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Acceptance

Permanent Linkby masquerade on Tue Jan 03, 2012 9:46 am

For all of my life I was aware that I was striving for something, yet not really consciously aware of what it was I was striving for. Now I know. My parents had almost impossible expectations of me. I would like to go into a lot of detail about who they were, what they were, and how they were, but I don't want to give too much away about my identity. I suppose the easiest way to describe their worst aspects would be to describe my father as a narcissist and my mother as histrionic, but it's not as simple as that. They had their good points too, and there were also happy times in my childhood. I am now aware that they were the products of their own upbringings, and that their treatment of me wasn't intentional. I'm now learning to accept that they were simply just as they were. The fact that they weren't self aware wasn't my fault, or even theirs. They alone had responsibility to themselves, and I'm sad for them that they both died before they could learn to be self aware and to take responsibility for themselves.

My parents had impossibly high expectations for me because on some level, they knew that they'd failed themselves. They wanted to live their lives through me, realise their dreams for me, and because they never felt good enough, they put pressure on me to be perfect, to live to an ideal that was impossible.

I grew up believing that I was never good enough. The things I said and did were never good enough. I also grew up feeling invisible, desperate for attention, and validation. I grew up not knowing how to express my inner thoughts and feelings, but being an expert at expressing the outer and the superficial. External appearances were very important to my parents. People were judged by them according to their social status, the area they lived in, the amount of property they owned, how they spoke, the social class they belonged to. I grew up in a large city where the people, irrespective of their social class, have a strong and distinct accent. It was impossible to grow up in that city and not develop that accent. Every day of my childhood my mother corrected my speech, telling me that if I spoke in a certain way it meant I was ignorant, stupid, coarse, not good enough. I was torn between wanting to be accepted by my peers and wanting to please my mother. When she heard my friends talk, she would tell me that they weren't good enough, based solely on their speech. I grew up literally believing that I was not good enough and that every person I came into contact with was not good enough. Of course I could see that my friends had good qualities that matter, like kindness, honesty, and integrity but my mother could not see beyond the superficial outer qualities like accent and appearance. It's hardly surprising that appearances of every kind became a major factor for me. I used appearances to detract from the feelings of inferiority I had inside. As a small child I was a histrionic with narc traits waiting to happen, a tiny replica of my parents, an extension of them, with no individuality of my own. I built up walls and barriers to protect and insulate the very frightened and lonely little girl I was inside.

For all of my life I was dimly aware of an inner pain, an unexpressed loneliness, and a hurting inner core. In order to protect that inner child, I refused to acknowledge her pain, and refused to acknowledge her. If she didn't exist and was invisible, then her pain didn't exist. It wasn't until I had therapy that I realised that the inner child I had refused to acknowledge, nurture, and allow to emerge, was actually my true self, and that the appeasing, "perfect", striving, attention seeking, shallow, vain, person was a false creation. The therapist and I worked together to allow the inner child to emerge, bit by bit, slowly and painfully, tentatively, scrutinising every painful event in my life, until she was allowed expression. My parents had caused me to believe that I was ugly on the inside, bad and unworthy, and it was cathartic to gradually realise that the emerging child was actually quite beautiful, worthy, and lovable.

I can now accept myself just as I am, faults, quirks, good points and all. The flamboyancy and dramatic flair remain, and so does the sensitivity. That is part of who I am. I stand alongside others as an equal, not better or worse, just equal. Being equal allows me to see the beauty in other people, and accept them just as they are. I am as I am. Other people are as they are. We're all human, and we're all beautiful and worthy of love.

http://youtu.be/myyITD5LWo4

http://youtu.be/IaBLhoWTkMI

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Re: Acceptance

Permanent Linkby Psyquest on Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:14 am

Very well articulated. It really paints a picture.
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Re: Acceptance

Permanent Linkby masquerade on Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:07 am

Thanks hun
http://youtu.be/myyITD5LWo4

http://youtu.be/IaBLhoWTkMI

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masquerade
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