I'll look into the work throughs. I am working with a therapist, and her opinion is that it's surprising I have any self-esteem at all. For some reason, a lot of people were very emotionally invested in the idea that I don't really have any smarts where it "counts," and that there is something wrong with me. They played "identified patient" with me, is what my therapist says.

To give you a good idea of the dynamic, a former husband of mine was on the low end of normal intelligence. He could live on his own, but there were some life skills he just didn't have, and he needed to be watched over and checked up on. I wonder how much of those life skills he actually could have learned, if anyone had taken the time to teach him. In a lot of ways he was in the same boat I'm in, underestimated. They didn't think he could learn to XYZ, so they they didn't bother trying to teach him, and just did XYZ for him. Then when he got to be 40-some years old and still didn't know how to XYZ, that was their "proof" that he needs their help. It happens all the time in families where somebody has a mild disability.

Including mine, apparently. Because my mother was convinced that he was just the PERFECT husband for me. This man, who could barely function on his own, and acted like an overgrown eight-year-old. Perfect husband for me. Because she saw me as on the same level. Which is why I did too, or else I wouldn't have married him. He's a sweetheart, nothing bad about him, but he's not husband material. And I am NOT on the same level of functioning as he is, even though at the time I thought I was. Why did I think so? Because that's how I was treated.