[ECHOES]

(((tree))) A variety of threads here recently are helping me, including your thread about shame.

Wanting love, receiving love, shame...
It's helped me see how I zero in on negative things and why. I zero in on a negative, which often is one tiny bit of a whole that is mostly postive. All I can see is the negative. The positive just disappears, evaporates. I don't get to enjoy the postive. I don't think I can accept it, because of feelings of not deserving and of shame. If I feel it, it triggers an alarm that something is wrong, because I surely don't deserve it. If I take it in, I am taking something that isn't for me, and I feel shame.
If I just stick to the negative (real or imagined), then I can avoid all the other.

Part of a recent session has been replaying in my mind and I didn't know why. I told T about a conversation with someone who described a beautiful afternoon they were having, and they mentioned another person and an explanation of who that person is. I already knew who that other person is, and it bothered me that it was explained to me. So this one tiny bit of the conversation became the whole conversation. The secret agenda (I will insult your intelligence to deliberately hurt you), the negative. That was all I could focus on. T, on the other hand, spoke of the rest of the conversation and how beautiful and meaningful it was and that the person chose to share it with me. I was furious (silently) that she wasn't listening to what I was saying.
Today, I get it. I blind myself by focusing on what I perceive to be negative and purposely hurtful. Protective, yes. But I also am withholding from myself, by not allowing myself to even see it, the warmth and caring that is there also. For me? No, there must be some mistake. Wrong address, I'm sure. Because this is something I don't deserve. Can't be for me.

Thanks to Sannah and Rainbow8 for their posts that also inspired my introspection. All of you inspire me Some posts just hit home and really jab me

[Sannah]

Originally Posted by ECHOES

Wanting love, receiving love, shame...
I don't get to enjoy the postive. I don't think I can accept it, because of feelings of not deserving and of shame.

Good insight Echoes. Did your discover of this change anything about it for you?

[jexa]

Ooooh boy can I relate. Receiving love = shame. It's hard to break out of that mindset, huh? I am glad you were able to see that conversation from a different perspective, ECHOES.

[sunrise]

That's a very deep insight. Growth. How will it feel the next time you have such a conversation and can allow the little blip of hurt/anger to pass while you internally acknowledge it and say yeah but listen to what else is being said (the positive) and turn toward it? I picture turning toward the sun to warm oneself. I'm inspired by what you wrote, ECHOES.

[MissCharlotte]

Hi Echoes,
I suffer from the same half-empty syndrome. I have known this about myself for quite a while and have been deliberately working on seeing the "full" especially in my relationship with H. This is a challenge because I hold myself to excruciating standards insofar as honesty is concerned so I continually question myself when I choose to see the good rather than dwell on the negative. It's as if I want to be sure I deserve to be happy so I question under the guise of being adamant that I will NOT fool myself. Go figure--I think it's a lifetime of armor we packed on to protect ourselves.

Good to "see" you!

[ECHOES]

Well, when I notice something I have been blind to, it takes me a while to use it and to keep looking for it. To not fall back into doing the same thing again. I have talked about negativity in therapy many times, and for a long time. This time I see it as something more than just a behavior or habit. I am very quick and harsh to judge myself (one of last session's topics) and that interferes with the things I want to explore. Judging and criticizing (more negativity) is a way of closing my mind to what else is there, a way of 'stop-thinking'.

Anyway, so I'm certain that this will be something I will come back to again and again as I notice it and learn to understand it. I did use my awareness of this with an email invitation I received yesterday that I judged as insincere because 1. there was no subject line (lol-am I petty or what? I jumped right on that and decided the email lacked sincerity because there was no subject line), and 2. because the invitation was to accompany the sender to another person's house for 'a party of some kind', and gave the day but no time. I had to ask about the time (3:30pm) and still don't know what kind of party. I will find out eventually, although I declined because I do have a full day planned. After initially wanting to declare the invitation as insincere and purposefully vague, etc., I decided it was not. I was being thought of, included in something and that someone took the time to ask me to come because they wanted me to be there. I know that may not sound like much to a lot of people, but seeing the stark reality in front of me is sometimes a struggle because I make it into something else.

So, I initially decided quickly that the email was something negative, but realized I was ready to dismiss it based on there being no subject line and was able to suspend judgement see what else was there.

But I think this zeroing in on the negative and vaporizing the positive will be something I will need to keep on the lookout for and that I'll need to see it in play many times to understand each situation; to see what it is that scares me so much I deny its existence and its affects.

[Melbadaze]

for me the actual recieving of love created love...its the wanting it that created the shame....when neighbours were kind to me as a child it felt good, there was no shame only the sha,e I'd been given was from my mother and told it was love so when that didn't feel good I felt more shame for not being able to feel the "love" my mother deluded herself into believing she was doing...recieivng love is wonderful...wanting it is difficult...

[Sannah]

What you're doing with this sounds like a great plan Echoes. This is the best way to change a "habit".

[sunrise]

That's a great example about the email party invitation, ECHOES. Sounds like your heightened vigilance for this sort of reaction will help a lot. (I need to do this more too.) Sometimes I say something to someone that I think is quite innocuous, and they react with irritation or anger. I am really bewildered and intimidated by that. Maybe they are having a negative reaction like you wrote of, ECHOES. I try to have greater sensitivity to what it is I said that angered them, but maybe part of it is their issue and they aren't even aware of why they are reacting negatively? (I am always very quick to assume everything is my fault.) I have asked occasionally, "why are you upset?" or "did I say something wrong?" and have gotten an even more irritated or angry response, "I am not upset!!!" Sometimes I wish everyone had gone to psychotherapy so they would be more aware of all of this! Relationships and communication sometimes seem like a mine field to me. If people have gone to therapy (ideally), it seems like the mines can be fewer and farther between.