for you, but your instincts seem to have given you ideas. You should follow those which seem to be both right for you and probably the ones you fear the most.

[wendy]

Thanks for your reply. I totally agree that the right way forward is to release my repressed emotions but I'm still not sure how. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give myself some space in my active, sociable life but I don't seem to feel anything!!! I suppose I must feel something but I can only describe it as low level depression. I'm ready to feel all these strong feelings so where are they??

I'm not sure what I do to help myself really. I'm quite well balanced and healthy and 'normal' in every area of my life except relationships where I probably am 'vaguely punitive'. I just ended another one after 2 months together. During the relationship all I could see were his negative points and he bugged me alot so I thought he obviously isn't right for me but now after a couple of weeks single, I start to worry that I made a mistake because he was quite keen for it to develop. So now I'm on my own again and I don't like it. I think about trying to find some-one else and maybe the only way for me to heal is with some-one but then on the other hand maybe I should be on my own to actually allow any painful feelings to surface?

[Benjamin Fry]

Have you considered actually staying with someone for long enough to allow the really painful feelings to surface; and then staying with both the partner and the feelings? That is, I suspect, what you are really on the run from. In that respect, your ultimate target for your ìpunitiveî behaviour might be yourself. Try giving both yourself and your relationships a bit of space to co-exist with their ìnegative pointsî and see if you can bear the emotional storm that might accompany it.

You say you are ready for the feelings and yet wonder where they are; but you also clearly identify some (ìall I could see were his negative points and he bugged me alotî) and then arrange to turn off these feelings by withdrawing from the relationship.