Processing - deserving, wanting, self-image
Last night I attended my bi-weekly therapy. I have a really good person-centred therapist who was referred by a friend. He's kink/queer positive, covered by OHIP, understands buddhist and "alternative" philosophies, and has done the work himself, so he understands the process well and can coach me through it as needed. Alas, his schedule is very full and he's near Sheppard and Yonge or I'd offer to refer more people to him.
Anyway, yesterday I was talking about the peeling away of defensive layers to get to the real heart of barriers that plague me. We talked about the difference between having the right to experience something vs. the idea of deserving, which I don't believe in. He understood why I don't believe in it and offered that I should consider my right to certain things.
In the discussion I learned that, in reaction to my mother's tremendous selfishness, I've been undervaluing my needs and wants. Why would I avoid expressing them?
Perhaps I've not really explained just how selfish she is.
My mother's "stuff" is that she wants everything to be easy for her. She wants everything to be pleasant and for there to be no challenges or difficulties. She can't handle any stress at all and is a huge drama queen. She wants whatever money she can reach so she can escape from the life she hates... the life that she resents because I was conceived. Every penny that she gets goes to her own pleasure - music, movies, television, travel, clothing, food, household goods, services for taking care of her home and property, etc.
When we were kids, my father told us that we were so poor all the time because my mother was spending the child support he'd been sending on herself. She framed it as him being a deadbeat dad, when in fact he wasn't sending it because he didn't want her to spend the money on herself again. She'd call and fight with him on the phone, sometimes for hours. She tried to make us hate him so we'd side with her. The subject of my father is still a fairly emotionally-charged one. She thinks he's a selfish ass. Projection, anyone?
When my grandparents on my father's side died, my mother tried to get her hands on the inheritances that went to us, and succeeded. When my great Aunt Mary died, she used emotional blackmail to get us to sign over our inheritances to her. When my grandmother died she had nothing left (apple doesn't fall far from the tree) and she had Grandma cremated, to be cheap. When we got insurance payments for the first round of severe car accidents they went to her pocket rather than to us, even the insurance money that we got for the injuries my sister and I sustained at the time. Nothing went to funding our educations, building a nest-egg to build our savings, or helping us become independent.
My mother regularly told us that our jobs were to grow up and become financially set so we could "take care of her in her old age." We were expected to parent her, not the other way around.
When I tried to put boundaries around what was mine vs. what was my mother's, or resist doing anything she asked of me, I got reminded that she brought me into this world and how hard done by she is because she was a single parent and I OWE HER for just being alive and relatively healthy.
My mother even went so far as to tell me to come near her as I was starting to grow pubic hair and underarm hair and exclaim how exciting it was because SHE made that. Got boundary issues much? :P
Even today my mother's first question about any job I have is how much money it makes. It irritates me a great deal that she asks that question so often.
Is it any wonder that I'm so reluctant to ask for anything from anybody now? that I don't believe in deserving or entitlement? that I never want to assume I have the right to anything? I've experienced first-hand what it's like to BE Cinderella, in service to my parent with no rights of my own and be used for someone else's happiness. I've experienced the destructive potential of that much selfishness.
Is it any wonder that I still harbour anger toward her? She wasn't ever satisfied with what she had or even what she took from my sister and I. It was never enough.
In therapy the additional learning was about the lack of reflection from my mother that might give me a better idea of who I am. Since she was only interested in how things affected her, she didn't really spend much time reflecting back to me who I am. When I asked for feedback on how I dressed, I was told that I had the fashion sense of a "Polish cleaning lady." When I asked about my singing, it was always "off key" (which I learned later was not useful feedback). When I asked for feedback about anything else, it was never good enough. Anything that had no particular benefit to her was ignored.
That's why I spend so much energy trying to figure out how I appear to others and why I don't have a sense of myself as clearly as some others do. I never learned how to see myself or gain an understanding of my own actions or behaviour since I got nothing but criticism with the exception of anything I did to make my mother's life easier. She'd shower me with gratitude for even small things with the idea of encouraging me to do more with positive feedback.
What I learned was to associate a lack of feedback with a lack of appreciation. I learned that unless I was doing something really helpful in just the right way, I might as well not bother. I learned that if I didn't give her what she wanted, I was denying her right to be repaid for the sacrifices she made to parent me. Oy, the guilt I had about having been born and never doing or being what she wanted of me.
As a result, I'm still trying to figure out who I am underneath all the defensive layers. I'm still digging beneath them to see who that is and how to describe the me underneath it all. I'm still working hard to dig for that stuff under there, which can sometimes be exhausting.
I've learned that I *am* worth doing the work I'm doing to get there. That what's underneath there isn't as fucked up and broken as I thought it might be and that I like what I've seen of what's behind all the protective layers of crapitude.
So... all in all... I'm on track for being a much less defensive and more real person. That's why I changed my LJ's subtitle to, "Becoming congruent with myself." That's what I feel I've been doing - learning who I really am and learning how to be that person as much as I possibly can.
I don't want a world without stress and strain. I don't want a world that's always pleasant and unchallenging like my mother does. I just want to be able to be myself.
The person underneath all the layers of protection is someone I want more people to get to know, rather than the facade that I and others see most of the time.
Anyway, yesterday I was talking about the peeling away of defensive layers to get to the real heart of barriers that plague me. We talked about the difference between having the right to experience something vs. the idea of deserving, which I don't believe in. He understood why I don't believe in it and offered that I should consider my right to certain things.
In the discussion I learned that, in reaction to my mother's tremendous selfishness, I've been undervaluing my needs and wants. Why would I avoid expressing them?
Perhaps I've not really explained just how selfish she is.
My mother's "stuff" is that she wants everything to be easy for her. She wants everything to be pleasant and for there to be no challenges or difficulties. She can't handle any stress at all and is a huge drama queen. She wants whatever money she can reach so she can escape from the life she hates... the life that she resents because I was conceived. Every penny that she gets goes to her own pleasure - music, movies, television, travel, clothing, food, household goods, services for taking care of her home and property, etc.
When we were kids, my father told us that we were so poor all the time because my mother was spending the child support he'd been sending on herself. She framed it as him being a deadbeat dad, when in fact he wasn't sending it because he didn't want her to spend the money on herself again. She'd call and fight with him on the phone, sometimes for hours. She tried to make us hate him so we'd side with her. The subject of my father is still a fairly emotionally-charged one. She thinks he's a selfish ass. Projection, anyone?
When my grandparents on my father's side died, my mother tried to get her hands on the inheritances that went to us, and succeeded. When my great Aunt Mary died, she used emotional blackmail to get us to sign over our inheritances to her. When my grandmother died she had nothing left (apple doesn't fall far from the tree) and she had Grandma cremated, to be cheap. When we got insurance payments for the first round of severe car accidents they went to her pocket rather than to us, even the insurance money that we got for the injuries my sister and I sustained at the time. Nothing went to funding our educations, building a nest-egg to build our savings, or helping us become independent.
My mother regularly told us that our jobs were to grow up and become financially set so we could "take care of her in her old age." We were expected to parent her, not the other way around.
When I tried to put boundaries around what was mine vs. what was my mother's, or resist doing anything she asked of me, I got reminded that she brought me into this world and how hard done by she is because she was a single parent and I OWE HER for just being alive and relatively healthy.
My mother even went so far as to tell me to come near her as I was starting to grow pubic hair and underarm hair and exclaim how exciting it was because SHE made that. Got boundary issues much? :P
Even today my mother's first question about any job I have is how much money it makes. It irritates me a great deal that she asks that question so often.
Is it any wonder that I'm so reluctant to ask for anything from anybody now? that I don't believe in deserving or entitlement? that I never want to assume I have the right to anything? I've experienced first-hand what it's like to BE Cinderella, in service to my parent with no rights of my own and be used for someone else's happiness. I've experienced the destructive potential of that much selfishness.
Is it any wonder that I still harbour anger toward her? She wasn't ever satisfied with what she had or even what she took from my sister and I. It was never enough.
In therapy the additional learning was about the lack of reflection from my mother that might give me a better idea of who I am. Since she was only interested in how things affected her, she didn't really spend much time reflecting back to me who I am. When I asked for feedback on how I dressed, I was told that I had the fashion sense of a "Polish cleaning lady." When I asked about my singing, it was always "off key" (which I learned later was not useful feedback). When I asked for feedback about anything else, it was never good enough. Anything that had no particular benefit to her was ignored.
That's why I spend so much energy trying to figure out how I appear to others and why I don't have a sense of myself as clearly as some others do. I never learned how to see myself or gain an understanding of my own actions or behaviour since I got nothing but criticism with the exception of anything I did to make my mother's life easier. She'd shower me with gratitude for even small things with the idea of encouraging me to do more with positive feedback.
What I learned was to associate a lack of feedback with a lack of appreciation. I learned that unless I was doing something really helpful in just the right way, I might as well not bother. I learned that if I didn't give her what she wanted, I was denying her right to be repaid for the sacrifices she made to parent me. Oy, the guilt I had about having been born and never doing or being what she wanted of me.
As a result, I'm still trying to figure out who I am underneath all the defensive layers. I'm still digging beneath them to see who that is and how to describe the me underneath it all. I'm still working hard to dig for that stuff under there, which can sometimes be exhausting.
I've learned that I *am* worth doing the work I'm doing to get there. That what's underneath there isn't as fucked up and broken as I thought it might be and that I like what I've seen of what's behind all the protective layers of crapitude.
So... all in all... I'm on track for being a much less defensive and more real person. That's why I changed my LJ's subtitle to, "Becoming congruent with myself." That's what I feel I've been doing - learning who I really am and learning how to be that person as much as I possibly can.
I don't want a world without stress and strain. I don't want a world that's always pleasant and unchallenging like my mother does. I just want to be able to be myself.
The person underneath all the layers of protection is someone I want more people to get to know, rather than the facade that I and others see most of the time.