Posted 4/8/2021 7:36 PM (GMT -5)
OK, so I'm in this Al-Anon meeting, for people who have friends or relatives with alcoholism, and it comes time for me to speak. I give my feel-sorry-for-myself negative spiel of how worthless I am and how rough my life has been.
That's the way I was raised, OK. As a 5 and 10-year-old, I believed what my parents said. That was my first mistake. As can be expected, I carried that downtrodden, negative attitude into my adulthood, just as I carried the English language into my adulthood as I had been taught as a child.
So, in the Al-Anon meeting I'm what? A 45-year-old, negative-baby speaking English. This woman sitting next to me did not believe my parents, that I was an idiot who had a rough life, and she was not negative.
She did not gaslight me with constant statements that both me and my life were worthless.
She erased everything my mother had said to me for 45 years in three seconds.
How did she, a total stranger, do that?
By, after I finished feeling sorry for myself, she said, "Oh, you were having a Pity Party. We've all done that." And she had the nicest, most understanding look on her face and in her eyes.
The 45-year-old baby was exposed in front of the group of being a baby, of believing what my mother had said. She did not believe that. She overrode my mother. What was the commonality? Both were females. I needed that common bond to make the transfer, one of them cruel, one a savior. I had unconsciously looking for that person all my life.
I changed my allegiance from my pathological mother to this nice woman, who I never saw again, in about 5 seconds.
As a 45-year-old man, I never wanted to be exposed in front of a group again as being a big baby. It was like electric shock. My psychic was struck by the nicest, most understanding but insightful, and, yes, mothering person I've ever met.
If you've never been embarrassed in front of a group and exposed as being nothing more than a big baby, don't try to guess what that feels like.
Because of that pain, information and compassion at the same time, I have never felt sorry for myself again. Because every time I try, I see that woman's face and I hear her voice and my Pity Party just doesn't work as I try to curl up into a ball and be a 5-year-old. My allegiance is still to her. That compassionate mother figure.
My guess is, you are getting some kind of reward for believing a parental type person in your formative years and you do not want to be disloyal to them and believe that they did not have your best interest in mind. So you cling to where you are, even though you complain about it every now and then.
But you really love it and can't be talked out of it.