Thank you too Sandi for your insights. I appreciate your comments about self-worth. My IC and I talk alot about the concept of worth. I wonder sometimes if I'll ever fully believe in it and never look back. Perhaps for me, it's just going to be a life-long work in progress; sometimes there and sometimes slipping back to what it had (or hadn't been) as a child. IDK.

Originally Posted By: sandi2

I also learned that just b/c you have a person that is critical does not mean you are wrong. That person who is so critical is the one with a problem!
It's interesting you'd say this. When you first started talking about criticism, I thought... well I don't think that was my case. But this comment makes me wonder, if maybe it really was...

I think the criticism I lived with came across as accusations. She'd accuse me of thinking, feeling and believing all sorts of horrid things about her... things I never ever would have felt or thought. And I'd be left to defend myself against things I didn't even feel. I'm starting feel now, what I likely didn't know I felt (as a result of these accusations) at the time - frightened, panicked, angry, helpless. And then after the fact, I'd start to wonder... "oh my gosh... DO I think and feel these horrid she's accusing me of??? Maybe I do and I just don't know it??" I think that was when I began to learn that I shouldn't trust myself, my opinions, my feelings. When I started to believe the blame and accusations more than I believed my own thoughts... or in my own self; and started really, to loathe myself for all these things that I 'must' feel, because she told me I felt them. Yuck. What a twisted mess.

I cannot complain for not receiving from others, that which I've never asked them for.