insecurity

[Write]

having worked my way through so much stuff this past couple of years, mostly i feel really good, and life is going well again.

But some days ( yesterday was one ) I for no apparent reason just feel deflated, and all the old negative thoughts come rushing back.
Is this just insecurity, does everyone have these days?

[c.j.]

I think everyone does have those days, unless they are extremely lucky, not just people with big issues!
Its an ongoing battle I reckon, but the stronger you get the easier it gets to bounce back I'd imagine, with time.

[c.j.]

I'm also reminded of the way of thinking that says that the greater the battle you have to overcome, the stronger you become through that experience, so the easier you find it to handle things, compaired to people who have had *less* to deal with. I'm not exactly sure though.....hmmm....

[Write]

Thanks.
Its true, and I am very strong, very often, and often confident and think ok, I've got it together now.

You said elsewhere you need to be liked by everybody c.j.
I was like that when I was younger, wanted to be 'all things to all people'.
Took me years to work out that it was better to look for the people who actually liked who I am rather than plugging away at people who, for their own reasons, don't.
Finding affirming people in your life is essential.

[rosencrantz]

Hello write - I'm so pleased to see you here.  I wanted to share that I have strong links with the same area you were discussing with Portia - small world and all that!  It must be the centre of all narcissistic misery in the British Isles!!!  And what intrepid travellers we are, too!!

I'm never the same two days running!!  I blame it on the hormones!!!  But anything can get me enthusiastic or dampen everything - maybe a line in a book or something somebody says just triggers off something and I don't even know what it is.  

If you can follow it back and work out just the moment when things changed, it might give you some clues.  

But also...I think we're on a merry go round of learning and change.  I really felt despair last year when I found myself YET AGAIN going through all this horrible stuff.  I've worked soooo hard for most of the past 30 years on understanding me, understanding other people, understanding everything you could possibly think of that could possibly be a problem.

Of course, I never knew that I hadn't found the SOURCE of it all - which was a  mother with NPD.  It was like starting all over again but this time I finally had a guidebook and knew what I was dealing with. Un-believable!!!

It's shaken my confidence big time so I've still plenty of sorting out to do.  I seem to be quite scared of the big, bad world out there now - I'm much more conscious of how theatening it can be.  Does that make sense?  No!  I feel much stronger than I've ever been - and yet I feel a complete 'nervous wreck' and avoid meeting new people like the plague.  (Go figure!!).    

The reality is that I see a few people on a regular basis and don't appear to be a nervous wreck at all.   I suppose they are people I don't mind being 'myself' with - they know about my circumstances and if I'm tearful or self-absorbed trying to deal with all this, I know they don't mind. With anybody else I feel like saying 'excuse me for not being myself, I'm not always like this'  I guess I've run out of my previously energetic 'public persona'  Sigh.  I suppose the word is 'depressed'.  What a roundabout way to work that one out!!  

Trouble is, put me amongst people and I immediately start to bubble.  That's lethal - can you imagine going to the doctor's and saying 'I need something for depression' when your eyes are shining and you're full of laughter (even tho ten minutes earlier you were feeling suicidal)! I can hardly believe myself!  And, anyway, my mother was always telling me as a teenager that I was 'copying' her.  Groan!!!  She meant that I looked or was acting depressed.  So when I'm depressed, I'm not depressed.    (Therein madness lies!)

They say that we're on an ever upward spiral of change so the learning never stops.  Yuk!

R