Dear Rachel:

You are welcome. In your post before the most recent you wrote: “It’s hard going through life without parents to guide us.. how can we know right from wrong without anyone to teach us?”-

Your parents did guide you (more accurately, misguided you) and they taught you. when your mother shamed you for telling your ranting father that you don’t want to be around him, she taught you to not get away from people who rant/  otherwise harm you, and indeed, as an adult, you didn’t get away from the abusive partner who harmed you.

“I always wonder, am I good person? What does good even mean?”- your mother taught you that being a good person means to not get away from abusive people. She taught you something that is very untrue, and now you have to unlearn what she taught you and teach yourself what it truly means to  be a good person. This is why I asked you to make the lists.

The items on your list need clarifications, context to be inserted, be made specific:

“Listening to listen and not just to respond”- you definitely don’t want to listen to a person on a monologue of ranting, similar to your father’s ranting.

“Following through with what you say you’re going to do”- if in a moment of un-wellness, you said that you will submit to  another person’s disrespect, you shouldn’t follow through with it just because you said it.

“Apologizing for wrongdoing and not doing it again”- if you don’t know yet what it means specifically what behaviors are bad behaviors, and someone says you did something wrong/ bad, how will you be able to evaluate if indeed it was a wrongdoing (some people thrive on pointing others’ alleged wrongdoings).

“Honestly, saying what you mean and meaning what we say”- with some people, and in some contexts (such as in the workplace), we should not say all that we mean.

“Helping others in need to the best of our ability”- often people aiming at helping others are really hurting them, and we should definitely not help those who are taking advantage of us, people who are already helping  themselves to us.

“Taking responsibility for ourselves”- this is very general: what specific behaviors constitute being responsible?

Bad behaviors, “Manipulating people to get something from them”- not all manipulations are bad: when teaching children well, we do manipulative them: showing approval for good behaviors and disapproval for bad behaviors (ex. hitting other kids). When we are polite to strangers is a social manipulation, and not a bad one.

“Disrespecting other’s physical, emotional, or energetic boundaries”- way too general.

“Sexual irresponsibility (cheating, not using birth control and/ or protection” etc., this is more specific, although this too can be made more specific, for example: what constitutes cheating.

If you want to, take your time and make a list of very specific behaviors that are good and/ or bad (you can choose one or the other). It doesn’t need to be a complete list.

anita