And so she continues living a life she feels she has no choice but to live in the way its always been. She doesnt even consider it as viable options because she doesnt want to feel weak. Olivia associates things like living a slower, more relaxed, more self-connected life, or even participating in basic self-care, with being weak. Its an extension of her history of anorexia and self-mutilation that started in early adolescence as a response to her overwhelming home environment. She works way too many hours, oftentimes missing on sleep or overworking herself into terrible physiological symptoms because of lack of proper rest, an excess of coffee and energy drinks, poor diet, and chronic stress. Now, as an adult, Olivia struggles with intimacy in her romantic relationship as she has found a partner who is emotionally immature and self-unaware, just like her father.
Olivia tries to stay strong no matter what because she doesnt want to be weak like her pitiful, child-like mother. Olivia grew up thinking that she hadand still hasto take care of both her mother because shes so weak and dependent, and of her father since hes a drunk and a danger to himself and others. When she grew a little older, she was often expected to take care of her drunk father: help him get home from a local bar, hide all the drinks at home, help him get undressed and ready for bed. Olivia felt sad, anxious, and even guilty when her parents were fighting, usually because her father was drinking again. Whenever Olivia expressed her dissatisfaction about how she was being treated, her parents used to shame and guilt-trip her by saying that shes making her mother upset by saying such hurtful things. She blamed her husband, Olivias father, for drinking and pitied herself for being in such an unfortunate situation where she had to take care of two children and constantly worry about everything. She describes her mother as a weak, incompetent person who always had numerous problems and tried to gather pity from those around her.
Olivia says she was a strong-willed, curious, and intelligent child. Heres a quick example of a hypothetical person who had to grow up too fast. The most common general effects of it all are poor self-care or even self-harm, workaholism, trying to take care of everybody else, people-pleasing, self-esteem issues, constantly trying to doing more than you are physically capable of, having standards for yourself that are too high or completely unrealistic, feeling toxic guilt and false responsibility, chronic stress and anxiety, lack of closeness in relationships, codependency, staying inor even unconsciously seeking abusive or otherwise toxic social environments. It also leads to relationships and social environments where you may be mistreated in the same ways you were mistreated as a child. It is vital to emotionally connect and empathize with your childhood experiences without justifying the people who failed to meet your needs. This also makes it impossible to resolve childhood trauma for the same reason. This blocks empathy for yourself, and especially empathy for the child that you once were because you are unable to connect with the feelings you felt when you were a child, and by extension makes it impossible to fully heal the original trauma that led you to have these problems in the first place.įour, feeling empathy for the people who hurt you before feeling empathy for yourself. Three, believing that if you recognize the trauma, abuse, or other injustices you suffered, that you will be weak, flawed, a victimand thats totally unacceptable. Its very hard for you to express your needs to others, or sometimes even recognize that you have needs. This often leads to you feeling lonely, isolated, unnecessarily distrustful, or that youre alone against the world. Two, believing that you cant ask for help and have to do everything yourself. Or, you become counter-depended, where you emotionally act in an overly protective manner and people cant get close to you, which leads to unsatisfying relationships. This results in being disconnected from your needs, sometimes to the degree where you ignore being tired, hungry, full, depressed, and so on. One, believing that you always have to be strong. Here are some of the more common beliefs and emotional issues related to it.
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