addicted dad and feelings of inadequacy

Old 03-29-2010, 09:45 PM
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Unhappy addicted dad and feelings of inadequacy

i am not good with formal hellos so i'll get straight to the point.
i'm the daughter of an alcoholic/drug addict. recently something happened between him and another family member that made me realize the root cause of the way i feel.
all my life i've felt something is fundamentally wrong with who i am. i don't see anything good about myself. at all. this has set me back a great deal. my self-esteem is so low i have to imagine i'm someone else to even feel happy or be motivated to do anything, and i've been this way for as long as i can remember.
the only attention my dad ever paid me was negative. most of the time he only spoke to me when i'd done something wrong. he never once complimented me. he never said he was proud of me. it was always negative, and it didn't help that kids at school teased me too. he was never there to hug me and tell me those kids were wrong. we lived under the same roof but he acted like he wanted nothing to do with me. any noise i made would even set him off.
he put his friends ahead of his own family's wellbeing. when he wasn't home he was out drinking with his friends, and then he'd come home and my parents would fight. i wasn't even six years old and i remember being so scared they were going to kill each other and that still angers me. no child should ever have to witness things like that. but the worse thing i know of that he's done was when he stored his drugs in our house so his friends wouldn't get it. what he had was so dangerous that had something gone wrong it could've blown up the entire house with us in it, but he never once thought about that. or if he did, he obviously didn't care. i've tried talking to him about it just to get my anger out on the table, hoping maybe it would help me. but it only made things worse, because i'm still wanting him to acknowledge the pain he's put me through and to tell me all the things i've needed to hear him say for so long, but that won't happen. he has never even apologized for the drug incident. i just have to wonder why am i not good enough for him to change. my sister tells me all the time his addiction has nothing to do with me, but i am his daughter. i should be good enough reason alone for him to straighten up. so this is where that feeling of total inadequacy comes in and i don't know how to stop thinking this way. i've been so desperate for approval from men, that i got myself into a very dangerous situation with a man. he knew that all he had to say to get and keep me hooked was "you're beautiful". sad thing is i knew he was only out to hurt me, but i was so desperate for a man to say something, anything about me was good enough, that i deceived myself into believing everything was fine. so i know this thought process is only hurting me but that thought of "you're not good enough" is always there. surely i'm not the only one who has or is going through this? how do you get past it?
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Old 03-30-2010, 07:28 AM
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You can get past it.

It is a healing process.

You begin by focusing on your many fine qualities in Step 4.

Some people think that the focus is on what's wrong, but some of us need to focus on the good things first.

It sounds like you didn't receive positive affirmation growing up.

I didn't either.

I still believe that I'm a good person and a beautiful child of God.

You are a good person and a beautiful child of God.

God doesn't make junk!

(((((hugs)))))

Please know that you're not alone. We need to change the way we speak to ourselves first. I was teased in school too. You don't need to believe the lies of others who put others down in order to try to build themselves up.

It does take time and practice to banish the negativity. We really can learn to talk nicely to ourselves and to be healthier.
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Old 03-30-2010, 08:30 AM
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Welcome to SR

Check your messages. You're not alone.
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Old 03-31-2010, 06:40 AM
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I just wanted to add another "you're not alone".

While I have gotten to a place where I don't frequently verbally beat myself up, every once in a while I slip. My husband once told me "Those aren't your words, that's not really what you think." When I asked him how he could know that, he replied "Because you'd never say that about someone else."

Perhaps you need, not to pretend you're someone else, but to treat yourself as though you were someone else. I'm guessing that you are a very supportive and encouraging person to everyone in the world except you.
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