If I Am Not Responsible, Why Does It Feel Like I Am?

[Eleanor]

I have blamed myself also all my life until just recently for my Mom's death from cancer over forty years ago.

OMG LBear - what an awful burden to carry all those years. I am so relieved for you that you have put it down! As if anyone could give someone else cancer! And think of all the millions of dollars and people's whole professional lives spent just to try to get a cure for one kind of cancer... Forty years ago, no one had a clue. How horrible for you to have labored with this. And how wonderful you are now free of it!

By caring and feeling compelled to help you're not flawed you're closer to being the noble person lauded by poets and philosophers. Don't fault yourself because you're a rare and special person.

Well said!
I'd rather say "strongly motivated" than "compelled" for literal meaning, but it Sounds much better your way!

Can't figure out how to quote your next post too....

Anyway, totally 100% well said in the next one too. "taking care of ourselves..." SOOO True.

 

[LittleBear]

Well, I did something nice for someone today and my scat stinking PTSD anxiety makes me feel like I am going to be punished horribly for it. Carp...carp...carp.

LBear

 

[Eleanor]

Well, I did something nice for someone today and my scat stinking PTSD anxiety makes me feel like I am going to be punished horribly for it. Carp...carp...carp.

This kind of thing just won't do.....

(Putting on my Doctor Of Philosophy and Master of Divinity hats) In a sonorous voice: "Carping Voices of LittleBear! I command you to be silent. Voices of gratitude and satisfaction: AWAKE! Do your job!"

(Pant pant pant from effort.) Hope that helps:D!

 

[LittleBear]

Thanks Eleanor.

Trying to hang in there but last night was one long continuous nightmare video. Even after waking up a couple of times it was like walking back into the haunted house when I fell back to sleep. Getting through this is going to take a long time as things from my childhood past are now bubbling to the surface. I am hurting so badly and I am starting to think that there may never be a chance for me to recover from the beatings, neglect, and ridicule.

Thank-you for your blessing but God abandoned me before I was born.

LBear

 

[TLight]

I hear ya.

 

[kimba]

Finding this thread helpful-thanks all!

 

[LittleBear]

I just had the living cat scat scared out of me. There's a drive-thru restaurant here I just came back from that the pedestrian sidewalk steps right into the drive-thru traffic. There's a pretty long run to get out of the parking lot and the sidewalk curb is the curb for the drive-thru. Thank-God I've learned a long time ago to drive with my foot on the brake when in a parking lot. This is an absolute blind corner. I was leaving and a woman carrying a baby steps out in front of me and God as my witness I stopped less than a foot and a half-from her. I had to go back thru the drive-thru for something else and told the attendants about the dangerous situation and they were all, "Not our problem; we have a sign that says "Watch for pedestrians."" They acted like I was an idiot for even caring. Then on the way home some "I gotta be first." personality flat ran through a stop sign because he would have had to wait for me if he had slowed down more than just touching his brakes.

This is the second time something like this happened in the last month. A little girl ran out in front of me about a month ago from between two parked cars and if I hadn't had my foot on the brake I'd have hit her.

Thing was I ran the errand for my Wife because I had to get out of the house because the 'cabin fever' was keeping me in a pre-occupied state of mind and keyed up.

I want to move somewhere where they have to air drop the mail every other week.

God I need some peace.

LBear

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

LittleBear,

Well thank goodness for those children and people that are such a conscientious driver and person.

That is terrible, and equally so is the fact that there are so many people in the world who lack basic compassion and thought for others. To me, it seems more and more that people simply do not see anyone beyond the scope of their own lives. If they are doing well, well, people who aren't, simply must have done something wrong along the way. And if it does not affect them, why should they care?

I relate about your childhood and doing something nice as well. I was feeling the exact same way at Christmas, I tried to do the right thing, and be nice, and just ended up feeling horrible about myself for it.

I just tried later, even though unfortunately it did not help so much with the emotional aspect of it, to remind myself, that regardless of how I felt or how other people reacted, I still did the right thing.

As for the childhood stuff... wish I had the answer, every time I end up finding something out in therapy I didn't know before, it just makes me feel I have so much farther to go than I thought I did.

But you aren't alone, ((((HUGS)))) if you want them. I hope you get some peace too... I wouldn't mind a little new year's peace myself.

Hang in there, it will get better (I at least can tell you that, having gone through many periods of processing trauma in my life).

Rising_Phoenix

 

[LittleBear]

Thank-you Rising...Phoenix and a hug back. This type event and the majority of the events in my life that have more than several times turned out to be horribly tragic through no fault of my own have got me so goofy I'm getting terrified to even be hopeful to try and recover. I just want to hide but obviously that's not a life. Unfortunately, I was raised that all tragedies are a result of my carelessness even though I couldn't possibly have been at fault.

The other and even more damnable aspect is that I was raised in a very strict and dominating religion that taught us that if we are suffering it's because God is punishing us for doing something wrong. My poor Brother is still trying to negotiate with God by going to church everyday and praying for several hours a day.

I remember one of my second grade teachers, and that was 50 years ago, telling the class that we suffered because we hadn't suffered enough. The only way to relieve your own suffering was to sacrifice yourself for others.

I am not trying to sound selfish or advocating that but I've got to develop a sense of real self-worth that was robbed from me as a child by ridicule and beatings for not being in a lock step with the rest of my human environment.

Thanks again...

LBear

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

I have some understanding of the religious issues you bring up (thankfully not my own, for once). My partner's abusive/alcoholic family was "saved" when he was 15 and his parents became, and still are to this day, devout Christians (I have lately come to see what the so-called most "devout" Christians in his family are like, and it sure does not strike me as how you should behave or treat others, he is the most compassionate one of the bunch of them). He was raised that way and believes in it.

But he has had a lot of struggles, trauma, and tragedy in his life. His "Christian" family's attitude?

Well, the bad things that have happened to him in his life are his own fault, because they made good decisions and he didn't. As a result, that is why bad things happened to him and not to them. They lived right, practiced their religion correctly, made the right choices, and as a result, God blessed them.

That the things happened to him were his fault, are absolute nonsense. His mother's reaction, after this rejection and judgement from his other family members was, "well, if you really want things to change, you will start going to church."

In other words, not only do they think his life is his fault, but God does, too, and is punishing him for it.

I cannot believe the cruelty in that, and they do not see it. Now he is a mixed up mess between questioning his faith in God, his pain at their rejection and lack of recognition of how hard he has worked to be a better person, and wondering if it really is all his fault, because he wasn't a good enough Christian.

He prays every day, and he is a good person, and helps others. He lives his life that way, the only thing he does not do is go to church. Yet he feels like a failure.

Now he is afraid TO go to church, because, even if he wanted to, if things get better, it means it was his fault, and if it doesn't he has to question his faith entirely. Either way it shakes him down to his very foundation.

THIS is what people use religion to do to their children? It's a double bind, the choices he made, such as to have his children, and as many as he had, were because "birth control is a sin", and he and his wife were trying to do the Christian thing. 2 of the 5 living children have autism and one died at birth from severe spina bifida. So because of that, it is all his fault whatever the consequences of that were. But if he & she had chosen to use birth control, or his wife have an abortion, well his parents would have had a stroke. You just can't win.

My feeling on this is, if you are going to believe in God, believe in a loving and compassionate one. Because frankly, if there is one there, and he/she/it is punitive and hateful, and has no capacity for love and mercy, all of us humans are screwed anyway and hell is going to be one overpopulated place. It really will not matter whether we have gone to church (or whatever), if trying to be a good person and live a good life to the best of our ability is not enough. And I can't imagine how going TO church, but being heartless and judgemental and hurtful in life, is going to get you into the pearly gates, and if it does, do I really want to be there?

So I understand how you and your brother can be struggling as a result of this. I think doing this to kids is despicable and cruel.

 

[Phoenix_Rising]

P.S. To anyone who is reading this and a practicing Christian, I am not saying ALL families, or Christians, are like this. My daughter's best friend comes from one such family, and I think they are a very good example of how to raise your children or practice your faith in your life.

What I am saying is, if you are going to do it (raise your kids that way), you should do it right, and be able to practice that in a healthy way yourself.

 

[dmeadz]

I am going to speak to my therapist today about this very post. I have a real conflict with this particular question. Others aren't responsible for my feelings, I can get behind that on one level. However, when someone says something abusive or hurtful, especially someone you know intimately and they are in a place of trust in your perceptions, then their actions can at the very least greatly influence how I feel. Right? In my opinion, they are culpable for how I feel if they've said something that clearly pushes a button they know has not been addressed properly.

Let's say someone tells me that my joking around about their current weight situation, even though they started the joking, is pushing a button for them. I've continually joked about it over a period of time. They let me know and I now know they are upset and pledge to make a better use of my actions. Now, let's say this joking is so well ingrained in our interactions that I forget and start to make the joke again. They get upset, again, and now I actually must take responsibility for making them feel bad/pushing their buttons. Is that not correct? I wasn't being response-able in handling the situation. And as a result, I'm responsible (culpable) for how that person now feels in response to what I said.