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Why don't i feel deserving of anything food?

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Roo

Confident
Hi, fellow journeyers...Thank you for your kind welcomes and thoughts :Hug_emoticon:
Your courage inspires my will to be well.

Please help me to understand something. --> I went to see my doctor today. My husband came with me to the appointment. These two men are blessings -- so kind, lucid, gentle and affirming.

I, at the core of me, stillbelieve that I am not worthy of kindness. I fear, despite the presence -- always -- of at least one compassionate guardian and many beautiful friends in my life -- and a mate who is my heart's lifelong desire (we met when I was 42, he 49...forgive the cliché but those are the words that insisted on coming!:rolleyes:) ... that I am constitutionally incapable of bonding with another...like something fundamental in me is missing.

I honestly wonder at any person who loves me...and wonder if I am incapable of loving. If I'm missing a part, so to speak.

Funny, though...animals (especially cats) come to me without fear. I notice this and think, What am I just not getting?!:crazy:

It's something I've lived with for so long...thought/written about, wrestled with...never spoken of.

Does anyone understand this / relate with it?

Thank you for any thoughts...:smile:

Roo
 
Possibly because you never had any good things happen when you were a child, and if they did it was taken from you by abuse???? After years of this you start to actually believe it... So the mind/sub conscience believes that you are worthless. Any negative thought/action/ can become ingrained within our minds, and now it's a process of replacing the negative, with positive.

You probably suffer from what a lot of us here have....Low to no self esteem. It's common with abuse. So now YOU must start to remove the negative thoughts that are ingrained with in you, by telling yourself POSITIVE things.

Then move on to doing things that you haven't done before, things that you thought that you never could. All of this builds self esteem...

Good luck...
 
Hi Roo

oh how I wish I could not relate so well to what you wrote. I am in the midst of one of my own phases of feeling like I am so damaged I will never break out of the isolation which plagues me.

Here are some thoughts though, ones I should perhaps apply in my own case. As a child what was reflected back to me by the important people in my life was that I was worthy of nothing good, and that I was in fact not fit for human relationships. The belief that all of that is true lies so deep within me that I'm not sure it can ever be eradicated. But! I also know by now on some other level, that it is untrue.

So even if I can't live from the place that knows that, I can use the thought to help me to believe the evidence of the here and now. That being the fact that people care about me, want to help me, want to spend time with me. Even the simple fact of someone laughing at my silly antics when I set my sense of humour in play in order to ease my way into a situation can be a reassurance.

I was once told that not to accept people's professions of caring and concern as real and true is a kind of arrogance. That it is an act of actual generosity for me to accept others positive view of me as true. Well, that comes from a particular world view, so don't buy it if it doesn't fit...but I come back to it sometimes.

The aim I guess is to let in as much of this here and now positive regard as will be necessary to trickle all the way down to the bottom of the storehouse of negativity left over from childhood...
May we all get there some day soon!
 
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You probably suffer from what a lot of us here have....Low to no self esteem.

I agree, sounds like it's a self esteem thing. I started a blog on this...
http://www.ptsdforum.org/blogs/upstream/245-ways-build-self-esteem.html

Maybe the video will help.

Also this audio file might help:
http://popularitydialer.com/popsound/affirmation.mp3
 
Thank you...

Thank you, everyone who's written...

dlross...you wrote this:

"As a child what was reflected back to me by the important people in my life was that I was worthy of nothing good, and that I was in fact not fit for human relationships. The belief that all of that is true lies so deep within me that I'm not sure it can ever be eradicated. But! I also know by now on some other level, that it is untrue."

You capture the experience exactly...especially your sense of how deeply you've been wounded...how deeply we have all been wounded.

You write that "on some other level" you know the lies for what they are; I do too. It just doesn't feel as deep as the poisoned layer...but somehow I know that it is deeper...I just seem to be missing some fundamental connection to it. Or some fundamental ability to feel a connection.

Argh! Sometimes I wish I could be free from the teeth of my own thoughts...:wall: Sometime ago, I wrote in my journal: "Girl, you've been a head case too long...go on now and be a heart case." (as in, "feel something!") :think:


D. H. Lawrence wrote a piece called "On Healing" -- here is a part of it:

I am not a mechanism,
an assembly of various sections;
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly
that I am ill.
I am ill because of the wounds to the soul --
to the deep emotional self
And the wounds to the soul take a long, long time;
only time can help,
and patience,
and a certain difficult repentance:
long, difficult repentance,
realization of life’s mistake
and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition
of the mistake
which mankind at large
has chosen to sanctify.


...This poem has been a life-raft lately. It helps me to see what is true...and now, since I've had enough of the teeth of my thoughts for tonight, I'm going to listen to some Frank Sinatra ballads before I hit the hay :smile: (Ol' Blue Eyes helps me to see what is true too)

Gentle dreams, everyone...

Roo
 
I struggle with this as well. I feel defective. I feel like I walk around through space with a big letter X across my face. I think part of it is feeling guilty from the abuse - like I broke the rules and am not allowed to engage normally with people because I don't know how to play the game - whatever that is. I don't know if I'll ever figure out this faulty thinking because I just don't get "normal", it is so far from what I lived.
 
Whoops! -- It's "Why don't I feel deserving of anything GOOD"!

I don't know how I missed that in the thread's title line...it gave me a good laugh when I finally clued into it...

I suppose that clearing the soul of shame is like any other discipline -- practice, practice, practice. I recall writing in my journal about 25 years ago, "If I have a soul, it's full of black tar." Ouch. Nowadays I'm constantly doing reality checks on my state of mind. I'm also discerning what's changeable...and what I just have to accept and live with as kindly as I can.

I've begun to read a fascinating book by Boris Cyrulnik, called The Whispering of Ghosts: Trauma and Resilience. He writes that two things are imperative in the healing of trauma -- and the ability to withstand trauma without being completely undone by it: they are (1) being bonded intimately with at least one person who does not bring harm, and (2) creating meaning from the traumatic experience.

I've been so blessed by having at least one "guardian human" in my life, always. And I've rooted through literature, music, the psychological sciences, wisdom traditions, religion...all to make sense of what was and what I've been left with. We are fortunate to live in an age where trauma is being recognized for the force that it is...and that there is increasing understanding of it.

We also live in an age where humans tend to judge one another on superficial "trappings" of success and power. Most folks have no idea what it takes for a trauma survivor to just get out of bed and carry on with ordinary tasks like housework and putting food on the table. As I told my doctor last week, "I've been exhausted for my whole life."

Perhaps there are only so many effects that we can rise above. I'm coming to understand this...with some grief. I'm very selective about whom I discuss my history and my challenges with...and I am grateful for the people in my life who hear me and do their best to understand. I've had two intimate friends who had childhoods similar to mine...we get each other with no explanations necessary. Bittersweet relief. They're two of the most generous, witty, intelligent people I know -- they've survived and then some.

Bonding and meaning...so important.
 
Roo, I know that feeling. I'm not sure if it's because I don't deserve good things or the fear that I will fail or screw up if I did get something good. So maybe I feel it is better not to WANT good things. Does that make sense? For me it is driven by a fear of failure.
 
Roo, I know that feeling. I'm not sure if it's because I don't deserve good things or the fear that I will fail or screw up if I did get something good. So maybe I feel it is better not to WANT good things. Does that make sense? For me it is driven by a fear of failure.

Cecilia...your words make perfect sense. Thank you :smile:

I used to see myself as a pathetic doglike creature that was content to huddle under the "banquet table of life" and wait for whatever scraps might fall. I don't anymore...and I still find it very difficult to assert myself in any way. I came to realize that I was more afraid of success --> success = exposure = danger. "Remain invisible and silent" was my childhood credo and I find this survival tactic is difficult to change. I've sabotaged many of my own gifts and talents in order to stay safe.

Failure feels familiar...and strangely safe.
 
This thread is just breaking my heart. I have never encountered people with such similar awarenesses and emotions to my own. Even my own siblings do not struggle to survive and keep finding reasons to stay alive. I don't even know what to say here. Something in this thread is touching the loneliness I have always lived with in a new way. That is good, unexpected, and oh so painful...
 
Roo just described my life! I want to be the "invisible woman"! Anything that brings attention to me is just horrifying! I want to crawl away and disappear. My mom used to always say "children are to be seen not heard", well as an adult I don't want to be seen or heard.

So many times I would just love to say or do something, only to find that my mouth is dry and won't speak and my hands and feet will not move. I fade into the wallpaper or at least try to.
 
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