Heya,

For a long time now, I've really been abusing myself, not taking care of myself, personal hygiene, not eating properly, getting enough sleep nor exercise, have hardly any social life..

I feel I've identified that (a lot of) my disregard for myself comes from blaming myself for having been emotionally abandoned by my parents. They were also abusive when I was growing up.

I've felt that, surely, they wouldn't have been like this had I not been somehow fundamentally awful and bad, unlovable! Intellectually, I realise this cannot be true as they 'hated' me even before I was born - my dad never wanted children and my mother only wanted someone like a porcelain doll that she could dress up and mould into what she wanted them to be, not to know them for who they were. I realise there was nothing I could have been or done to make them hate me - I was innocent in that sense - but this realisation has never reached my emotional 'truth' for some reason.

I believe it'd help me to hear it from someone else that what my parents did was not my fault. I've sometimes wondered why I need to hear these things from others when I already 'know' them, and my therapist says it's because 'that's what we humans are like' - social beings who need that connection. So, if anyone out there could help me with this, I cannot even tell you how much I'd appreciate it

All the best!