For me the result of being raised by a bipolar & alcoholic mother & alcoholic, unfeeling father is that I have all the symptoms people have listed above & I am constantly "testing" my husband to see if he will really stay with me.

It's a sick situation that I am trying to control. I would do some outrageous thing & see if he stuck around. Yeah, he did, so I would create another crisis & see what would happen. Still here. Been married 34 years. I also have bipolar so that does certainly complicate my compulsion to "test" all the time.

Also, my mother committed suicide. She was physically a very beautiful woman & that is all my father would ever say about her--that she was very beautiful. He told me she killed her self because she was losing her looks. I thought that was such a wrong attitude, but you know what?

I've put on weight with my psych meds & my husband said he no longer found me sexually attractive due to that & I overdosed that night!! I mean, talk about internalizing my father's beliefs & then having my husband say that meant I had no worth at all so I tried to kill myself. Been 1 1/2 years & still having trouble getting over it & the emotional pain that one remark has brought on me.

Basically, I think there is a core feeling of being OK that is lacking. Always looking to other people for confirmation that I am OK & if I don't get it, I am devastated as it confirms my own beliefs that I am really a pretty worthless person--sometimes thinking why the heck am I even here?--Suzy