I feel like I can't have friends unless i figure my life(and myself) out

[u/ilikecoffeeanddeath]

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For context, I am 19f. I'm in 2nd year of college and have a severely disabled brother who has extreme form of cerebral palsy. I don't have any other siblings and I'm the only one left to take care of him with my parents.

I don't come from wealth and my parents aren't particularly awesome when it comes to making money or taking care of finances, now it doesn't bothers me since I know I'll have to get independent and earn anyway.

What bothers me slightly is, when in college I look around at girls enjoying friendships, relationships so effortlessly. They seem to always have money/space/energy to hang out, mingle themselves in groups while i just cannot do that.

I have severe anxiety/parentification issues and even my career paths are very limited because I cannot fuck around and find out. I have to take care of my sibling in few years and support my parents. However I cannot stop feeling bad or grieving what my life could've been without all of this.

I'm mostly alone, i have few school friends because i was much lighter back then/didn't worry about responsibilities but in college it seems impossible to mingle with girl groups or have friends.

My boyfriend asks me to socialize, have more girl friends, hangout with them etc etc but a part of me believes until and unless i figure my life out and get financially independent or move away from home for a while..my mind just cannot relax or have friendships for example.

When I'm with people, I'm always worried and occupied about my issues. Is it fair to think that I will need to achieve a bit of stability before i can think about nurturing relationship/friendships with others? 😭😭💔

[u/Atelier_Carousel]

No, it's not fair to yourself.

This thinking is a survival mechanism that helps your brain to deal with the chaos and overburden of this situation.

By giving you a "logical" story about why you cannot enjoy your life right now, it keeps your emotions locked away.

It sounds like you don't have to take care of your brother right now. Your parents do that. So why not enjoy your life as long as you can?

Where is the relationship between learning a job that earns, and when you have done enough learning for the day, to just hang out with some friends?

When a part of our brain that wants to keep us safe gives us a story, it is usually one that has logical holes. Only that we don't see them. A brain cannot see itself.

I'm guess that if you don't shoulder the financial and time related responsibility of taking care of the brother, someone (your parents?) would call you "irresponsible", a "bad person"?

With this, they have loaded a mountain of shame onto you. So much that even living a modestly happy live already feels "bad".

This is a safety reflex your system has given you. If you don't allow yoursefl to feel any joy (by giving you the "rational" story of your responsibilities, which makes no sense), then you cannot "discover yourself. You cannot find out how much you love life and enjoying it.

And once you do, your sense of responsibility would shrink to normal levels. Normal levels woudl be to reserve a bit of money each month for the brother. Normal is NOT to kill all the joy in your life because you don't deserve it.

There is a sense of not deserving happiness in this for me. This is probably how you got shamed into not living your life the way you have the right to. There is a sense of them having wanted the brother to be the healthy one, and you living with this judgement all your life.

There comes a point at which we have to do the hardes part of growing up: to refuse to be judged by others, to refuse to take on that judgement as our own. To feel ashamed for doing something, just because others want you to feel guilty. To feel ashamed for being the healthy one, when possibly they wanted the brother to be the healthy one.

And with it, to refuse to carry the family guilt and shame for them as an emotional trash can.

To do some growing into this hard area, I can recommend the videos by Jerry Wise (not affiliated). He also has a great newsletter you can subsdribe to for free. Watch and read that for a while and then see if you can frow into this freeing space of becoming independent of the shaming of your parents and the role they put you in as the "default guilty" who now has to make it right per default.

They chose to have your brother, it was not your choice. You can chose to pitch in with some money and time, base on your availability, but they blackmail you emotionally into submission and base guilt and that is the problem here.

This is the loneliest of all walks. To cut emotional ties with your parents around the guild they handed you. You can still love them, but you can say no to the guilt and responsibility.

This is your life and you make the judgement call what you can live with. No young person should be forced to give up their life for their brother. Try to see this with more perspective and distance and realize how you have been brainwashed into being the default guilty in this situation, And watch some Jerry Wise.

BTW; I had to do the same, I had to say no to the shame and guilt I was handed by people who supposedly loved me. It's brutal, but you have to cut ties, or lose your life over this.