In an earlier post you said: 'Part of why he left is because I've been talking the blame for everything & honestly believing that everything is my fault & feeling inferior to everybody'.
Now you are saying:'I feel like it's totally my fault we split (even though he ended it). I also feel like caring about him at all was a mistake.'
So, in spite of the active work, little seems to have changed in this area.
And this needs to be addressed. Otherwise you will keep thinking that only an 'unlucky guy .. would be willing to settle for me'.
You said: 'I've been taking the blame for everything & honestly believing that everything is my fault & feeling inferior to everybody for about 20 years now, & I'm in my 20s'
And this has to be dealt with ~ and it's likely to be painful. It's probably something where you will need the support of someone you really trust ~ either a therapist or a reliable friend / family member or both.
If this goes back 20 years and you are still in your twentys, then it strikes me that something happened when you were a child to make you feel that you had to take the blame; that things were your fault.
Children feel like this for a whole host of reason:
They may take the blame to protect someone else.
They may find it hard to make friends, so think that there is something wrong with them.
They are bullied by other kids, so think that they must have done something to deserve it.
They are slapped or scolded by adults, so think that they must have done something to deserve it.
They are sexually abused, so feel shame & guilt.
Their parents split up, so they think they must have caused the problems.
They are told by someone that they are naughty / bad / wicked / wrong ~ and believe it.
Someone else ~ eg friend or sibling ~ is praised more than them, so they feel inferior.
Doing right & wrong is made to be such a big thing that their conscience becomes overworked and they develop a guilt complex ~ this can be caused by religion or by a strict family upbringing.
Children think differently from adults. The world is a bit of a scary mystery to them. And they are usually under the control of other people ~ older kids & adults, usually. Adults should have a better understanding of the world and can be ~ sadly not always ~ freer to be themselves.
In your case, your inner child is grasping you and pulling you back to the fears and other negative feelings of a child. You need to take her by the hand and guide her out of whatever nightmare she is sucking you into. As an adult you can help the childhood you to deal with this ~ but you may need professional help.
One thing though, you need to start believing, straight away, that whatever these negative feelings are, they belong to your childhood, and nothing that you did before the age of 10 can possibly have been so bad that you were ever truly blameworthy. Anything that may have been your fault back then should not be affecting you now. You were a child then; you are now an adult, and you come over as a pleasant person.
You miss this chap; you feel rejected and guilty, so you will feel down, but if you could deal with these negative emotions of guilt, things would improve.
As I said, I've had problems with 'the guilt complex'. I haven't been a bad person, but of course I am not perfect. I have said & done & thought things that I shouldn't have. Now I think over everything I have said and done, just in case I've said or done something I should be feeling guilty about. I have got over the worst of my 'thing', but it won't go away completely. Meeting my husband, at 18, helped me to get things into proportion; and a one-time RC student at university helped me realise that Roman Catholicism heaps loads of guilt onto the shoulders of its children.
Seeing things objectively, as an adult, can help ~ but it can be difficult. The results are worth it, though!
Good luck!
PS
I should add, to show how things can affect kids, what it was that affected me.
I am two & a half years older than my brother.
When we were little children, I was very protective of him ~ to the extent that I felt that if anything bad ever happened to him, it would be my fault.
Of course, as kids we fought & argued. This upset my Mum, because it reminded her of her one and only minor childhood argument with her sister, and how guilty she had felt about it when her sister died, not too long afterwards.
So, I blamed myself for something that might one day happen, and I carried my mother's guilt over an argument that she had had with her sister, and which was transplanted onto arguments I later had with my brother.
My Mum was a child at the time; I was a child at the time ~ but we both carried our worries into adulthood. And I still think that the 'perfection' often expected by the RC church didn't help (not that they expect perfection from their priests and nuns, etc.)
Sometimes a word that seems of little consequence to an adult will take on a huge amount of significance to a child.
Last edited by PDM; 04/26/08 01:20 PM.
