@Christopher

Realize that the “you” or “I” you keep referring to is not something that was there at birth, but rather something created by the mind/brain as you grew up and continues to be formed throughout life. It is a picture or character created by the mind to represent “self”.

Past experience (abuse) can create an image of “self” that says we are “not good enough” and “unlovable”. Then we take that image of “self” out into the world, believing it without even thinking about it, perhaps never questioning it. We go about living our lives without fully realizing the impact it has on everything we do, everyone we try to bond with, and how we see the world as a whole. We tend to see this image as our “true self” and forget it is just a character made up by our own mind.

We try to find “things” to make us happy, but they only bring happiness for a short time. We try to find “others” to make us happy, but when they can’t take away the pain, we end up resenting them for letting us down. We chase achievement hoping to show others and ourselves that we really are “good enough”, yet when we achieve our goals, we resent others who don’t seem to see us as we thought they would and should.

Everything you told me in your post makes perfect sense to me. I lived through a very similar story. If you are like me, then you are probably running away from your “self”. You grasp at “other” to find something to make up for your own inherent sense of defectiveness. You simultaneously resent others for not making you feel better, yet go running back to them and cling to them as you fear nobody else would want defective you.

In my experience, the only thing that helps is to go back into this character your mind has created called “you” and gain an understanding of what it is, what it is not, and just how ephemeral and fictional it really is. This is your “ego”. You were not born with it, it was created by your mind. Now it is leading you on a life experience full of sadness, fear, loneliness, and despair. Some seem to find a way to numb out and experience life as a spectator (for a time anyway). IMO, this is not how to get the most from the life experience. One way or another, there is no sense of an individual “I” without the ego and to have a personal experience of life you need a “you”. It is your mind that created this ego image of self, and your mind can pull it back apart and rebuild it. Old beliefs can, with work and time, give way to new ones. The effects of emotional abuse, particularly during childhood, are carved deeply into the foundation of the ego. Never the less, they can be repaired, and this starts with coming to understand what the ego is, how it was formed, what it contains, how your mind uses it to guide your decisions and opinions throughout life, and that most of all, it is just a fictional character, a character your mind can re-characterize. This may seem like a rather nasty lot to be given in life. The upshot is that if you face your task with courage, and most of all compassion for this “self”, you may just come out the other end understanding a great deal more about your “self”, other’s “selves”, and what IMO, what Christ’s teachings were really all about. Good luck, it’s a tall mountain to climb, and even harder when starting from low in the valley, but the view is worth it.