One of the biggest limiting beliefs that I’ve had is the idea that I should rely on the outer environment to define me.
The idea of defining myself, for myself, has seemed an impossibility for me.
Maybe the logic was, “I can’t trust myself. My opinion is meaningless, especially when it comes to my own self.”
I felt I could only rely on other people, or on the outside world in general, as an accurate and meaningful measure of my worth.
So I spent my life running around trying to satisfy everybody else’s ideas of who I was supposed to be.
Which was an impossible task–everyone had a different plan for me, and satisfying one would inevitably upset another.
I came to understand that on some level, but I still felt compelled to keep going with it anyway (only now feeling trapped and full of despair).
Every comment, criticism or offhand remark was seized upon and picked apart for clues to my identity.
“Am I in here somewhere?” I wondered as I ruminated on every word.
“Am I okay yet?” was the even more desperate and tragic subtext below it all.
“Am I a worthwhile human being yet? Do I deserve to exist now? How about now? Now??”
—
It breaks my heart to look at this, and admit how I have been.
It truly is sad that I was living like this for so long.
It’s no wonder I was so miserable. Of course. Anyone would be.
I also have compassion for myself. I see exactly how I came to be this way, and I understand.
The abuse within my family was so relentless, severe and specifically targeted to keep me from having any sense of self.
Especially when younger, it was safer to remain amorphous, to just not have a self, to be mutable enough to quickly contort myself into whatever anyone else demanded.
The sooner I abandoned myself, the sooner the shame and humiliation would subside. Just give in, agree–it’s much easier that way.
I still remember the words. “Oh, well! Look at you!” and then as an aside to another family member, ”Who does she think she is??”
There were plenty of punishments for when I was bad, but the worst were the humiliations for being “too good.”
Like when my mom would hear all the good reports about me at parent-teacher conferences, she would attack, and accuse, and humiliate me.
She would say say the teacher must be stupid, because you’re fooling her… or, that it was just more evidence of my guilt; I’m lying to this poor woman, trying to fool her into believing I’m something I’m not.
“If only she knew what you were really like at home–you’re like the devil!”
This created a horrifying double bind by which I had to live: I had to be good, I had to try to be perfect to be acceptable and redeem myself; but I could NOT be good, as it then became proof of my badness, showing how manipulative and deceptive I truly was.
Any action or inaction on my part became proof of my inherent unworthiness. It was all proof of how I was undeserving, bad, a lost cause, the devil.
