Dr. Love,I don’t know what to do anymore, for the past few years, I fall for the guys I like HARD, and it always takes me forever to get over them(if I ever do). And I seriously let them walk all over me. I give them any and everything they want, forgive them right away if they hurt my feelings, you name it I’ll do it for them.Also, my friends too. Almost every friend i have has gone after one of the guys i like at one point. And i always just forget about it, and don’t say anything just keep it all bottled up inside of me.I need to stand up to them (my guys and my friends) but i don’t know how. Could you try and help me.
It sounds like you are a professional victim. You allow yourself to be mistreated and you reward whoever is mistreating you by giving them everything they want and forgiving them right away.Before you can break this pattern, you need to accept that your unconscious mind has a reason for putting you in this place over and over again. No pattern continues unless it meets unconscious needs, so you need to accept the fact that you are right where your unconscious mind wants you to be.Now our job is to figure out what your unconscious mind gains by keeping you in this place. I am fairly sure that you were abused as a child, which programmed you to seek out abusive lovers and friends.As for why you reward the people who abuse you, this is a pattern that all abused children learn early in life. When you were mistreated as a young kid, you surely thought that the abuse (or neglect) you suffered was your fault. You also thought that if you were a better girl that you would succeed in being treated better by your parent.So, in response to the abuse you tried to be even nicer hoping and hoping to finally show your parent that you really were a good kid who deserved to be loved. This is how you learned to reward people who dump on you.Having been abused as a child also explains why you keep your anger bottled up when your lovers or friends do you wrong. Having been raised by an abusive parent is such a terrifying experience for a child.Most people who were abused as kids learned early on to keep quiet when they were being mistreated. This was actually a survival mechanism. The last thing you would have wanted to do was to tell off a volatile and out-of-control parent–that would have led to more abuse. So you learned to keep quiet to protect yourself. That pattern continues into adulthood, long after it’s needed. Now, keeping quiet not only doesn’t protect you, it leads you to suffer more abuse.Now the question is how can you free yourself from this crippling pattern. The only way is to join a therapy group, which is what I call your second chance family. In group you will experience relationships with people who love you as you are. These relationships reprogram your brain so that you come to expect to be treated in your outside life the way you are treated in group.In no time you will start choosing better friends and lovers and the pattern is broken. I am so excited to soon be starting the world’s first online group therapy and I hope that you will be one of my first groups.
