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