Dear Sadlyconfused:

This is in response to the first of your two posts, the one you addressed to me:

You are welcome and good to read from you again! “For me, it’s probably enough now to acknowledge that when something like this happens it isn’t automatically my fault“- it will take this kind of acknowledging, over and over again, over many months, to uproot the core belief that when something bad (or something that you perceive to be bad) happens, it is automatically your fault.

“Oof, yeah, I do judge myself harshly don’t I? It’s so automatic and I don’t realise I’m doing it!“- there will be  lots of oofs as you make a habit of acknowledging when you automatically assume that something is your fault and harshly judge yourself for it.

“Thank you for reframing the sentence for me, I wouldn’t have otherwise recognised that I was being overly judgmental of myself. It helps give me an idea of the healthier kind of self-talk I could be aiming for“-  you are welcome, and please make a habit out of recognizing when you are judgmental of yourself and asking yourself: did I really make a mistake, or do  I only feel that I made a mistake? Did I really do something wrong, or does it only feel this way?

A CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) practice will help in this regard. I got my introduction to CBT 12 years ago by reading the book  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies and doing the exercises in the workbook, same title.  One key exercise is filling in a form when you notice that you feel distressed: (1) you label the feeling best you can, (2) you write down the thought or thoughts behind your distress, (3) you evaluate each thought as to its truth or lack of. Ex.,  you submit a post on tiny buddha and it comes out with lots of excess print, you feel distressed, you fill in the form: I feel anxious (feeling), I made a terrible mistake (thought), then you evaluate the thought: did I make a mistake.. what was my mistake?

“If anything does continue to bother me I’ll have been approaching it rationally and from a balanced perspective rather than reacting emotionally“- this is what CBT is about, and particularly the CBT exercise I mentioned right above: you challenge your emotionally based (often distorted) thoughts, use your rational to correct the thoughts… and as a result your distress lessens, you feel calmer.

I wrote to you: “In no way do I think that you are a bad woman wearing a mask of a good woman, or pretending to be a good woman.  Being an extreme people pleaser does not mean deceit…“, your response: “Thank you for clarifying that, I think fear does motivate a lot of my reactions to uncertain situations..“.

The reason I made the comment above (the italicized) is that as a shame-based person that I was, I  know how quick I’ve been to see wrongdoing and wrong being on my part anywhere and everywhere possible. Sometimes, when I felt criticized and judged, I really was, but at other times, I assumed that I was… when I wasn’t.

I know that as I respond to members, particularly to shame-based members, I need to be reasonably careful to not word things in ways that can easily be perceived as criticism. More so, I need to be careful to not really criticize and judge members- something I did when I wrongly projected my mother into original posters’ stories, wrongly assuming that what is true about my mother is also true about the OP or the OP’s mother!

“I have been doing much better over the last few day“- good to read this!

anita

Dear Sadlyconfused: I am reposting my two posts of earlier today, so to move them past the very long, illegible post right above, for your convenience.

Oct 4, post 1:

*I just noticed that you submitted two posts today, Oct 4. This post that I am about to submit,  is what I typed before noticing your new posts, thinking that you may not post again. I will submit a 2nd post following this one.

Dear Sadlyconfused:

* Soon to be Contentedly clear, I hope!

“I had a father who(se)…  cruelty and criticism towards/of me really amped up when she died and could no longer protect me from it. I grew up in a very misogynistic environment and walked on eggshells…. I do carry a lot of shame and fear in me…  I’ve harshly judged myself all my life…I became a massive people pleaser to get through it, which has been really difficult to emerge from as it’s pretty much been my identity my whole life. Without it, who actually am I? What do I stand for?… people naturally assumed that my easy-going, people pleasing habit was my core personality, rather than the trauma response that it really was… I didn’t tell my husband that I was weaning off anti-depressants which I feel was a massive communication error on my part, as my poor behaviour had no explanation. I have such a bad habit of just trying to deal with things alone, as though it’s something shameful“-

As an adult, you rightfully, I am sure, labeled your father a misogynist, which suggests that you know that many of his opinions about girls and women were wrong. But as a child, your father was a superior being, a god (to the child that you were),  and what he said about you was the word of god. He told you in so many ways that there is something terribly wrong with you,  you naturally believed him, and shame (the belief that there is something terribly wrong with you) took hold, a core belief was formed.

The hallmark of shame is a constant, vigilant, painful awareness of  mistakes made/ wrongdoings committed: often imagined mistakes and wrongdoings, and in regard to real mistakes and wrongdoings: they always appear, to the shame based individual, much bigger than they are.

Your last post, Sept 29, after submitting a post with lots of extra print, was: “Oh my word, what did I do to the formatting in that last post?! Sorry“- the excess print happens in my posts when I copy from an online source and paste it on tiny buddha, so I am sure that the excess print was not your fault, not a result of a mistake you made. But see how you reacted: seeing a mistake where there was none, seeing it as a huge mistake, automatically taking responsibility for it and apologizing. That was your last post: maybe that imagined (wrongly perceived) mistake was too much to bear…?

Believing that you are (as I believed about myself) a … sort of Mistake Monster, you walk on eggshells, being very cautious, careful, alert, not wanting the monster to do what it does: huge, terrible mistakes that will hurt people and bring you punishment. Any word you say can be a mistake… so you stay quiet, any deed that you do can be a mistake, so you watch everything you do, careful.

Oct 4, post 2:

Dear Sadlyconfused:

This is in response to the first of your two posts, the one you addressed to me:

You are welcome and good to read from you again! “For me, it’s probably enough now to acknowledge that when something like this happens it isn’t automatically my fault“- it will take this kind of acknowledging, over and over again, over many months, to uproot the core belief that when something bad (or something that you perceive to be bad) happens, it is automatically your fault.

“Oof, yeah, I do judge myself harshly don’t I? It’s so automatic and I don’t realise I’m doing it!“- there will be  lots of oofs as you make a habit of acknowledging when you automatically assume that something is your fault and harshly judge yourself for it.

“Thank you for reframing the sentence for me, I wouldn’t have otherwise recognised that I was being overly judgmental of myself. It helps give me an idea of the healthier kind of self-talk I could be aiming for“-  you are welcome, and please make a habit out of recognizing when you are judgmental of yourself and asking yourself: did I really make a mistake, or do  I only feel that I made a mistake? Did I really do something wrong, or does it only feel this way?

A CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) practice will help in this regard. I got my introduction to CBT 12 years ago by reading the book  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies and doing the exercises in the workbook, same title.  One key exercise is filling in a form when you notice that you feel distressed: (1) you label the feeling best you can, (2) you write down the thought or thoughts behind your distress, (3) you evaluate each thought as to its truth or lack of. Ex.,  you submit a post on tiny buddha and it comes out with lots of excess print, you feel distressed, you fill in the form: I feel anxious (feeling), I made a terrible mistake (thought), then you evaluate the thought: did I make a mistake.. what was my mistake?

“If anything does continue to bother me I’ll have been approaching it rationally and from a balanced perspective rather than reacting emotionally“- this is what CBT is about, and particularly the CBT exercise I mentioned right above: you challenge your emotionally based (often distorted) thoughts, use your rational to correct the thoughts… and as a result your distress lessens, you feel calmer.

I wrote to you: “In no way do I think that you are a bad woman wearing a mask of a good woman, or pretending to be a good woman.  Being an extreme people pleaser does not mean deceit…“, your response: “Thank you for clarifying that, I think fear does motivate a lot of my reactions to uncertain situations..“.

The reason I made the comment above (the italicized) is that as a shame-based person that I was, I  know how quick I’ve been to see wrongdoing and wrong being on my part anywhere and everywhere possible. Sometimes, when I felt criticized and judged, I really was, but at other times, I assumed that I was… when I wasn’t.

I know that as I respond to members, particularly to shame-based members, I need to be reasonably careful to not word things in ways that can easily be perceived as criticism. More so, I need to be careful to not really criticize and judge members- something I did when I wrongly projected my mother into original posters’ stories, wrongly assuming that what is true about my mother is also true about the OP or the OP’s mother!

“I have been doing much better over the last few day“- good to read this!

anita

Dear Sadlyconfused:

You are very welcome! “Would you mind sharing how you incorporated CBT into your day to day life? For instance, would you sit down for an allotted time each day to work through the exercises?“- I don’t sit down with the CBT workbook or CBT forms and do the exercises. I do the exercises mentally. I will give you an example  of my most recent CBT mental exercise. It happened when I read the first sentence of your second recent post: “Hi Tee, thanks very much for your reply”. A thought occurred to me: Sadlyconfused didn’t thank me very much did she?  There was hurt and anger accompanying the thought. Next, I thought to myself: oh, this is just me afraid that I am less valued than others, hurt and angry about being treated as LESS THAN. Next, I went back to the post you addressed to me and was pleased that you thanked me “very much” as well. I am aware of my tendency to feel or believe that I am treated as less-than others, aware of my intense and prolonged anger over it growing up… and onward, and so, I no longer assume without checking: I look for the objective reality. *if you didn’t thank me VERY much as well, it wouldn’t have necessarily meant that you value me less: most people are not that careful with their language.

Another thing about this example: a voice in my head says: someone will take advantage of me sharing this and make fun of me for it, saying to me something like: how petty of you, anita! how stupid.. – which gives me the opportunity to do my next CBT mental exercise: I pause and become aware of the fear, fear of being ridiculed, made fun of, shamed, and how much I suffered from this and for so long.. Next, I feel empathy for myself as I think: there is no shame in being hypervigilant to being treated as less-than, when this was my experience growing up and for so long! If anyone ridicules me for this.. they don’t have much of a heart, do they?  Following this latest thought, I no longer feel (for the moment) fear of being ridiculed. I mean, it may happen that I will be ridiculed, but the shame in such a possibility is gone because… I will not be valuing someone who will ridicule me over this, and perhaps.. over any other thing.

This latest exercise made me aware that the fear was not about being ridiculed but about feeling shame, it is the very painful feeling of shame that I fear.

* I was impressed by the similarities between your father and my mother: (1) my mother too hit me “not bad enough to leave a mark and incriminate (her)“. She even told me that one time that I remember, when she hit me: “do you think that I am that stupid as to leave a mark on you?”, (2) my mother too did the following: “recording some perceived slight against (her). and finding a way to punish me via humiliation months down the line“- there were many, many perceived, untrue slights that she accused me of. Each humiliation session was very long and very elaborate, (3) my mother too repeatedly “would play the victim and pretend that I was uncontrollable and rebellious, when the reality was that I was a quiet, well-meaning girl“- she accused me of meaning to hurt her by saying this and doing that, when it was not at all the truth, I was not evil-meaning and of course, I had no intention of inviting her abuse, (4) I too was afraid of my mother “creating a scene“- she created lots of scenes, very dramatic, scary scenes.

“The first time I had truly felt safe in years was when the pandemic happened and we were forced to stay home for months as it meant that my father couldn’t turn up out of the blue and harass me… I think it was only with feeling safe that I could really reflect on how my life looked in the present moment rather than being in fight or flight constantly“- I’ve been living continents and oceans away from my mother and yet, I am not quite sure that I am safe from her. It is strange.. how the fear never really goes away, not altogether.

anita

Dear Sadlyconfused,

I am really happy that you and in a much better place with your husband and that he is, to use your own words, “nothing alike” your father! That’s fantastic because that means he is not a judgmental, criticizing type, who makes your life miserable, but is an understanding and loving person, whom you can talk to. There was a glitch in his behavior during the pandemic, but as you said, circumstances contributed to that as well. It’s good that you are now seeking to forgive both him and yourself for “any dysfunctional behaviour over the last couple of years”.

If you keep your communication open and honest, knowing that he is not your father and won’t judge you – I think that will be the base for a healthy and emotionally intimate relationship.

That’s fascinating that the pandemic actually enabled you to feel safer because your father couldn’t just pop at your door at any time to harass you. Maybe this feeling of safety encouraged you to stop taking anti-depressants too? (you said you’ve been weening off for the last couple of years, which coincides with the pandemic). Which also means that the reason you were taking anti-depressants all this time was your father and your inability to say No to him, to protect yourself from his harassment, I imagine? But eventually you succeeded:

distancing myself from him was the hardest thing I ever had to do as an adult but to allow the psychological assaults to continue would have been just as bad.

Congratulations on distancing yourself! How is your relationship with your father now?

It also seems that unlike with your father, you felt safe with your husband – safe enough to start reducing the anti-depressants and discovering and expressing your authentic feelings, and showing more and more of your authentic self. I am happy for you!

You were right to react to your husband’s excessive use of Discord:

I certainly couldn’t keep quiet about the things that were bothering me anymore, regardless of how silly they might or might not have been. I was feeling so insecure about it.

It wasn’t silly. He was having an emotional affair with people in the cyber space, and was neglecting you… so you were totally right to make an issue of it. And I am glad that this game doesn’t exist any more, but also that he had already reduced the time he was spending on it, even prior to that. It seems it lost its emotional grip on him, which is good news.

I would like to return to your father briefly:

I sometimes even hear my mind telling myself “I’m bad” or “I’m disgusting” and it’s sad and scary how ingrained these beliefs are. I’m trying to grieve for my childhood when emotion comes up and attempting to talk to myself kindly. In the present day I genuinely don’t feel like I have any reason to feel that way towards myself and I know that it’s not true, yet my nervous system is wired around these messages.

It’s great that you don’t trust the inner critic any more, and when you hear those deprecating words, you try to talk to yourself kindly. That is the way to counter the harsh voice of the inner critic: to talk to yourself with warmth and compassion, like a good, loving parent. You are doing a great job, and all I can say is: Keep up the good work!

It will take some time to stop the automatic thoughts from popping up, but it’s important that you notice them and sort of observe them, but not identify with them.

Apparently it was Martin Luther who said “You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair“. So you notice the deprecating, harsh thought, but you know it’s your Inner Critic, and you counter it with the voice of the Inner Good Parent, or the Inner Coach, as some call it. Someone who loves you and cheers you on, rather than someone who judges you and puts you down.