Dear J:

I wrote to you in my last post to you that the origin of this core-belief that you are inadequate was never about you being imperfect. When you got 97% on your test and your father got upset-

you thought he was upset because you didn’t get 100%. No surprise you thought that was his reason: he told you so. Of course, a child believes what a parent says.

But the reason he got upset with you had nothing to do with you getting 3% less than a 100%. And this is key: the reason he got upset with you is totally irrelevant to your test score. Something else was on his mind, a frustration, old or new to him, on that day.

When “a family member tell me that no matter how much weight I lost I would never be as pretty as my classmate”- you thought that it was a loving family member talking to you, that he/ she was on your side, so you took what they said to heart. No surprise there either, we tend to think family is loving: we need it to be so.

But that family member was the opposite of loving to you, against you at that moment, not for you. But you didn’t know it then, so you believed him/ her.

Keep posting.

anita