Dear anita,

you are right, you did specify that in some contexts he was a good person and as a parent, he was a bad person. I am just worried that I will fall into thinking in black and white terms again, which I would like to overcome. The words “good person” / “bad person” worry me somehow (I realize that I used them myself). It is too much of a dichotomy and it worries me.

I am trying to learn to see the world in more complex terms, trying to be more open and compassionate. Maybe I just worry that I will also be put in the category of “bad person”… So these words scare me.

It worries me to talk about the past, to talk badly about others. Once my old therapist asked me: “are you trying to be a saint”? Maybe I should accept the negative sides of myself, my flaws, my weaknesses. And then the shame will stop. Or become a healthy shame. Feeling shameful for behaving badly, but also forgiving myself for my mistakes and then move on. I don’t want to carry it around and then give it to others.

You are right that the shame started in my childhood. I remember feeling that I would never amount to anything in life. That no man could ever love me or like me. That must have come from somewhere. And I remember some of the words my father used, how he looked at me with a hard face and sometimes hit me. That there was very little understanding for me. And it is sad.

I understand and accept that you no longer want to talk about my childhood. You of course also don’t have to address anything about my parents that I wrote above. But it helped me to write it out for myself, to understand better. I am watching videos about toxic shame at the moment and it helps to understand. I think it is the root of my problems. The shame, the feeling of being nothing, worthless. The feeling of being bad. These problems are deeply rooted in me and I need a lot of time to understand.

Thank you that you went through my threads again yesterday and put together your post. It must have taken a long time!