I go into a spin examining and scrutinizing any tendencies of my own to be the same way that I was "judging" them for
Yes, exactly. In fact, I can strongly relate to just about everything in your post.
I've, finally, come to realize that I am different from my mother in that I apologized to my children when I knew I had screwed up.
Yes, I've come to realize that too for myself. But nagging doubt keeps creeping in, especially given that my daughter is at a stage (hopefully a stage) where she refuses to have anything to do with me. And I know approaching her would be a bad idea, not only because it's obvious she wants space, but because I know her aloofness would trigger me and I wouldn't be able to relate to her in the way I'd like to. And you see, I recently cut my own mother out of my life because of a long history that she absolutely refuses to face and take responsibility for. There is a difference: I didn't do the same things to my daughter that my mother did to me, and I took responsibility for the things I did do. But the pattern of lack of contact continues regardless. And then I read so many posts here where people have absolutely impossible family members and the advice is usually "they'll never change, walk away" and every time I see that I think not so much about my mother as about myself and wonder how my daughter sees me and whether if she were to tell people how she sees me, she would be given the same advice. And that would mean that indeed I am impossible, will never change, and people should walk away from me.
And I displayed MANY other different positive behaviors toward my children that my mother never modeled for me.
Good you can see that.
My therapist recently surprised me by saying I have a tendency to exaggerate the negative about myself and that I wasn't nearly as bad a mother as I think I was, and told me to go home and think about all the happy times. :confused:
My mom continues to believe she raised us the "right" way and doesn't see anything wrong with it.
There was a thread a while back where someone was worrying about she might be a narcissist because she had up till then thought she was a pretty good mother, but then started wondering because her own mother, who
was a narcissist, would have said she was a pretty good mother too. The one answer I remember was someone saying that the fact that she was worrying about it was a pretty good indicator that she wasn't. A narcissist doesn't see anything wrong with how they are, by definition.
My mind can still come up with a lot of "yes, but's" about that one though.
Is this a way to keep myself from the truth of how painful it is/was to be around some people and accept their poor treatment of me?
Maybe, I don't know.
In this case, I do. Thank you. I appreciate your comments, even if I don't necessarily agree.
Other people may not be interested in being aware that they are manipulative or may be consciously trying to be manipulative.
Right, that's another example like the above about the narcissistic mother.
Where is the line though? Is there a way to stop the incessant self examination and just relax a bit?
Apparently with ocd you ruminate on your worst fear
So this is maybe an OCD thing? Hmm... (I'm not sure whether that means it needs to be treated differently, but it's an interesting observation.)
But it's so hard to judge your own balance.
Yes, exactly.
Does part of your difficulty come from your core belief that you are not as good as you "should" be
Not exactly. It's more about the consequences if I am not as good as I should be. For me, that means I will be abandoned. I'm struggling for the right words, it's more complicated, and bigger, than that. But that is the general idea. When I said I can't separate what I think of myself from what others think of me, it was significant. What others think of me can have a
huge impact on me, not just because of their opinion but what they might do with it and how that affects me. What I am learning from exploring this is mainly how extraordinarily vulnerable I am to other people's actions. Even if those actions are ones that others might not care much about. "Shrug and walk away" is such easy advice to give. When I think about the possibility of someone being given the advice to deal with me that way? Panic. My mother did exactly that, including in life-threatening situations. Shrug and walk away. I think about this and, well, I
can't think. I can be hurt so easily. That's the problem here.
just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you are guilty
Did your therapist tell you how to tell the difference?
@FridayJones, I read your post and am thinking about it. Thank you for sharing all that. I'll leave responding till a little later, I need to go out and do some stuff.
