Rebecca,

Well, what I am trying to say is, until I read this thread I had no idea why I was so merciless with myself. After reading this thread it makes sense.

Valerie

I have the same problem. If I receive any positive recognition, I brush it off. I can’t feel any joy or sense of accomplishment from it. But I whip myself into fretting and insomnia if I perceive that I did something wrong.

I never thought that I was recreating the conditions of my critical parents. So my need for love is tied in with feeling as if I need to bully myself.

This was manageable until I had a very, very bad year last year. I had just struggled to move to a new city for family reasons, the most expensive city in the country. During my first month there, my (separated) husband was arrested with my children present, he spent the next three months in jail, I started a new job and another part time teaching job, I had to move again in order to keep my dog, my mother found out she had terminal cancer, and I was hired onto the project from hell at work…the kind of project that unbeknownst to me the two previous people in the position had walked off of.

I managed to pull through it, with some memory loss and difficulty processing thoughts which lasted for an additional year and a half. But another side effect I struggle with is a profound deepening of this feeling insecure in a very, very fundamental way.