Jane, you "are" friendly and capable. But you experienced a "crisis" that really affected your confidence. You have had things take place that you had not been prepared for that even invaded your personal boundaries so that is enough to mess up the "shoes" you had all lined up to where you had been privately slipping into certain ones that fit for whatever you were going to do. Now, you are dealing with missing shoes and trying to rebuild that, however as you do that you are seeing things about the old shoes you had slipped into that didn't quite "fit" the way you had thought they did.

When I talked about your mother? Well, she has her own shoes that she has designed to fit her, she "just" slips into them and doesn't really "know" that these shoes are often offensive and upsetting to others. This is the "just" that other people talk about whenever they address others with problems or concerns. It is like having a car where you get to "just" know where everything is, you learn where all the different buttons are and it becomes a "just" every time you get into the car and go anywhere. Most people become "used to" who they are and develop their sense of self with "auto" opinions and responses and they are often not "consciously" aware of some of their "auto" opinions and responses that can actually be "unhealthy", however, because they appear confident and strong minded, they can get others to respond to them in ways that make them feel empowered. For example, when your mother criticizes your dishes and tells you they are not good enough and you should have dishes "she" thinks are better, she is used to others responding to her with apologies and agreement so she feels justified in thinking "she" knows best. The truth is that your mother doesn't "see" others and allow for their personal choices, she only sees "her own" ideas of what things "should be". You and your sister have grown up with that and when your mother comes to visit either of you it is just as though she is coming to your room when you grew up in her home and insists you have your room cleaned and organized to "her" approval. Your environment in her home was "all about her" and you were deeply conditioned to believe in following along with that. You were trained to be "dutiful" and unfortunately, that happens way too much.

Your core shoes are all about being "dutiful", have you noticed that? A dutiful wife, a dutiful mother, a dutiful employee, a dutiful student and if you struggle with these challenges you begin to feel "inadequate and uneasy". And yes, there can be quite a bit of anger about that too. Being dutiful is always about "others" and what you have found is that when "you" needed someone to actually "care for and help you", that was not there for you. If we are hard core programmed to feel safe as long as we are dutiful and then a crisis happens that challenges that deep core sense of "dutiful safeness", that can become very hard because a dutiful person tends to surround themselves with others that appreciate them because they are dutiful.

When your ex husband became ill, you were needed to be "dutiful" and that was hard for you because you had needs and fears too. Your ex husband got so he was more and more demanding and to a point where he was actually abusing your "sense of being dutiful" to him. That relationship got so bad for you that you could no longer maintain it and quite honestly you did the right thing by deciding to disconnect. Sure he eventually found someone else that was willing to be dutiful to him and he was doing better so it was manageable, however, the reality is the same, someone is playing a dutiful role in that relationship and it could get so there may be a time where that can again get overwhelming.

Often we do not realize our deep core Jane, most people build their lives around a core they are not totally "aware" of. When something "traumatic" takes place or a "crisis" happens a person can become so deeply rattled and confused and often they cannot even verbalize the way their core has been so deeply affected. This has nothing to do with true worthiness of intellect either,however it does feel like it has something to do with that.

What "therapy" can help a person do, if the therapist has an understanding of the challenge, is it can help us discover our core issues. Once we get to understand that better, we begin the journey of slowly building new and healthier skills, and that really does take time. On that journey will be a mourning about whatever "our" needs were that were not met, there will be "anger" about how much we did give that was not appreciated, and we start to see things about people we had not really realized before too. Some of these challenges take place in a lot of people as they get older and start to see things they just had not seen in their past, hence that saying, "If I knew then what I know now" is often uttered. And what you need to slowly learn to accept is "what is just about being human" and that everyone will have certain amounts of "blindness" to them.

You don't have to be "dutiful" anymore either Jane, you actually "can" learn to slowly accept that you were at times, but, you do not have to "wear those old shoes" anymore and you can slowly get so you accept that more emotionally too. CBT and DBT are helpful therapies for that transformation too.

Jane, you "are" still a warm and caring person and you can even be very forgiving, and those qualities are good ones. You don't have to be "dutiful" the way you were though anymore and you can learn not to feel those old "toxic" duties so emotionally anymore gradually too. You can learn to develop deep "shoes" you can put on to where if your mother makes certain toxic comments, you can see them, but you don't have to allow them to have the same emotional impact on you anymore. I am just using that as an example here. "Dutiful" can become something much more positive to you now and you can learn to slowly build strong wiring in your brain as you learn to let go of and adapt new to replace.

When you go back to school, you need to do that "for you" and learn to let go of the old
"dutiful" self where you tended to be over concerned about how you needed to please and be dutiful to others. The more you adapt to that, the less having "others" around you will bother you. You are "gaining" in a way many people do not understand, that is ok, it is high time people began to understand it better, and as you work through it, you will be able to help others learn to do the same. Funny thing is, that is actually what we are originally designed to do, it is a big part of our existentialism as a species.

OE