I take everything personally and expect the worst

[Gaining Strength]

This issue about taking everything personally is closely tied with a powerful battle I have against expecting the worst, and expecting rejection.

I am starting this thread without a clear vision of what I am going to put here but I know exactly what I expect the outcome to be.  This is the refuse pile where I will leave the lies that chose to believe about myself.

Step by step I am going to pay attention to the shame I feel about everyday items significant and insignificant.  Once I identify how I feel about myself I will be able to change it.  Right now it is as close to me as the air I breath and it is difficult to distinguish the lies from the truth.

For instance:  this afternoon I left to go pick up my son - there was an AT&T truck in my driveway parked right behind my car.  I was in a hurry.  I was angry - no idea why they were here what they are doing, expecting the worst - disconnecting phone - no I just paid the bill - what? I have no idea.  I honked the horn until they came.  I was Not very nice then softened a little.  I took this personally - as though this man parked behind me to make things difficult for me.  Angry - expecting the worst - shamed, worried.

This is obviously minor, more significant issues are more difficult to write about - shame rises with significance.

[sea storm]

Dear SS,

At this point I dont think anything is insignificant. I think that personalizing your moms behaviour is very important. This gets displaced or projected onto everybody else in your world and no wonder. You could not deal with your projections with mom.
AA is good for this.  They say ,"What you do is none of my business".  How true. It is a good thing to start cultivating. I am beavering away at doing this.  It really helps. I realize I didn't trust anyone. I would try to please everybody but didnt trust them. So this helps.

These patterns are so deeply ingrained but I see that your dreams are showing you paths toward freedom for you.

Love,
Seastorm

[Ami]

Dear SS,
 I am glad you shared this. I can relate. I am learning that it was a lie that I was bad. As I see the truth of my parents(very hard),I have more empathy for myself. I confused love with abuse, as many of us do. It is really hard to see the difference when you grew up as we did.
It seems like a life long battle s/times, doesn't it?         Love You SS,   Ami

[Gaining Strength]

Here's another example.  My son recently signed up for summer flag football.  I don't know exactly how teams are selected but either the dad/coaches do it or it is randomly assigned.   Anyway, when we got his assignment I reivewed and found myself analyzing it from the point of view of he was not chosen by this choice coach or that he was put with this uncoordinated child or .... none of which is even reasonable.  It's as though he of all the other children is singled out to be mistreated.  It is such a negative, critical attitude and it comes from being so mistreated in my early years where those type of selections were made for me time after time in my family. I was given the worst seat in the car the worst seat at the dinner table, the smallest portions, always served last, the least appealing bedroom and on and on.  So I developed the habit of assuming that everything that happened to me or mine, outside of my control was done to give me the worst possible choice or the greatest disadvantage.  It is a poisonous mind and always expecting the worst.

[Gaining Strength]

Seastorm

I think that personalizing your moms behaviour is very important. This gets displaced or projected onto everybody else in your world and no wonder. You could not deal with your projections with mom. Thank you Sea Storm.  That is so powerfully poignant.  What a generous perspective!  It is very touching - thank you.

I realize I didn't trust anyone. I would try to please everybody but didnt trust them.  That is it - exactly!!  And how bizarre to try to please people you don't even trust - isn't that weird?  Try to please them as though my being depended on it - in fact it did.  The only way I knew to "be" someone was if I could get attention by trying to please.  That left me very succeptible to being used and taken advantage of and left me with no sense of who "I" was.

Ami

I confused love with abuse, as many of us do. It is really hard to see the difference when you grew up as we did. It is incredibly hard to sort those things out.  How I wish i could have done this earlier.  Though of course i am thankful to understand now how important and possible it is. 

[gratitude28]

I think it's a great idea to keep a list of this type of example - where things seem personal, and they probably aren't.

My son and I went bike riding this week and we passed a man on the sidewalk and said, "Excuse us," and "Thank you," as we passed by him. He had a scowl on his face and looked disgusted. My instinct was to think he didn't like us because I am not pretty and I am not in shape or that he felt we were invading his space, I don't know what... but that it had to do with me. So, I said to my son, I guess we'll nickname him "Chuckles." We had a laugh, but for a brief moment I tried to put the thought in my mind that maybe he was upset over something in his life and was walking it off... or something that had nothing at all to do with me. Fairly likely... but not my instinct to believe.

Really, SS, this thread is a super idea. SS, I am in the same boat with you as far as choices for my family go... I really do the same. My dad is very negative and I think it has just plain sunk in to me. And since I do care about him, his thoughts are sometimes harder for me to shake than my NM's trivial, mean-spirited ones.

Lots of love, SS.
Beth

[Gaining Strength]

I love that Gratitude - that exactly what i do.  Some time ago I  began trying to see things differently but i did n't know who terribly deep these thoughts ran.  Now I do but i think they are even deeper than I know.  That is why i want to dig them out - exorcise them.  We'll see.

[sea storm]

I think thay N mothers isolate their children by inferring that people outside the family are bad and evil. I know my mom could not stand it if I had a friend.  She would say aweful things about them. The message..... Mom is number one.

Divide and conquer. No wonder one feels lonely and does not know how to authentically connect with others.  I am not sure about this but have an inkling.

Another theory is that kids with N mothers have very big radar.  They are on the alert to defend themselves and for good reasong. Ns keep kids under control by saying aweful things about them. I have seen this over and over. They act like they love their kids but think they are bad and evil.  Or something like that. Anyway there is no way that they are going to shower praise on their kids and so the kids are on a starvation diet of lack of emotional nourishment.

Sea

[Gaining Strength]

I think thay N mothers isolate their children by inferring that people outside the family are bad and evil. I know my mom could not stand it if I had a friend. OMG - I did not really get this for a long, long time.  Partly because growing up the only people I was allowed to be friends with were people whose parents were friends with my parents.  In high school, (I went to a small private girls school which my grandfather had been on the board for many years and my mother was on the board when i was there) I became friends with a student who probably was a scholarship student. She was smart and a gifted athlete.  My parents hated our friendship.  It was because she was from a lower class.   In college my parents weren't interested in my friends at all.  They didn't know them and therefore weren't interested.  I could not figure this out - for years.  You see they had (and still do) talked about their college friends ad infinitum.  The model was that college friends are important and a good part of your life.  So i knew much about many of their college friends even though I had never met them.  I still do.  I don't think they could name a single one of my college friends.  It was one of the first great befuddlements of my experience with them.  I didn't get it at all.  Now I do.

Another theory is that kids with N mothers have very big radar.  They are on the alert to defend themselves and for good reasong.  That's exactly what I am talking about. 

[sea storm]

I am so moved by this talk we are having.  Kind of blows my mind. Actually, I am crying and feel so sad at the loss of this gift of childhood friends. A pretty poor show for parents, eh? So self centred.

Talking about it is like reclaiming a very precious part of myself that was lost. Thank you.

Sea storm

[gratitude28]

Sea,
Your post is so profound - and so true. I know that most of my thoughts that are nasty (the ones I am also trying to exorcise, SS) are thoughts previously voiced by NM. She has to comment on EVERYONE - either give her approval or a hurtful remark about them. SHe does it even now. It is a way of classifying herself. I used to look around a room and think, "Well, at least I look better than THAT person." I don't do that at all anymore. Now in a room, I try to see something special in each person. Just as I would like for them to see that in me - to see past my physical self.
This is such a helpful thread!!
Love, Beth

[sKePTiKal]

SS:

I still do this, too... but I am making some progress on it. For me, it's the EXPECTATION that all the normal, irritating things that happen in life are meant just to personally make me miserable. It's how N's are, isn't it? That was always somehow, in some mysterious way - my fault. I got blamed. N's always blame someone ELSE for inconviencing them - sometimes just for BEING. It's something I picked up and added to my self from being around my mom - but it's not really me. Just a habit... to change... and under the surface: yes, shame... but also a desire to be important enough that other people will accommodate MY NEEDS and WANTS, for a change.

I know that the car in front of me this morning, going 5 miles below the speed limit, driven by an elderly gentleman isn't some "punishment" directed at me, by the universe. Yes, it means I have to slow down. Yes, that car's in my way and I like to drive faster. But that nice old guy driving his wife to the mall, isn't out to make me late or inconvenience me... he's just being HIM... and he feels safer driving a bit slower than everyone else or isn't in any hurry. He's ALLOWED, you know?

Just because I have a problem feeling not important enough to have my needs & wants addressed - doesn't mean the rest of the universe and the people in it, KNOWS this. When I can let that feeling go - that jumping up & down, "my turn! my turn" insistence - and just be patient, then everything works out just fine. The old guy turned and I got to work 5 minutes EARLY.

[sea storm]

Hmmmmm


A lot of personalizing seems to be about fear.  Yesterday I was with a group a new friends. I was highly keaned to pick up on rejection and evil intents, even the most subtle things.  Part of me knows that body language is very powerful and group dynamics can be complicated.  Who would study group dynamics, anyway???????? Probably someone who is freaked out about being in groups. 

One woman was a former nun and I felt very mixed up about her vibes. She had also been in the army. I asked her which one she did first.  She shot my a hateful look.  It was a garden party and very laid back. But inside I was knashing my teeth and struggling to feel safe. I was drawing with charcoal and she insisted that I draw her dog and then did not like the drawing.  This is common. Unless one draws a person and they look like sophia loren, they feel ripped off or something.
So I keep trying to handly my lack of self esteem.  But there it was. I personalized what everyone was doing. What a thing to do.  At least I could see that, so it is a step in the right direction. I seem to have a gift of seeing the toxic nuances in every meeting.  Is that paranoia?  I think it is just training from a very young age to watch your back.

So I am working on not personalizing. This is very big stuff.  I breathe through the scared times now and dont call them the real thihg as if that is what matters the most. What is WRONG>


Sea storm