Hi all and thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights with me. Life is intense right now (working, teething baby, stuff happening - good but buuuusy) and I wish I could post more frequently but it seems not to be in the cards for a while.
Finding Peace - thanks for brandishing your staff at that fool poster I described! I didn't think it was too forceful at all. Thanks! He was just a person who didn't get what I was saying at all and was not very diplomatic. He spent most of his time on that board rationalizing how it could be right in some circumstances to have an affair and yet still be a good person doing the right thing somehow. Pfffft! So you see, he was someone with issues on the other side of the see saw regarding the Golden Rule - treating himself indulgently at the expense of others. Hmm, not important but illustrative of what I'm trying to say about the balance of treating ourselves and others both well.
And thank you so much for your kind words on my writing! They mean SO much to me! You are lovely.
Lise (as all of us too!) might feel she must insist upon punishing herself, but I bet if she saw someone else punishing themselves in the same way - she would intervene compassionately at once and it would distress her. We recognize the wrongness of it. Also if you saw someone treating another individual the way you and I treat ourselves - if it was right out there where you could see it as an interaction between 2 beings - it would be obviously wrong, I think.
We treat ourselves in harsh ways because we were taught to do so. We were taught wrong.
I think the main way I treat myself ill is the same way I was taught to. My dad always dismissed what I said as if it was mere twittering of birds and treated everything about me as either worthless, ornamental or just foolish. By no means is this in any way comparable to much of the abusiveness I have read about here, but well - that's the size and shape of my damage and it is not fully healed. The best I can say so far is that there is a lessening of internal oppression and I have been feeling good about myself and feeling good about feeling good about myself too.
Also I realized just recently that a lot of the things my dad indicated to me were worthless about me - such as writing (ahhh I can hear his voice echoing the word patronizingly, sarcastically in my ear) - are things he can't even do. Of course sometimes he would just excuse himself from any involvement in my 'issues' by saying "I don't know anything about that." He was indifferent to me. He has been so for many years, except that he is not indifferent to me when I fail to gratify him - then he is angry.
Whatever, we all know how that goes.
Leah, I just read your 'what and why' topic and feel so much for you and all you have gone though. You have endured great cruelty and callousness and deserve much loving care, and in the short term - a nice new hair cut!
changing you are a sweetpea I think. I was thinking, with some outrage, about how much you have given to others and how little received. Imo, it would be lovely to see you receive bounteously. To some extent I can see a comparable dynamic at work in me to give to unworthy recipients, but I think you are the greater spirit there. I have gone rounds with my dad many times - I'm sharp tongued and have many fruitless arguments in my past. The last dysfunctional incident with my dad was when I came to visit and stayed to clean and browbeat him about hiring household assistance (and asked him pointedly why he was holding on to 5 year old clothing and whatnot catalogs) and he threw me out with great umbrage and gave me a full on cold shoulder for the next... year or so. Anyway, I feel compelled to confess I have not exactly been a
bystander on Enmeshment Avenue.
Coming back to the point since I am editing this whole post right after posting it (lol!), I think that at least between my H and me - when we say "Be kind to yourself" we are not talking in general - we are saying it specifically to address something we see the other person doing
right now. I see him being harsh on himself and I say 'be kind to yourself. You are judging yourself unfairly harshly' and on from there to address the specifics. And he does the same for me. So I guess I don't see the remark as being a general one or a cop out. To me it is a specific response to draw attention to specific behavior happening right now that we can see happening. I just know when my H berates himself out loud that he probably has said the same thing to himself silently millions of times, but no one was there to intervene in that negative script. If he says it out loud then I am able to be that voice that breaks into the negative script and draw more awareness and present attention to how he is treating himself and also offer alternative interpretations. kwim.
