[Yearning0723]

T said this to me last week, that no matter how "bad" I was as a kid and no matter how I may have provoked the adults around me, and even if I think those things were my fault, the things that happened were traumatic experiences for me and I deserve to heal from them and move past them.

But why? If I'm the one who invited this treatment, why do I deserve to move past it? If I hurt other people, why do I deserve healing? To use a really extreme example, let's say you kill someone. The act of killing someone is probably very traumatic for you (assuming you're not a psychopath), but maybe you don't deserve to heal from that self inflicted trauma like if you were the victim of someone trying to kill you. It's just a different situation.

I don't know how much headway I'm going to make on the "healing" (T's goal for me?) when I don't think I deserve it...and yes, I will discuss it with her...

[stopdog]

Everyone deserves to move past it.

[Yearning0723]

Originally Posted by stopdog

Everyone deserves to move past it.

Why does everyone deserve to "move past it"?

[stopdog]

For me, I don't look at it like one ever does not deserve to feel better, heal (if one looks at therapy for that), move past things etc. It might be that I don't think of it as a deserve or not deserve sort of thing. I see no benefit to anyone not healing or moving past and so forth.

[Yearning0723]

Originally Posted by stopdog

For me, I don't look at it like one ever does not deserve to feel better, heal (if one looks at therapy for that), move past things etc. It might be that I don't think of it as a deserve or not deserve sort of thing. I see no benefit to anyone not healing or moving past and so forth.

Hm, for me it's not about pragmatism - obviously the best way for me to be emotionally stable and thus function well in society would be to move past this stuff. I guess it's me clinging to my old idea of retributive justice - if you hurt others, you shouldn't just get to walk away from that and "move past" it and live a normal happy life.

The funny thing is that I don't endorse this ideology for anyone but myself...

[stopdog]

What good does it serve? Not just on a basic level - but even with the idea of RJ? Is there no room for redemption?

[Yearning0723]

Originally Posted by stopdog

What good does it serve? Not just on a basic level - but even with the idea of RJ? Is there no room for redemption?

Obviously on a political level, I advocate rehabilitation over retribution because I feel that it serves the good of society more than just punitive measures...so I guess this is less a philosophical issue and more of a self esteem issue, since I think practically everyone else in the world should be able to move on from past wrongs they've committed and become whole, integrated members of society, even if they've done some very heinous deeds. I guess that it's just that I think I personally don't deserve the compassionate treatment I would advocate for others.

[stopdog]

In a way - doesn't that make you special? I am not trying to be mean and I may be being unclear in what I am trying to express. But how would it be that you, out of everyone else, would be so X as to not deserve compassion? Plus, I do believe redemption is not easy. Why not redemption for oneself by undertaking the healing? It seems a bit easy in a backwards sense to keep going on the non-deserving, self flagellating path.

[AllyIsHopeful]

Well whether you feel like you "deserve to heal" or not, don't you think you owe it to yourself to at least accept it and grow to make your life as happy as you can now and in the future, without holding the past against yourself? You are in therapy to work on yourself, yes? Most of us are...And sometimes this work requires healing from traumatic experiences, forgiving yourself or someone who has hurt you, and growing to become the best possible person you can be. I understand how tough it is to forgive yourself- it's WAY easier than it sounds. Maybe that's something you could focus on tackling first, before healing from the trauma and anything else that has happened in your past.

[Yearning0723]

Originally Posted by stopdog

In a way - doesn't that make you special? I am not trying to be mean and I may be being unclear in what I am trying to express. But how would it be that you, out of everyone else, would be so X as to not deserve compassion? Plus, I do believe redemption is not easy. Why not redemption for oneself by undertaking the healing? It seems a bit easy in a backwards sense to keep going on the non-deserving, self flagellating path.

These feelings don't stem from rationality, so attempting to out-logic them will be a futile endeavour. I know seeing myself as an exception makes no sense. It's just how I feel because that's really all I've ever known - this idea that I'm bad and thus don't deserve x. I see how irrational it is, but somehow that doesn't eliminate the belief.

[HazelGirl]

Even if it was your fault, how long should you suffer? At some point, you have done more than your fair share of "punishment" and it's time to move on. Even criminals are eventually set free from jail, unless they do something so terrible that they get a life sentence or death...and last I checked, you didn't murder someone. So at some point, you are able to accept that you have suffered more than enough and you can let go.

[blur]

yearning, this is a complete stab in the dark but could you be protecting yourself from the anger, pain and feelings of loss of control you feel toward your parents by saying you deserved to be treated poorly and still do? when we come up with things like "i deserved it" it can give us a sense of control in thinking that if only we hadn't done things to deserve being treated poorly then we wouldn't have been treated poorly by others. unfortunately, this is not true and we are not responsible for the actions of others. life and people can be quite unpredictable (and ironically consistently unpredictable) and we can't always make sense of things sometimes.

we're all human. we mess up. your parents made some doozies from things you've shared. you probably have made mistakes too. c'est la vie. i'm not trying to be flip but just saying it is bound to happen. all we can do is forgive others and ourselves and move on and grow from the experiences.

[Depletion]

Hey yearnings I thought you might find this video helpful. The guy in the video is a T in new your who does psychoanalysis he talks a lot about narcissistic injury and internalized aggression. The fact that you don't think you deserve to heal sounds a lot like internalized aggression. Maybe you will find his talk useful.

I really love this guy a ton. In fact I think I'm going to share all of his videos in another thread.

[Yearning0723]

Originally Posted by blur

yearning, this is a complete stab in the dark but could you be protecting yourself from the anger, pain and feelings of loss of control you feel toward your parents by saying you deserved to be treated poorly and still do? when we come up with things like "i deserved it" it can give us a sense of control in thinking that if only we hadn't done things to deserve being treated poorly then we wouldn't have been treated poorly by others. unfortunately, this is not true and we are not responsible for the actions of others. life and people can be quite unpredictable (and ironically consistently unpredictable) and we can't always make sense of things sometimes.

we're all human. we mess up. your parents made some doozies from things you've shared. you probably have made mistakes too. c'est la vie. i'm not trying to be flip but just saying it is bound to happen. all we can do is forgive others and ourselves and move on and grow from the experiences.

It's definitely a control thing...and according to T, a lack of appreciation for developmental psychology.

[Middlemarcher]

Originally Posted by blur

yearning, this is a complete stab in the dark but could you be protecting yourself from the anger, pain and feelings of loss of control you feel toward your parents by saying you deserved to be treated poorly and still do? when we come up with things like "i deserved it" it can give us a sense of control in thinking that if only we hadn't done things to deserve being treated poorly then we wouldn't have been treated poorly by others. unfortunately, this is not true and we are not responsible for the actions of others. life and people can be quite unpredictable (and ironically consistently unpredictable) and we can't always make sense of things sometimes.

I really second this. I struggle with similar issues as you on this front, Yearning, and eventually, it became clear that at this point, I'm the one keeping myself down. Once upon a time, it served a purpose for me to internalize everything and think that I was at fault for everything-- it kept me from feeling the fear, anger, and out-of-controlness that I'd feel if I faced up to the fact that my parents had issues of their own. In my adult life, it no longer serves a purpose, and it actively keeps me down and affects my life in concretely negative ways.

Sometimes I still find myself thinking in the ways that you do--no one in the world is bad or undeserving, except for me, etc--but more and more often, I get out of this mode of thinking. I knew it was completely irrational and assumed that I had no conscious/rational control over it. Perhaps that was true and it was just a matter of time before my work in therapy started to filter over into my unconscious or whatever. But I think that I had more rational control over these ideas than I assumed I did; I had to make a choice to stop believing this and actively, consistently correct my own inner narrative whenever this arose.

[Petra5ed]

Originally Posted by Yearning0723

T said this to me last week, that no matter how "bad" I was as a kid and no matter how I may have provoked the adults around me, and even if I think those things were my fault, the things that happened were traumatic experiences for me and I deserve to heal from them and move past them.

But why? If I'm the one who invited this treatment, why do I deserve to move past it? If I hurt other people, why do I deserve healing? To use a really extreme example, let's say you kill someone. The act of killing someone is probably very traumatic for you (assuming you're not a psychopath), but maybe you don't deserve to heal from that self inflicted trauma like if you were the victim of someone trying to kill you. It's just a different situation.

I don't know how much headway I'm going to make on the "healing" (T's goal for me?) when I don't think I deserve it...and yes, I will discuss it with her...

Why? Well because you were a kid, but even more than that because you are a human. To err is human, well so is it to be mean and "bad" and all that! But if you do not forgive yourself you can never truly heal, and if you stay broken then you are liable to continue to be "bad" to yourself and others. Don't forget, everyone is "bad." Maybe you did more bad things than some, so what, I bet lots of people did more bad than you. Now what are you going to do about it? Will you accept that you are human and that you were a child who didn't know better? Can you accept that wanting to be better and feeling bad for your mistakes actually does make you sound like a good person? !! Don't be so hard on yourself, mmm kay

[Favorite Jeans]

I'm a little stuck on your analogy about killing someone. I get that you're trying to illustrate a point. But seriously, do you really think that anything you did as child or adolescent trying to make her way in the world with extremely narcissistic, emotionally abusive parents is so beyond the pale that you deserve a life of depression and pain? I'm sure the anecdotes you've shared here are not an exhaustive account but I don't even recall a single incident that I thought was abnormal teenage behaviour given the circumstances, much less antisocial. That's the terrible thing about childhood abuse: your relationship with the abuser can end or change but you have internalized their message to such a deep extent that you feel you deserve everything bad that happens to you. You don't.

[Yearning0723]

Originally Posted by Favorite Jeans

I'm a little stuck on your analogy about killing someone. I get that you're trying to illustrate a point. But seriously, do you really think that anything you did as child or adolescent trying to make her way in the world with extremely narcissistic, emotionally abusive parents is so beyond the pale that you deserve a life of depression and pain? I'm sure the anecdotes you've shared here are not an exhaustive account but I don't even recall a single incident that I thought was abnormal teenage behaviour given the circumstances, much less antisocial. That's the terrible thing about childhood abuse: your relationship with the abuser can end or change but you have internalized their message to such a deep extent that you feel you deserve everything bad that happens to you. You don't.

Well, that's the thing. When you hear it enough, and when you don't hear any conflicting messages, it just starts to feel like truth. And regardless of rationality, those feelings feel so real. I feel like I was a terrible kid and probably am still a terrible person in a lot of ways, and I did a lot of things that hurt my parents who loved me more than anything (well, my mother, at least - the jury's out on my father's ability to love anything that isn't $$$), so I feel so much guilt for that. My mother has suffered a lot due in part to my actions and even if I know logically that's not my responsibility, I feel so bad and just want to make all that pain go away for her, or undo all that I did to contribute to it.