Anita

First of all thank you so much for thinking of me even when I’m not asking for attention. You have been a direct influence on my healing. You are teaching me how to love myself through your love, despite never having met you I am grateful to have crossed paths with you here and hope to be as insightful as you one day. I just really want you to know that I feel the love every time you respond and it gives me hope. Thank you Anita for being there for me through my difficulties and challenging me.

1. It is still difficult for me to accept that my parents didn’t love me as a child. They provided me with a false definition of love one that consisted soley of basic needs, but as an adult and through your guidance I realize I lost out on love as a child because I had emotional needs that were never met.

2. As far as guilt for blaming my parents, yes I’m still struggling with that, and I realize it is not helping me. It frustrates the hell out of me when people credit my parents they’ve never met for my accomplishments. I typically dont correct them, essentially supporting this belief that it’s my fault for turning out this way. I try my best to sugar coat the bullshit that happened in my childhood, but it still stinks regardless. As a therapist I sometimes compare myself to my clients who may have had “worse” struggles than me, when they’re not really any better or worse just different. When I compare my struggles to others I feel shame.

3. I still struggle with awareness of how my relationship with my parents and mother in particular affects me now. It’s hard for me to make the connection on a feeling level that when I’m on a date for example if I cannot help the woman or make her happy I consider myself a failure. This is probably the wound that presents itself most often and ironically has been the hardest one to recognize in the moment. I struggle with dating because I’m uncomfortable with knowing I may not be what the other person is looking for, so I blame myself for not being enough.

4. I thought I had made peace with my inner critic but apparently not. I dont even recognize some of the subtle ways I shame myself like you wrote above. My inner critic has a very polite way of being a jerk to me it seems. I think my inner parent needs to be assertively empathetically corrective with this kind of subtle shaming because it is so pervasive in my thinking. I have been trying to lately to see that hurt child in me and telling him either in my head or sometimes even out loud that “I got your back no matter what, I will take of you” my hope is that by visualizing my hurt inner child everytime I’m in pain i can eventually grow that empathy to include all of my selves including my present self.