Dear Sadlyconfused:

You are very welcome! “Would you mind sharing how you incorporated CBT into your day to day life? For instance, would you sit down for an allotted time each day to work through the exercises?“- I don’t sit down with the CBT workbook or CBT forms and do the exercises. I do the exercises mentally. I will give you an example  of my most recent CBT mental exercise. It happened when I read the first sentence of your second recent post: “Hi Tee, thanks very much for your reply”. A thought occurred to me: Sadlyconfused didn’t thank me very much did she?  There was hurt and anger accompanying the thought. Next, I thought to myself: oh, this is just me afraid that I am less valued than others, hurt and angry about being treated as LESS THAN. Next, I went back to the post you addressed to me and was pleased that you thanked me “very much” as well. I am aware of my tendency to feel or believe that I am treated as less-than others, aware of my intense and prolonged anger over it growing up… and onward, and so, I no longer assume without checking: I look for the objective reality. *if you didn’t thank me VERY much as well, it wouldn’t have necessarily meant that you value me less: most people are not that careful with their language.

Another thing about this example: a voice in my head says: someone will take advantage of me sharing this and make fun of me for it, saying to me something like: how petty of you, anita! how stupid.. – which gives me the opportunity to do my next CBT mental exercise: I pause and become aware of the fear, fear of being ridiculed, made fun of, shamed, and how much I suffered from this and for so long.. Next, I feel empathy for myself as I think: there is no shame in being hypervigilant to being treated as less-than, when this was my experience growing up and for so long! If anyone ridicules me for this.. they don’t have much of a heart, do they?  Following this latest thought, I no longer feel (for the moment) fear of being ridiculed. I mean, it may happen that I will be ridiculed, but the shame in such a possibility is gone because… I will not be valuing someone who will ridicule me over this, and perhaps.. over any other thing.

This latest exercise made me aware that the fear was not about being ridiculed but about feeling shame, it is the very painful feeling of shame that I fear.

* I was impressed by the similarities between your father and my mother: (1) my mother too hit me “not bad enough to leave a mark and incriminate (her)“. She even told me that one time that I remember, when she hit me: “do you think that I am that stupid as to leave a mark on you?”, (2) my mother too did the following: “recording some perceived slight against (her). and finding a way to punish me via humiliation months down the line“- there were many, many perceived, untrue slights that she accused me of. Each humiliation session was very long and very elaborate, (3) my mother too repeatedly “would play the victim and pretend that I was uncontrollable and rebellious, when the reality was that I was a quiet, well-meaning girl“- she accused me of meaning to hurt her by saying this and doing that, when it was not at all the truth, I was not evil-meaning and of course, I had no intention of inviting her abuse, (4) I too was afraid of my mother “creating a scene“- she created lots of scenes, very dramatic, scary scenes.

“The first time I had truly felt safe in years was when the pandemic happened and we were forced to stay home for months as it meant that my father couldn’t turn up out of the blue and harass me… I think it was only with feeling safe that I could really reflect on how my life looked in the present moment rather than being in fight or flight constantly“- I’ve been living continents and oceans away from my mother and yet, I am not quite sure that I am safe from her. It is strange.. how the fear never really goes away, not altogether.

anita