Deborah E answers the question, “I’m very unhappy with my life because of some life experiences. I am so depressed sometimes. I feel like ending my life so all will end but I have one daughter who is autistic. Any idea how I can make my life better?”

My dear, there is always a better solution than suicide. I know that when the world feels like it is falling in on us, and there are no options, that that seems like the only option available to us.

Also, sometimes it feels as if that option has been pre-programmed into our psyche, often due to mistreatment or abuse in our own past. As human creatures, we desire love. We crave love. We need love. It is very natural to want and need that! When we are deprived of that love, we have a vacuum inside of us and that vacuum can often trigger us into feeling like it would be better to shut off the vacuum forever, with the ending of our own life. Sometimes there is a piece of self-hatred because we have been taught to hate ourselves. Many times there is a need to escape from the pain and a real, sincere, but desperate cry for help, not only the salvation from ourselves and our own thoughts of handling it through a final act of termination, but also a desperate cry to find the love and the hope that will help us to not

Deborah E answers, “I want to get married.”

I can appreciate that you want to get married and that is a very honorable thing.

Something that would be helpful is to ask yourself why you want to get married. Is there a particular man or woman that you want to marry, or is it the idea of being married? Is it marriage that you love or a particular person that you love?

Marriage is the culmination of a relationship that is headed toward marriage, that is, when it is based on love. There are situations of arranged marriages, but it wouldn’t seem that you would be talking about how much you want to be married, as if it isn’t happening, if it has already been arranged for you.

Deborah E answers the question, “How do I forget about the bad incidents of the past?”

Forgetting about bad incidents is difficult. It seems that we often times forget about pleasant, but less memorable events, and remember the bad incidents. When the incidents are really bad, and it happens to a child, there is often times a defensive mechanism in the mind to block the incident from memory, or an interpretation of the event that would cause psychic pain.

It also seems that the more we try to intentionally forget about bad incidents, the more our mind will play it out and the more we recall and remember it.

Time really is the best healer, but we also need to continually remind ourselves of two things: 1) We are not “bad” because we remember

Deborah E answers, “I really need to understand someone.”

It’s a great thing that you want to understand someone. In this day and age, when it seems to be “all about me,” it is good to hear someone who wants to look outside him or herself and think about the other person, by striving to understand him or her.

Now comes the hard part, actually understanding!

To truly understand the person, you would really need to be that person. The closes that we can come to it is “walking a mile in his or her moccasins” (American Indian Proverb). That is not always easy to do, since you

Deborah E answers, “My mutilation is hard due to psychological problems.”

I can see where this would be very difficult, as you have issues that are bothering you, and they are presenting themselves in harm to your body, as well.

By the reference to “my mutilation,” it seems clear that you are aware that this is an issue and is causing you difficulties. You are also aware that the mutilation is not a symptom of itself, but, as you put it yourself, it is a symptom of a psychological problem or problems.

As a result, it is difficult to address the mutilation issue and bodily harm without addressing the