Dear Anna,

I live far from my mother, I just barely started talking to her again and when we do talk all she talks about is her and what she is feeling and she hasn't asked about me.

You know, my marriage is like walking on eggshells, it is my fault cause I cheated on my husband of five years.

I saw you once when I went back to see my mother, my mother sent me to you after a nervous breakdown. I'm 28 years old and I feel trapped. I don't know what to do or think. when I saw you, I asked about my marriage and all you said that I was gonna have a lot of boyfriends.

How long is my marriage gonna last? It wasn't the first time I cheated on him. It was just the first time I got caught. I have two children and I feel like I became selfish, when everyone told me that I need to think of myself. I need my mother but she is so controlling and judgmental.

I need some advice or something. I'm seeking professional help and taking the proper meds, but I feel lost. what do you see in my future?

I know prayers change the future, but I don't feel like being married anymore, but I love him and care about him very much and he don't deserve to be hurt because he takes good care of me and my children.

My children and their step dad are just now getting close. I don't know what to do. Can you please give me some guidance or something? I would really appreciate it! Thank you.

I feel like another nervous breakdown is coming along or I feel like just letting go.

Lost and Confused

Dear Lost and Confused:

It is good that you are going for counseling. It is good that you are on prescription medication because you seem to be suffering from clinical depression.

You have to give yourself time. The chemicals in the brain that influence how you think and your emotional tenor (or level of emotional response) have more control over you than you understand.

I really want people to understand that depression, bi-polar disorder, and other chemical imbalances do not mean that a person is weak-minded. I quit referring to such conditions as mental disorders and started to refer to them as brain illness.

Mental implies that you can think your way out of them, while brain illness has a truer relationship with reality; meaning that the brain chemicals are out of balance and interfere with the mind's ability to deal with reality in a healthy way.

I want you to give yourself the time you need for the chemicals in your brain to normalize. I want you to eat right, and do not take or use any substances (drugs and alcohol) except those prescribed and natural food supplements (like vitamin D, B, and C).

While your brain is finding its normal realm of functionality, remind yourself when you are feeling blue, angry, frustrated, hopeless and depressed that it isn't real - it is chemistry.

I want you to focus on your own success. Not only on what you want to be, will be, or might be; but on who you are. I want you to take time to admire your ability to survive and the resilience and strength you have used and use to survive your daily life.

I want you to take one minute, at the beginning and the end of each day to be grateful for your survival.

At that same time, I want you to be thankful for the opportunity to do one good thing for one person each day.

I want you to focus on doing one good thing a day for someone. It doesnt have to be much, it can be a kind word, or listening, or wiping a child's tears.

It can be giving someone a dollar, or feeding a stray dog, or sweeping off a sidewalk. It can be anything that is good.

When you start to be thankful for the opportunity to do something good each day, and you do something good each day, then acknowledge that you are good and did one good thing.

This practice may not make much sense to you, but it will help to influence your brain chemistry, in fact, it will begin to change your brain chemistry, which will begin to change your life.

I want you to stop rehersing what you have done wrong in your mind. I want you to quit having that conversation with yourself. It is a downward spiral.

You already know what you have done, accept it is done, find the compassion you would have for others for yourself, and let it go.

Seal your lips and close your mind to the discussion, and go forward with thanks for the hard lessons learned.

You have to work on your self-esteem. That is why you continually search out short sexual encounters outside of your marriage.

For those brief moments, you somehow feel important, in control, excitement - for being smart enough to get away with it, and powerful inside of dark secrets. You look for approval and power from these casual but unfulfilling moments.

When you choose to have sex with a friend's mate, you feel power over her. This is an addiction, and your therapist can help you overcome the problems and release the destructive behavior.

Remember, sex is not for abuse or about a 60 second central nervous response. It is a sacred union of two people to share life-force.

You merge energy with your partner, there is an intermingling of body fluids, and the possibility of creating a new life.

When two people engage in intimacy, they merge energy, emotional, physical, mental and spiritual bodies.

Each of you merge life fields, and therefore both become at risk to walk away with the other person's boogie men (attached negative spirits), as well as other phsycial results (STD's), and emotional attachment.

Knowing these things, consider yourself stronger than physical attraction. Move into consequential thinking.

Decide whether you want to merge, or whether you are just playing around.

Indiscriminate sex has ruined many lives, why do you think this might be?

When the human is out of balance, and not paying attention to all parts of his/her (physical, mental, spiritual, energetic and emotional) self, then an imbalanced relationship with an ill-chosen mate will result.

You will find a better way to live.

You will find your right chemically balanced mind, you will find joy in day to day living, you will find a way to live that you enjoy and you will let go of your addictions.

The key to all of those things is gratefulness for the experience of being human and walking on the earth as a human.

Gratefulness for the blue in the sky, the water, the wind, the earth, all creatures, colors, sounds, tastes, feelings,thoughts and all other humans.

Forgive your mother. She just isn't very good at being a mother. That is okay, and you can love her anyway.

Try to stop thinking about what she should be and understand who she is.

She is human, and she is only as good as a mother as she is.

You are an adult and are no longer the center of her life, nor should you be. She can't fix you.

Know she loves you, but she is just who she is. Use that formula with everyone and you will do better in your life.

Please understand that you are responsible for how you feel - or rather, how you choose to react to others.

When you learn to be okay, despite the fact that your mother ignores you, or doesn't listen to you, then your life will be immediately better.

You would not want your grown adult child to be miserable because you were not always there for them, so understand that adults don't get the same attention that two year olds or teen-agers require.

They don't need to be "understood," or spoiled with undivided attention. My feeling is that your mother has always been a little casual in her attention to you, so don't get angry and decide to feel bad because she is who she is.

Focus on your children, your husband, and your health.

Your marriage is headed for the rocks right now because you are in chaos. Decide that can be changed by being okay.

It is not about being wonder-woman, it is about the resilience of the Spirit within you to take claim over your own life, accept responsibility for your own life, do the best you can everyday, live inside of integrity, find compassion for yourself and therefore for everyone, and quit taking everything so personally.

As you grow up in life you will discover not everything is about you. When someone ignores you it isn't about you, it may be just about the kind of day they are having.

When you find the heart of compassion for yourself which will then grow to others, the appreciation of your resilience and ability to recover from depression, appreciation for the opportunity to experience life in human form, then you will be happy.

You can do it. I know you can. I can see it from here.

You can email Anna Bee your questions at askannabee@ yahoo.com or fax to (605) 685-1870, or write to PO Box 386, Martin, S.D. 57551. All requests may be subject to publication.

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