Dear Jack:

Thank you again for being the first of two to comment on my thread!

You wrote: “I’m not aware I am bullying myself or I have sense that someone has to do it. I can’t go unbullied. That would be chaos.” I wrote to you elsewhere that I was not bullied today and yet I felt depressed much of the day, and it is my observation that I believe, we enjoy some emotional payoff for bullying ourselves. We suffer but we also experience a desirable payoff. Much like eating too many biscuits: we enjoy the eating and we suffer the weight gain. There is nothing we do, no repeating behavior, without a payoff. There is a feel good chemical/s motivating us to repeat, and so it is in self bullying. Be is a pleasure of masochistic kind or a release of tension or feeling of empowerment or business and distraction from another pain. so I felt depressed because I didn’t have the payoff of self bullying.

So I figure I am for no longer bullying myself and go through the depression like. Like getting off heroine, it doesn’t feel good coming off (I am told) but eventually it is a good thing. Same with overeating and any other payoff/ destructive behavior.

“… I think I come from a family culture/Christian culture that encourages harmless, non-assertive, compliant behaviour. I was rewarded for that behaviour when I was a child. My mother once said of me:”Oh Jack, you were such a placid child!” And so it was my job to be placid, one reason being that my next eldest brother was disabled and far from being placid.”

I didn’t understand this. Are you bullying yourself into placidity, submission so to be loved, or get your mother’s praise?

Your oldest brother bullied you. Which brother was disabled and how did it affect you… and how is it related to you being placid? Oh, and can you define placid?

anita