Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueMoon6
Its as if I feel...not anxiety...or maybe it is some kind of social anxiety. I feel as if I am not good enough. My friends, who know me and seem to really like me. My fear is that they will see what a mentally ill (not that some of them arent themselves!), flawed, selfish, sick, unlikeable, stupid, unworthy, childhish, and all together awful person I am.
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So....I go on with life, being social and chatty, dressing up, heels and make-up, going out with my friends and even having fun, but with deep feelings of self-hatred driving much of how I behave. And, maybe, that is where the glass of wine comes it. It doesnt take much for me to feel relaxed with some wine because I eat so little, one glass will pretty much do it for me.
I will bring this up in therapy monday. I wrote about it in my journal. And its all connected, I guess, with the bigger picture of growing up in an abusive, invalidatiing environment. But where to go from here? Where and how does it end? How can I just feel its OK to me?
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BlueMoon, I can really relate to what you wrote. Just today I was talking to my therapist about how I got badly triggered in my group therapy this week and how it made me realize how much I still hate myself. Like moonrise, I have a persona that functions in the world to make it seem like I am quite OK, even confident and happy. But I feel like a fake, and I know I am somehow worthless and fundamentally bad. And like you BlueMoon, I sometimes behave in ways that perpetuate the shame underlying the self-hate, as if it is so much a part of my identity that I have to keep it going in order to know who I am. It feels like in order to reverse this self-hatred I have to begin to live in a different universe entirely, not the world I grew up in. No wonder, I guess, that I get so scared. Sometimes it is just plain disorienting when I do get a glimpse of another way of feeling about myself. It also means acknowledging the wrongness of how I was treated, and that means feeling a lot of pain. I can be a big old chicken when it comes to that.
Given the way you describe your having a glass if wine when you go out, it seems almost like a kindness towards yourself, not something to feel embarrassed about. As if you have found a simple way to free yourself from the voices of the past so you can just have some fun with your friends. I think we all deserve that kind of time off.
As for how to feel like it is OK to be you, I can only say that I am still trying to get used to the idea that my therapist really just wants me to be me, and that it is safe to do so in her presence. I think the only way to change this is to be real a bit at a time with safe people and learn that, unlike when we were kids, there will be no dire consequences. Today my T pointed it out to me when I took a small risk with something I said, and had me stop and notice that nothing bad happened as a result. I guess it is paying attention to things like that that may eventually dissolve the self-hatred and shame about being who I really am. Like single drops of water melting a huge salt crystal...