Quote:
Originally Posted by HazelGirl
For example, you may not be able to stand up to someone because you were harmed as a child for asserting yourself. Your choices as an adult are now limited through no fault of your own. But it's your responsibility to work towards reclaiming those choices.
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Every post I read today touches something in me.
I was told by a "friend" today that I was the perfect child, complacent to the point that as a middle-aged woman I still have no voice.
She said it is my choice to continue to live this way because I haven't made a choice to live differently. She also said she would wish a plague of hemorrhoids upon me every time I say something negative about myself, because the only person who can raise my self esteem is me. Basically tough love, stop bellyaching until you grow a pair and make changes.
It's hard and painful and dizzying and somehow terrifying, for me to stand up for myself. The reward is not worth the cost, at this point. She said I'm doing it wrong, that I have to learn how to stand up TO myself before worrying about standing up FOR myself.
But still for someone with a victim mentality (which isn't healed up and gone away) the idea of choice is just another way to say I screwed up again.
Refusing to make a choice is the same as making a choice to do nothing.