Dear Lily Margarette:

I wrote to you on the first page of this thread: “Self-help is a process of sharing common experiences, giving and getting help”. I am willing to share with you about my life experience which has similarities to yours, if you are interested. Please let me know if you are.

I want to add to my recent post to you a few clarifications and elaborations:

1) You shared: “I never felt 2nd place as a child. I came from a very loving, supportive family“. And I wrote to you: “it reads like a core belief from childhood…  that you are 2nd, or 3rd best, down the pecking order. If you, at times, felt safe and fully loved and supported as a child, then it may be that the trade-in to that feeling was to accept being down the pecking order within your family of origin… Someone in your childhood terribly disrespected you, brushing your feelings aside” –

– it is also possible that you were treated fine by your parents and brothers but that any one of your parents or the whole family (parents and three children) was treated poorly, as 2nd best, etc. by others, extended family members or society at large, for being poor perhaps. And because you felt great empathy for your parents, and/or you felt a part of your family, you took on this core belief that you too (wherever you are and forevermore) are treated as one down the pecking order

2) It is possible that in the sentence, “I came from a very loving, supportive family“, you exaggerated the loving and supportive part for the purpose of showing how in comparison, your husband came from a very unloving, unsupportive family.

3) Your original post was about a Christmas card received without your name mentioned on it. I assume that you received Christmas cards where your name was mentioned, but you didn’t mention the latter because we tend to focus on evidence that supports of our core beliefs and dismiss evidence that does not support of our core beliefs: you focused on the one card where your name was not mentioned and dismissed (did not mention) the other cards.

4) In your second post, you wrote: “I think the thing that’s really irritated me (I’m not ‘angry’) is that…” – reads to me that you are aware (and perhaps you were told repeatedly), that you are frequently angry at people (for perceived insults), so you deny feeling angry and you choose a weaker form of anger for yourself- an irritation.

If I don’t read back from you, I hope that you make therapy happen for you, somehow, and I wish you well.

anita