Dear ginn:

Thank you for understanding my concern. My concern is born out of how guilty I used to feel about my mother (an unjustified guilt), a guilt that stood in the way of my healing and caused me to waste away so much of my life.

“It’s just my concern… (that) blaming him for everything…  I know how much it hurts my father and me“- I understand your concern: if he knows that you blame him, he will hurt, and if he hurts, you will hurt because you love him.

I assign this definition to the verb to blame: to assign responsibility for a wrongdoing. I know from very personal experience that assigning responsibility correctly is necessary for mental health.

Here are my suggestions: (1) Don’t blame him for “everything“, only for this or that specific wrongdoing that he really is guilty of, (2) You don’t have to express to him that you blame him for anything at all, do you? Instead, when he harshly criticizes you next, tell him kindly what about his criticism is harsh, and explain to him that harsh criticism does the opposite of what he intends it to do. Maybe he will listen to you.

anita

How are you, ginn?

anita

Dear ginn:

Good to read back from you, you are welcome, thank you and virtual hugs from me to you! It’s okay for you to respond whenever you want, no time restrictions.

“Still not much has changed” – real and lasting changes take a lot of time and effort, so don’t be discouraged, and post here any time you would like my input!

anita

Dear Ginn:

“Recently, I’ve been having some problems at work. When the emotions hit me, I felt stupid and helpless. I started subconsciously slapping myself as a punishment. I wanted to know what was wrong with me” –

– you experienced some difficulty at work, next a part of you criticized the rest of you, telling you: you are stupid and helpless! What’s wrong with you???  Another part of you felt that you deserved the criticism and you punished yourself.

“Because when I was a kid, my parents used to punish me whenever I did something wrong” – the part of you that criticized you is the mental representative of your parents (aka inner critic). The other part of you is the child that you used to be, the child who believed, and still believes, that her parents are always right (aka inner child).

“So, I slapped myself to make myself feel better when I did something wrong?” – you punished the part of you that allegedly did wrong, so that from now on, she will do right!

Problem is that the criticism was wrong, not you!

“I thought I was getting better mentally, but it actually seemed to be getting worse” – to get better, you need to understand that much of the time, your parents criticized you unfairly, that they were wrong, not you! For as long as you believe that their criticism was always right and you were always wrong, their mental representative will keep criticizing you and you will keep punishing yourself.

This “repeated pattern” of unfair criticism and punishment is what’s keeping you “stuck” (words taken from the title of your thread).

Earlier in your thread, you wrote: “I always thought that if my parents or someone else spoke to me in a gentle voice it would make me weaker… And that my father was right and that he should be strict with me to make me stronger” – you need a gentle inner critic. A strict inner critic is making you weak and stuck. A gentle inner critic will make you strong and free!

When I say that your parents unfairly criticized you, I mean that they claimed you made mistakes when you did not make mistakes. For example, you wrote earlier: “When I cried because I was stressed about small things, he would criticise me that why I was being so weak” – crying was not a mistake, it was simply an expression of emotion.

Let’s look at an example where you criticized yourself unfairly: “I ran away from piano exam when I was twelve because I don’t want to fail it and be embarrassed of myself. So, I lied to my parents that I wanted to focus on my school… I hate myself because I wasn’t honest with my parents” – when a child lies to her parents, it is not a good situation, but it is not a mistake on the part of the child when the parents are in the habit of punishing the child for telling the truth, truth that they don’t want to hear. When parents punish a child for telling the truth, it is not a mistake to lie to them. It is instead, a way to avoid unfair punishment.

I am not saying that you never make mistakes, I am sure that you do, but you need to (1) Be able to tell the difference between a real mistake, and what is NOT a mistake, (2) Stop punishing yourself and instead, correct the real mistakes that you do.

anita