It was exactly the answer I was hoping for. I tell you what... having realistic hopes met is a lot nicer than wishing for the impossible. :)

I have an "LS" of sorts, who is ragingly co-dependent and a people pleaser. Being so close to his real self, I am where he comes back to with all of his feelings of resentment and of being exploited. The world owes him everything he cannot seem to get himself to provide for himself. He pours time and energy into people who give him nothing in return. In actuality, he is surrounded by people who care for him, but expect him to take more responsibility for his own care and cannot seem to convince him to take an active role in it. He will go out of his way to indulge anyone's requests of him, and then ends up feeling drained, and no one will return favor. He, naturally, has a habit of getting involved with people who DO exploit that, but I also understand the average person's perspective. I didn't demand this. He insisted on helping me or giving me this. What can I do? I didn't even want to take his help, how can he hold it against me when I have come to his aid and he doesn't recognize it as aid?

On his end, he believes the best thing you can do in the world is to invest in your neighbor, because when you are in need, your neighbor, basically owes you. That's not his perspective, he just thinks everyone should be like he is, and if they were, he'd want for nothing. It's incredibly idealistic and I have many times told him that he can't give to anyone else until he makes sure he is okay himself first. A message I need to hear too. I'm useless to everyone because I reject caring for myself.

John, I had a recent little meltdown and tried to observe my feelings in this vein.

My thought process was: If I am neglected and treated as a nuisance, my survival is a negative to my caregivers. I should not survive. My survival is an unfortunate accident. But I am here. And I long for validation of my existence, because otherwise I feel like a grievous mistake has been made. I'm torn between the desperate longing for validation and an impulse towards self destruction. And I feel an intense mixture of anger and grief for that not-belonging. Is there any way to change that belief that I shouldn't exist? The floating urge is to *demand* that validation from someone who triggers the attachment process. If they "fail" me, the anger and grief increases the desperation.

Please accept me. Please nurture me. Give me what I want.

Knowing that is not how it works does little to negate the feeling and craving.

Long post warning!!! :) Going back to what John posted from the naturalchild article~ and I apologize because this is somewhat off-topic but it's really been eating at me lately.

"...we, as a society, have raised our children with the expectation that they become totally self-reliant and autonomous rather than with the hope that they have the capacity to form close, loving, intimate relationships with others. As a result of our social insistence upon self-reliance, we have witnessed an epidemic of addictions and what I call "the alienated self," meaning people who are disconnected from their internal thoughts and feelings - their inner selves - and are unable to form true intimacy with others. Addiction exemplifies how, by not allowing ourselves to deeply connect to other people, we have attached only to the other things."

It's funny to read this (esp. coming from a parenting website), because when I returned home to the US from South Korea over the holidays--to the news that 20 kids had been murdered at Sandy Hook while I was in flight--it sent me into a contemplative mood for several days. I don't think there could have been a more shocking wake-up call to the differences I was about to experience. As I re-adjusted to American society, I was struck by all the ways (subtle and not so) that we do violence to each other in the States, and the Western world in general. And the more I pondered and tried to suss out the feelings of *What is going ON here? Why is my home country like this and why is Korea not?*, the more I realized the truth of exactly what this article is stating.

There is a fundamental sense of alienation, separateness, and competition in American society that does not exist to the same extent, or in the same way, here. I noticed it on the subway, when walking into a bar, while driving on the road in the US. We are so quick to "other" people, to almost/actually treat them as objects or threats, and to stubbornly believe in our own narratives. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we are nation of immigrants, of diversity, and have little in the way of a collective sense of identity. When I walk into a public space in the States, I have the sense of being "sized up" immediately. The look on many peoples' faces is a hard one, a guarded one. Unease is pervasive--people are afraid, or worried, or angry, or condescending. I cannot really point to concrete evidence or explain it except to say it was unnerving and it was in the very atmosphere of many places/situations I ended up in.

Koreans experience the same emotions, of course, and commit crimes and have problems in their culture, but there is a friendliness and connectedness in public places. No fear or unease or guardedness. People may be angry but it's a qualitatively different kind of anger. They are not going to hit you, endanger your life over an argument, or rob you. Koreans are more aware of *this is another living person* in front of them. You can leave your things unattended in shops for more than 15 minutes, and come back to find them untouched. Homeless people do not accost you and make you feel uncomfortable. This is a society in which drinking is extremely prevalent, and all men complete mandatory military training for two years. The cities are very close and crowded. You would expect more problems from this kind of combination, but it's much safer at all hours of the night. And so all of this caused me to wonder...what the hell is going on? And that was the conclusion I drew: our society has created a maladaptive culture in some major, possibly crippling, ways.

The more frightening part is that I'm pretty sure there is only a small minority of people who realize this, judging by the firestorm of debate which occurred after Sandy Hook. So many people still think that our problem is guns, or mental health care (lack thereof), or the absence of God, or violent video games/movies. It's all of this and more, but we continue to focus nearly exclusively on external THINGS and practices to blame. We are not looking at our own selves, our own culture, our way of conducting relationships--intimate, platonic, or perhaps most importantly, with strangers. When I first went home I had this terrifying feeling of disintegration, as if I was witnessing the earlier stages of social breakdown across the country. It was unexpected and alarming, then became normalized as I adjusted. It may sound overly dramatic to some people, and my feelings were probably heightened by reverse culture shock, but I still feel that we are not headed in a good direction as a nation. I didn't like what I saw when I went home.