Janet,
that I feel I don't DESERVE to belong. And that bit DEFINITELY comes from my FOO (NMum, almost exclusively).
Ok, good, you have identified a major source of this feeling: You feel you don't deserve it. To me, when we feel we don't DESERVE things, the source sounds like toxic foo shame. I think your NM conveyed the negative message to you that you were/are 'a bad little girl & you don't deserve ANYTHING'! This negative message caused you to feel shamed.
Perhaps do some work on this shame. I love John Bradshaw. I'm going to paste some stuff I wrote about shame in another thread:
Here's some thoughts about unhealthy toxic shame based on books I read by John Bradshaw: Eventually,you will see that it is not your shame, but rather someone placed the shame on you. It's someone else's shame (most likely your parents' shame because we are not born with shame; someone has to place shame on us). So, people projected shame upon us and we absorbed the shame like a sponge and consequently, we mistakenly believed that it is our inherent shame, but it's not. Feeling shame is carrying someone else's emotional baggage. Unfortunately, this shame is handed down from one generation to the next and it's so old, no one really knows where it originated. It's like free floating shame.
But I do hate having to justify it to others, just the same. It's like when I tell people that I have NC with my mother.
Janet, you do NOT have to justify any of YOUR PERSONAL CHOICES TO ANYONE OTHER THAN YOURSELF. I suppose this is the essence of what it means to validate ourselves and not seek validation from other people. As children, we were under the thumb, the servitude of our N parents and so we could never validate ourselves. In order to survive, we could only be validated by our N parents.
Problem is that now we are adults and we have the power to validate our selves, but the N damage has stolen our ability to validate ourselves. So, we need to re-claim our ability & power to self validate and we must chuck out our automatic reaction to seek validation from other poeple or groups.
Id do whatever you wanted, every time. I have trouble doing what Ami is struggling with - nurturing myself (although I'm working on it
Janet, it's sooo good that you are aware of this, because I think awareness is half the battle. Yes, keep working on it.
Nurturing ourselves: This is probably one of the BEST things we can do in life, because if we don't nurture ourselves, we starve ourselves almost to the point that there is no more self left. The self vanishes. Wow, Janet, funny connection: I recall you had an eating disorder & I am connecting lack of self nurture with eating disorders: I think they both can kill us, spiritually &/or physically.
I do tend to feel that groups 'push me away' when it might be that I don't 'push myself in'.
Janet, I feel this way too, but as I feel this, I ask myself (redundantly): Is this an issue of not validaing myself & seeking external validation from others? If I want to join a group, then I can't let fear & shame prevent me from taking action to join. If the group rejects me, well, that is part of life and, then ask myself: Did I do something to cuz the group/person to reject me (own my responsibilty) and/or is the group/person Nish?
And, I'd ask myslf: have I worked on giving myself (self nurture!!) enough POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS (replace negative foo messages w/ positive affirmations), so that if I am REJECTED, I know I'm not destroyed, I can live & still be happy, whether or not I find a group/person I like because the UNIVERSE is loving & accepting of me & I am part of the universe? (these are positive self affirmations which have replaced the old negative foo messages) This last part is also a bit of zen thinking.
Ami, thank you for your kind words.
Love,
sally
