guiab

I have been really frustrating myself my whole life.
I am not proud of what I am about to write, at all. But I am just looking for some insight, some thoughts, some hope. Help.

I have this lurking almost unconscious distrust, or murmuring paranoia about other people. In almost every encounter, in my whole damn life, the first emotion is sort of like this:
'they think they are better; they know they are better; they want to prove it by humiliating and exposing me; and I have to think hard to figure out how to avoid it or make myself feel superior to them; back away and protect yourself, say something that will make them back off or make them realize you know what bad things they are thinking; lie to make them think that you are not as bad as they think you are.'

When I work on anything that requires thought (academic papers, grading, business reports) the similar emotions constantly bubble up:
'This will not go well; they will see that you are failing in your work, they will expose you, talk about you with everyone you know; if you make any mistakes and you will you will be exposed and talked about as a huge fool and charlatan and worthy only of shame.'

As a result it takes me forever to finish anything, and usually at the last minute, as I must wade through these emotions. I drag my feet at work and in relationships.

And I have the same cursed feelings about all of you here on SR!!!!!

This demon has been around as long as I remember. I hate to think that anyone else has such morbid, obsessive, and self-centered thoughts. It has ruined numerous relationships, made me a loner, and resulted in numerous poor job performance reviews (mostly that I move too slowly and am passive-aggressive to supervisors).

I am managing, with a job and home. I have casual contact with many, but nothing intimate, close, or trusting. And I am not, as always, not intimate with my work.

I am pretty sure this is fairly characteristic of adult children. But does it have to be so damn intense and persistent?

I am in therapy and taking an ADD/anxiety medication. Maybe I am now just more aware of this problem, and that is the first step to healing my head.

It just angers me that I am going to spend yet another late night of grading and planning and it just doesn't seem to get any easier.

HealthyLimits

Some struggles are more external than internal but most seem to be more internal and some such as this one is entirely internal.

This starts with you and your view of yourself. I think you need to work on that. It isn't uncommon to have self esteem issues from your childhood but who are you really trying to prove what to? Have you ever said something to somebody and felt this huge relief that now they respect you?

I don't know your childhood or the results you faced with making a wrong choice. I can only tell you that you are now an adult, in charge of you and you will get all the rewards or lack there of from the choices you make now.

So work on being alright in your own skin. Work of feeling comfortable with who you are and accept that it's often times better to make the wrong choice than no choice at all. That the worse way to decide something is by not deciding. I felt like I had to prove myself to everybody. When I reached the point I'd thought I had nobody even noticed. I've accepted that if I'm okay with me the rest of the world will be and if not all of them the people I want in my life will.

Good luck and remember we all have hurt, pain and history behind us. We're all here to help. There is nothing wrong with being in a different place on the same trail and no rush. Being taught is living and learning is growing.

dothi

What were your parents like?

I definitely see myself in the feelings you describe. My AF was super-critical of both my accomplishments and failures (standard "on a report card of A's the only thing worth noting is the one B" type of feedback). But there's also this other dynamic at work, where it almost feels like my family celebrates when I'm stupid. They would never criticize me regarding academics, but if I forget to plug in my car during the winter, it's all jokes and chuckles at how the big college students doesn't even know when to plug in her car (actual experience dating to when I owned my first car). There's no learning curve in my family. Hard work = intelligence? Hell no, you're either brilliant or friggin' stupid.

So in my mind, the lovely result is this paranoia that *everyone* is ready and waiting to celebrate my failures. The higher the stakes, the worse the paranoia (especially at work!). It leaves me too afraid to bring up project shortcomings or mistakes I've made. I've learned the hard way that in the long run this is even WORSE because then I waste a lot of time going back to fix those mistakes when they finally come to someone's attention.

If you're like me, then I can easily guess why your performance reviews suffer.

It's tough, but stop viewing criticism and feedback as your enemies. It's not a reflection of you or how crappy your work is. Criticism does NOT = celebration of your crappiness. Learning to gracefully accept criticism is a HUGE and admirable asset. Take comments and decide for yourself whether they're appropriate. Maybe someone complained because they were having a crappy day. But maybe someone commented because they like you and don't want to see this mistake haunt you. The point is that you're not doing yourself any favours by taking in all feedback as = grewupinabarn sucks.

You've got a childhood survival mechanism working overtime that's telling you both avoid making mistakes (not going to happen, as you happen to be human) AND avoid confrontation (so you don't have to squirm under the heat of direct criticism, because ya, that hurt when you were a kid and it still hurts now, right?). Maybe the key is to stop envisioning what "you the child" needs to do, and start adhering to what "the admirable adult you've always wanted to be" should do.

guiab

I am overly obsessed with criticism and mistakes, and with trying to look like I don't deserve criticism. I usually do this by lying, ending/evading the conversation (admit fault without really feeling it), or convincing myself that the criticism comes, or could come, from someone who does not deserve to criticize me. It takes a lot of obsessive thinking to continuously come up with a story that I can believe.

Over the past year I have become more aware of this brain mechanism. Now, I can at least see it, sometimes, as separate from me, as a sort of fog that warps what I see. It is sometimes easier to try and see what the fog is not saying - the emotions that it brings up are so subtle and persistent that I don't have the tools yet to contradict it successfully.

Both of my parents were alcoholics, as far back as I remember. My father was a highly functioning alcoholic who was a fine man at work, quite successful, but after a binge became a horrific screaming nightmare full of hatred and contempt for his family and the world. I wish I could say the criticisms were grades, but I, my siblings, and mostly my mother enduring corrosive insulting tirades about just anything. One day it might be grades, but then it would be forgetting to feed the dog, or leaving the back door open. The tirades would go on for hours, with the target switching until he was exhausted and fell asleep on the floor. Any action was open for criticism. Often he just made up things to criticize. It was just so random. He had a way of seeking out personal weak spots and driving a machete into it. Jeckel and Hyde.

SR is a really great place. I think my posts always have a little lingering touch of suspicion and paranoia toward anyone reading them, and thus don't show real compassion. I apologize for that. Someday I what I say, write, and do will
show real compassion to others and myself.

dothi

That sounds like an environment enriched with fear and paranoia. No matter if you were good or bad or pulled your weight, it sounds like your father could find any reason to punish you for an imagined fault. It's hard for me to imagine YEARS of all the times that you knew you weren't wrong, but suffered for it regardless.

You know you weren't doing anything wrong as a kid (good!) but now you're determined to prove you're not doing anything wrong ever (as an adult not always so good, especially when you have actually made a mistake). grewupinabarn, if you made a mistake - a REAL unarguable, unavoidable mistake - what would that mean for you? Say that person who normally you can convince yourself is just too plain nuts to ever raise a valid point is actually right and there's no way around it. What would that mean for you?

Would it mean you deserved your father's rage?

GiveLove

grewup,

I've read many of your posts and have yet to see this paranoia you're talking about. But maybe you just feel it really strongly when you're writing. Maybe you're paranoid of yourself? Sorry, j/k, but really: I haven't noticed anything but intelligent observation.

A lot of my habits were like yours, and I'm still doing mopping-up operations many years after. I hate to say this, and it may be completely unhelpful to YOU, but one of the things that someone finally pressed into MY mind was this:

I'm not that f***ing important.

I would walk around in my life filled with paranoia and suspicion, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop, wondering when the next person was going to try to screw me over, watching that guy in the corner throwing (mean? scornful?) looks my way.

Coming up with a plan to deal with this perceived attack-waiting-to-happen. When, truly? -- no one gave a damn.

I'm not that important. It was leftover paranoia from my childhood, when abuse was around every corner, no matter what I did. I was so used to being in the crosshairs, the red dot of my family's rage and jokes ALWAYS on my chest, that I assumed the rest of the world was training their sights on me as well. When, 99% of the time, they are just going about their own business, being whatever flawed self-interested person they are, until my weird behavior clued them in that something was wrong.

Can you see that? I was paranoid about something that wasn't happening. But then I let that paranoia show, and people picked up on it, and acted on it. My reaction to them acting on it reinforced my own beliefs. My thoughts became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Score: parents 1; GL zero.

Are you comfortable that your therapist is helping you work through this? What do you do with your anger for the crappy way your father treated you? Where does that anger live inside you? When you play the filmstrips from your childhood, do you feel any sympathy for the kid who's being berated? Do you ever just have a healthy physical rage about it, rather than the "soft" resentments of paranoia?

p.s. If your subconscious is interjecting that I'm offering these things because I "think I'm better than you," please ask it nicely to shut the hell up

GingerM

I use a variant of this when I start feeling like my world is going to come crashing down around me (which is nothing more than an extreme of "everyone is out to get me").

I go outside and look up at the sky. I remind myself of just how insignificant I am. I remind myself that if I were to die tomorrow, the world would continue to rotate about its axis, that flowers would still bloom, that people I've never met would fall in and out of love. That I am so wholly insignificant that really, not much would change.

So what if one or two people dislike me? Oxygen continues to be made and consumed, critters in the ocean go on eating and being eaten, the raccoon who has decided that our roof is his personal litter box will continue to poop on my roof.

By reminding myself of my own insignificance in the grand scheme of things, I am forced to realize that I am not that important either. And if I am not important, then what does it matter whether people are impressed or not with who I am and how I am. That frees me up from all the negative and intrusive self talk, so that I can focus on what I want to do rather than on what the old tapes in my head are telling me.

Like GiveLove, I don't know if this will work for you or not. Like GiveLove, it works very well for me. Go outside and look at the trees, the leaves will fall whether you are happy or sad. The birds will migrate. Spring will come and the flowers will bloom. No matter what other people do or don't say to you or think about you, life will go on. My own insignificance in the greater scheme of things often keeps me well grounded.

londonvanpelt

I have had those same thoughts. I read The Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz, and that voice disappeared for quite a while. I am thinking of reading it again to quiet that voice. That voice is lying.

What others think of me is none of my business. If they think poorly of me, then I need to walk away or I will be self-destructive by allowing them in my life. I won't recognize abuse if I am berating myself. Someone in recovery made a false judgment about me. They assumed I was greedy by me wanting to have a larger salary. They didn't know that I wanted a larger salary, so I could afford healthcare for my daughter, so they were projecting their own greed onto me.

If someone thinks I don't do something well enough for their standards, then I will give it to them and walk away. Your best is good enough. Some people will tell you that you are being selfish because you tell them no. It's the person who doesn't want to hear your no that is being selfish. It is my duty and obligation to my God to love, honor, and respect myself.

With love & gratitude,
London

guiab

HL, GiveLove, Dothi, GingerM, and Londonvanpelt -
Thank you so very much for your posts. It is so .... truly....unbelievable that I am getting such support. I have never really exposed my thoughts so graphically, even in therapy!
I have probably been trying not to be a 'difficult' therapy patient by keeping the most twisted childish wining thoughts to myself and airing only 'good' patient thoughts.
I have been trying out the 'I am not that F****** important' idea in the last day or so and I think it does indeed make a difference. I see how highly self-centered I have been. It is hard to believe a self-centered focus can be so awful. Isn't is supposed to be fun - like a life of a celebrity or politician?
The thoughts that keep me from being 'unimportant are just so persistent. It is a mystery of how to think another way.
Strangely enough, these distrustful anxious selfish thoughts are not as strong at night. Is must be that no one is around and all the alcoholic parents are asleep or have passed out!
Sigh...
I think this is going to be hard work and I don't know if my brain can think another way to just 'be' after so many years. This is really tiring staying up late trying to finish up work which everyone else seems to get done twice as fast. The constant obsession with 'those people hating me out there somewhere' is also really tiring. And lonely.

GiveLove

Does it change anything when you get more sleep, more light, have less work, etc.? Are there any other patterns (besides the "quieter at nighttime" one, which is extremely valuable) that you can identify in this situation?

It seems like you're really pushing yourself to the limit, and if I had to guess, I'd say that stress and exhaustion might be contributing to a self-perpetuating cycle of extra-crummy thoughts. I'm no expert in anything but MY weird little world. But......is there anything you can do to lighten the load, grewup? Even if some voice inside is sneering, "Well, you SHOULD be able to handle all this....." (I have that nasty voice, anyway)

Thing is, I KNOW there are people out there in the world who hate me. I have made some truly horrible decisions in my life, and have also made some good decisions that were bad news for someone else. My entire recovery process has seen my alienation on a grand scale from almost everyone I knew until I hit 35. And on my worst days, I sit and think about them, and complex about what I could have done differently, what horrible unfair jerks they are, etc. I can't hope those days will go away entirely, just that I have the strength to stand up, shake it off, and "turn off the tape" when I want to, say, after 30 seconds or so

For me, that "new way" of thinking took a long time, but not really a lot of drudgery. I just tried to change one thing at a time (like the book, "Do One Thing Different") and stuck with that one behavior change until it felt as natural to me as running my hand through my hair. Then took on another.

Mostly, in my best days, I stopped imagining that everybody was concerned with me. And I stopped being as concerned with what they thought. It was just a matter of practicing whenever I had time.

And relaxing into my life.

GingerM

It definitely is hard work. That's why so few ACoAs actually attempt it. I work with an ACoA who thinks that the world revolves around her and has very little desire to change behaviors that make her unhappy. On rare lucid moments, she's talked to me about what I've been doing and why I'm in therapy and why I wanted to do it and how oh how did I ever manage to open up to a complete stranger. She is terrified that she won't be able to do it.

I have a different philosophy. I never used to have a name for it, but there actually is a name for it in the business world - it's called "fail faster". In business, the idea is that if you're trying to make a new product or change an existing system, most businesses find one avenue and investigate it to death. They spend tremendous amounts of time investigating the one idea they came up with (starting to sound familiar yet?).

The "fail faster" model is an efficiency thing. If those same businesses came up with 100 ideas and pursued all of them just a little bit, they'd be able to rule out the 75 of them that obviously won't work and the 20 that probably won't work, and are left with only 5 ideas to invest time in.

In the private life, this can also apply. Instead of worrying about whether you're perfect (you're not) and whether people are judging you (they are), go out there and "fail faster". Take one idea, work it a little, see if you run into a total dead end. The faster you run into those dead ends, the sooner you can rule them out as possibilities, which means the faster you'll get to something that might work.

I actually joke with the people whom are under my management that "I'm perfect!" I always say it right after I make some silly mistake. It's a running joke with us. I also have taught them the "fail faster" method of learning. I have gotten it across to them that mistakes are actually good things, as they learn from them (unless they never learn, in which case, there's a bigger problem). The more mistakes they make, the faster they learn.

Under this premise, being imperfect is a good thing. And if people judge your imperfections, you can hold your head high and tell yourself "at least I'm trying something new and learning along the way, rather than just beating my head against the same wall over and over again." Most likely, the people judging you have a dent in their wall where their head has been striking it for years.

So as weird as it sounds, failing faster can boost your sense of self worth. It takes much more inner strength to try and fail, than it does to doggedly stick to a path that obviously isn't working because you don't want to be "wrong."

It is work indeed! I won't deny that. It also opens whole new worlds to you.

guiab

Thank you, Much, GiveLove and GingerM,
How much do I owe you for the therapy??!! ;- )

My efficiency with work has always managed to expend any work into the time available. It is much harder now and I don't get outside nearly as much, but this whole semester has been sort of a 'tipping point' or catharsis or a personal test that has pushed me to a point where I can't ignore some long-term faults. It is sort of like the enlightenment of Scrooge, pain leads to cure, death-bed conversion, that sort of thing. That is how I got here.

I recently did have a job as a hiking guide/naturalist that was not highly stressful and allowed adequate free time. I had rave reviews from participants but my career ended because, naturally, I was passive-agressive with superiors and had one of the worst job reviews in my life. One supervisor said ' I don't know why, but I can't trust you and you seem to resent me, and that is your problem." It a repeat of a very old story with me. Realistically, I know that all jobs work this way to some degree. So, fun easy job = not helpful.

I have been staying aware of the persistent tendency to 'self-center' my thoughts and contradict them, and it always seems to relax me a little. And it has been a true relaxing feeling, something very different, and I can feel my mind engaging with others and ideas in a happier way. The feeling is short-lived, but I have been trying.

I think I can take the advice on 'fail faster' to examine a thought to see if it is 'me getting/going to be/was dissed' focused as a dead-end id strategy, and keep the 'that is good' thoughts. If I can stick with that I can make a little bit of progress, and with any progress 'its all good'.
Let me give a prayer for all of you here tonight. You are great.

GiveLove

grewup,

You appear to be a cool, articulate, insightful person and it is for purely selfish reasons that I'd like to see you get to where you like your life more.

Mostly, I just like to see more people like you around, in real life AND online -- it makes me nod and smile to imagine you coming through your lousy childhood and STILL getting to the place where you are exploring all your options, daring to fail, detaching from other peoples' questionable opinions, and shrugging off the crap.

Small steps, practiced whenever you can. Be your own science experiment. And stick around. You're a great addition to this community.

guiab

Thanks again, GL.
I have gotten some great insights in this post. There are some benefits to the occasional gushing whine. I have been turning over all the posts here in my head over the past few days and it really has been a revelation.
The fear I think generates a resentment that becomes passive aggressive to supervisors, and -OMG- society in general. Sort of a 'rebel against all', though I have never outwardly been a rebel. Fear and resentment make me drag my feet so much in life.
I happened upon a few posts elsewhere (SR and other places) regarding 'self-centered fear'. This seems to be a common issue with many addicted people, and it describes what I described at the top of this thread well. As with many codie issues, this kind of fear is likely prevalent in families too. And many of those posts recognize the HP, the 2nd step, as part of the treatment.
I have been really pondering and visualizing what 'a power greater than myself' really means to me. A HP is much more than the typical G_D images we are used to, and that I grew up with. To really visualize that power that alone can help, that is greater than anything I or others can do, is something quite new. There is no cross, no arc, no temple, no crystal - the power is just there around me. I may not be that f*****g important, but I am important to that HP, and the HP alone can help me, and all us others. Wow.