Well Alisha, that is a good question and I know that I put a lot of "demands" on myself for many years and never really knew why.

For me, it went back to being upset about things not being "safe" growing up, only I never realized that. When things got bad I would clean my room and in my marriage I kept fixing up my home and keeping it "clean". I also stressed when company came, everything had to look clean and perfect. I can trace that back to playing with my older sister, we played dolls and made up their houses because we didn't have "doll houses". She always made me feel that whatever I created was not as good as what she created.

Plus whenever my grandmother came to visit my mother would get frantic and we would run around the house cleaning everything and dusting because our grandmother inspected the home and would make remarks of disgust if things were not clean.

When we are born our subconscious mind is pretty much a clean slate and it picks up messages while we are growing up. We can form a deep sense or lack of self esteem from the messages we receive from our mothers and siblings that we don't even realize.

Most parents are "ignorant" about this and think their children just grow up and are who they are. They simply don't realize that their children pick up so many things from "them and how they treat the child and behave in the home themselves".

If you figure out the "negetive messages you have in your subconscious" that brings out feelings of being inadequate and uncertain, you can "fix" that and realize that you don't have to "accept" those messages and often the people (parents) you got them from are just "ignorant" in how to properly raise a child.

It has nothing to do with being "unworthy of love or being an uworthy person" either, and by allowing yourself to step outside of "self punishment from parental errors" to a different way of "knowing the truth" you can begin to work on "correcting yourself" slowly and putting in some more "positive ways of thinking".

Alisha, it was good that you learned about how to "understand" the motivation behind your Anorexia.

By the way your mother tends to "burst your bubble" and criticize you, it sounds like she made some parental errors and is just another ignorant mother, not your fault, and never means you are not worthy.
And it doesn't mean she doesn't love you either, it is that she is "unaware" of how she can "hurt you".

Open Eyes