Quote:
Originally Posted by seesaw
I know that quote, and I try to live by it. I had to remove that family from FB because I couldn't post without feeling like someone was judging me, so I just said, screw this, it's my life, it's my social media, I shouldn't have to feel like a criminal when I post. So I removed them. And I feel a lot better from that.
I really try not to care what they think, and I do positive self talk all the time to reinforce it, but I'm not quite there yet. With other people, I can do it easily, ignore their opinions, etc, but the voice of my inner critic is the voice of my asshole father, so it's really hard to get rid of that one. When I was at a residential treatment facility we did a lot of work on taming that inner critic, but it can be so tough.
How did you get to the point where you stopped caring what they thought? How long did it take to train your brain to ignore them?
Seesaw
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I stopped caring what my family and other former fair-weathered-friends think of me, when I finally accepted myself 100% flaws and all. Now, if someone trash talks me and someone tells me, "ooh Ceilpur, so-and-so said this about you, what do you think?," I just nodd and say, "what other people think of me is none of my business." And I shrug it off. It's very liberating.
Relationships or friendships are not supposed to be one-sided. One person can't do all the work; extending social invitations, being a support system. Both people involved have to carry equal weight. If my extended cousins really cared about me, they'd call me. They'd email. They'd extend social invites. But, they never have. So, I wrote them off as not important, esp. when I lived in the same city as all of the cousins on my mom's side of the family.
I think self-acceptance is necessary and everyone comes to it, in their own time. Those who don't accept themselves, project their flaws on to other people and abuse those people (manipulate them too), so that they don't have to be confronted with the emotional pain of accepting your own flaws and fixing them yourself. People who abuse others, have no sense of self or they wouldn't abuse others. They are walking time-bombs. They are walking zombies, lacking an internal moral compass. They lack the ability to empathize, to take responsibility and hold themselves accountable for their own actions, because that's the role their victims fulfill for them.
I'm still depressed because I am not on the life path I want to be on. But I'm aware that I need to take steps to get off the wrong path, and back on the right path. And I'm doing it without the support of my extended family, who have never been there for me in the past when I needed their support.