Do you blame your parents for your social phobia?

I do. My parent don't love each other, and I don't think I ever remember them being in love. They are so cold towards each other, more like brother and sister rather than husband and wife, they split when I was doing my final school exams but got back together a few months later, and I don't know why they bothered! All I remember is stupid arguments. Once my mother threatened to take an overdose in front of me and my sister when I was 8 years old. It hurts to see something like that.

Blame may be strong but they certainly contributed to it. There was only one way things could be done according to Dad and that was his way and he would get impatient and angry when things were done differently. Trouble was 'his way' would change with his mood. I would need to be a mind reader to know the 'right way' anything was to be done. So I would be anxious to do anything.
Where Dad controled with fear, Mom controled with guilt. She would become silent and hurt if I would possibly do anything that might displease or disappoint her.
So I grew up anxious about making and acting on any decision because more often than not the feedback I got was that it was the wrong decision.

No. My family brought me up right, taught me everything well, and were loving and everything. I don't blame anyone in my family except myself.

Okay! maybe I don't completely blame myself. I know it's wrong, but I usually blame society. Because when I was quiet and wouldn't respond to anyone, I thought it was my fault. But when I started approaching people, and trying to get to know them, they just ostracized me (true story).

This's a very important issue i guess. I'd say my family has played an important role in my anxiety. Maybe i was born as a sensitive child who needed special treatment.

I don't think my parents were bad with me. I think the problem was the lack of love/intimacy in the family. But who knows, we could never found the true reasons of this thing (at least in my case).

Maybe my relationship with my parents is too good. As I said in my first post, I do more things with my dad than I do with my friends. I guess you can say that I became dependent on my parents ordering food on the phone, shopping for me, setting up meetings/appointments. Maybe they didn't set me up for the real world.

FAMILY MATTERS

blaming others for our behaviour is one way to escape taking responsiblity for changing.

i know i used to think my parents were "normal" then when I started looking at family of origin issues ( eg where did my parents get their values, why was it so hard for my mother to put her arms around me and say "I love you" ) i found myself obsessing about how they had harmed me and my brothers.

i realise now that i used to keep quiet about what i was thinking and feeling as a child, so they had no idea how strongly i felt about certain issues.

i was the good child who never made any noise.

when it fact i was seething like a volcano.

even now as an adult I bring up the past and share how strongly I feel about it. I don't ever get a "gee Bob I am sorry for the way we handled that". Instead , the last time was "your brother's suffered more than you did".

So sad. they don't get it.

my folks are not perfect. they have their healthy habits and their harmful habits. i can't change them.

the only person I can change is myself. and that is hard to do.

My folks aren't entirely to blame for my being the way I am, but they certainly made a large contribution to it. Mom and Dad are screwy themselves. They never had any friends for as long as I can remember. They forced me to do things that they themselves would never dare to do, like play the piano in talent contests, and participate nearly every weekend in summer in horse shows. I was always expected to be perfect, to get perfect grades. Anything less than perfection was considered failure. That was so deeply ingrained upon me that I am to this day a perfectionist, and since nobody can be perfect, I always feel like a failure, a loser, like I'm not good enough. Feeling that way about yourself can make you feel incompetent and inferior in every aspect of your life, including social interaction with others.

Re: FAMILY MATTERS

YankeeBob said:

blaming others for our behaviour is one way to escape taking responsiblity for changing.

Click to expand...

well said.

Perfectionism

Thanks for sharing on this theme.

I heard a man say one night in a meeting that one of his character defects was "perfectionism".

He went on to say that all the things in his life he fell short of meant that he experienced anger, or self loss. And self criticism.

That was a very interesting disclosure for me ....because I too was a perfectionist. Had tried to live my life for 50 years that way.

This acquired character defect pushed me away from myself and from others.

Shortly afterwards I decided to "throw out this acquired character defect".

I visualised it being chucked out into the rubbish bin one night.

Now I strive to be a good , balanced, happy human being. I can like myself when I am this kind of person.

That was another turning point for me.

Hope this helps.

My dad died when I was 4, so my mom raised me for another 11 years until she died. During the time that my mom and I were alone, it was in a way, hell. No physical abuse or real emotional, but because she was so depressed, and drank, and isolated us, that was the situation that I think did it for me. But I don't blame her, poor thing, she was sick, and you should never blame your parents. Be lucky that you have parents in the first place. I would give ANYTHING to have my parents again, anything.

Message for "Lonely World"

There is a very interesting psychologist by the name of John Bradshaw. I can't recall whether he is a Canadian or a US National.

In any case he writes of the issue of "adult children" being those of us - possibly I was one - who see live through adult eyes. And as a result we miss out on the innocence of being a child.

Miss out on love, both parents praising us for our efforts, a game of catch on the weekend, a trip to the zoo, catching a movie with a parent.

Some parents are workaholics ( like my Dad ), some of us had parents who didn't love one another, others may have had only a single parent who struggled to put food on the table and keep a roof over our head.

Its ok to "mourn for the loss we suffered as children" . To talk about it, to let it get out and being acknowledged for what it was.

Because if we don't we repress all these feelings.

I use the analogy of shaking up a bottle of coke keeping one's thumb on the top. All our feelings are like bubbles in the bottle. They create an inner pressure that needs to get out. If we don't share them with someone we trust and respect then these unresolved feelings will harm us.

Does that make sense ?

Take care. Be well.

..

Yes i do...

healing the wound of the past

reread this thread just now....and it occured to me to share with you all ( my new friends ) something that I found helpful.

apparently as I started to talk about the past, about my childhood with others around me (remember I am a 58 year old man next week ) others started to notice I did this frequently. my next door neighbour, a french man in his 40s , he brought this to my attention.

I thanked him. And asked my wife if it was true. She said "yes".

Well if two people who know me see this trait ( you see I switched thinking about it all the time and keeping quiet, to TALKING about it all the time whenever it occured to me ) then I have feedback that its someting to look at.

so I asked my friend Rob to share with me again how he had let go of his anger towards his father. by the way Rob's paternal grandfather died when his Dad was 13; my paternal grandfather died when my father was 19. We both noticed a shift in our father's behaviours when we reached those dates.

rob told me he had written a letter to his Dad setting out all the harms that he had experienced because of his father's behavior. I asked Rob, do you give him the letter. He replied, "No. This happened in the past . What could my father do about the past." Instead he burned the letter.

I didn't want to do this....but again I am open to the concept of taking risks to be free of obsessive thinking.

So I wrote a letter to my Mother and my Father. In each letter I wrote two columns. on the left side were those harms I as a sensitive child missed out on and have never expressed loudly enough or with enough determination. In the column on the right were the things I was grateful for: a roof over my head, food on the table, presents at Christmas, and so on.

At the bottom of the letter I wrote "I have the freedom to choose. I can think about the left column and feel pain and hurt. Or I can look at the right column and feel grateful and happy. I am tired at looking at the left column....sick and tired of it....I have had enough. Its now time for me to look at the right column and be content with what I received."

you know since I wrote that letter I feel much more emotional serenity and mental peace.

if you want to see a copy of this letter let me know.

your new friend in Australia