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