Question: I was raised by parents who didn’t treat me as an individual, but more saw their children as an inconvenience to be dealt with for 18 years. No surprise, all my romantic relationships so far have been with extremely self centered men. How do I find ‘me’ again after a lifetime of being told I wasn’t important? How do I break out of this trap?

Answer: You deserve the life you will take responsibility for. That means you can have anything you’re willing to plan for, take risks for, and know you are good enough for.

You need to have a dream. This will take some time and you probably don’t have time to sit down for 30 minutes and think about yourself. Ok, take 5. Take the minute you get in the bathroom, the hopefully longer than 5 minutes you get in the shower. It is ok for you to spend some time thinking and planning for what YOU want.

If this seems sinful, foreign, selfish or just plain wrong, what would you want for your daughter, or your best friend? If you would give them the time to dream for themselves, then you can give it to yourself. You are, after all, the best hope they’ve got of learning to do this.