Dear Inky:

Thank you for your answers. I agree of course with the above #1 and 2 and will add to it that we are literally bred in the bone as you put it, to please our parent/ primary care taker. When a mother (or a father) is hard on the child, beating him up verbally, let’s say,the child is … bred in the bone to take the parent’s side and be hard on himself so “shape up” and please the parent, be accepted by the parent. Because in the wild it is a death sentence for a young mammal to be abandoned by its mother. So this is why I have been hard on myself, to please my mother being hard on me. This is how this pattern originated.

Regarding #6; Focus as a form of boundaries, you wrote. I like the word BOUNDARIES in this context. Forming boundaries around our thinking.

* Jack: will come back to you.

anita