So Jenny helped me figure out a really big part of who I am. First off, I fall perfectly into a category that is very common to youngest children who have or have had an alcoholic parent while growing up- always feeling like I have to help, always feeling like everyone else’s burdens are MY burdens. This is held ever so true for me, all my life. I never thought about how having an alcoholic parent when I was so young actually affected who I am to this day. It’s amazing how the way I am fits EXACTLY the characteristics that studies have found to be true over and over again with kids like me.
Then we talked about molds. Jenny told me that just by hearing me speak and talk to her, she can tell I’m an intelligent person (phew! good to know), she said that’s very evident. But she then said that whenever I’ve been talking about school things, it seemed very, very… forced. And she asked me why and what I thought about that. In my head at first I was like, pshh.. forced? whatever i'm a total school nerd... and then I realized that was totally false. I answered, “because I want to please other people.” She said, “it seems you try to fit into this certain mold that you really don’t fit into at all.” I’ve always thought that I had to be the A and B college student that breezes through school and excels in mostly everything and stays on track the whole time, stays clean and organized and always has an ambitious direction in mind. But you know what? That isn’t me at all. This whole time I’ve been disappointed in myself for failing a test or having a hard time in classes, and it’s because I was trying to be somebody I’m actually not. My whole life I have tried to fit into my sister’s mold, the way she’s always been with her place in our family- she, being the oldest, was thrust into the successful, achieving, independent, moving on with her own life type of mold. While I, as the youngest, am really not like that at all, but thought I had to be like that too… I thought I SHOULD be, and if I’m not like that I’m just a disappointment and have no worth.
That ties into the biggest thing I discovered. I have certain patterns in my life that have to do with disappointment. In my relationships with people especially, but also with all other aspects of my life. When I feel someone is disappointed in me, I take it in such a way that makes me get upset and overwhelmed, maybe angry, and ultimately I take ACTION and DO something as a result of feeling the weight of that disappointment. The same goes when I am disappointed in myself. I feel like I let people down and so I have to take the responsibility of punishing myself- that’s where my extreme behavior from the past 6 months came in and took over. I also have patterns of taking ownership of things I am not meant to own. When I know that somebody is upset or angry with me, or if something is wrong between us, I completely take it as my own failure, and it’s all my fault, it’s something I did and that’s all. I take full ownership of those problems ALL on my own shoulders. But the truth is, it’s not all my fault. Relationships are two-way streets and there is never an instance where I’m supposed to own everything that’s wrong and take it in and fix it myself.
This is the most interesting part.
Jenny asked me what do I value, and she was going to write down and just make a list of what I said. So, I told her these exact things- trust, honesty, love, faithfulness, joy, laughter, truth, kindness, loyalty, humility, hope, generosity. Then she asked me to think of instances in my life where I feel that heavy disappointment, things other than just in my relationships with people. So I used an example of getting a bad grade on a test or in a class, or even… having to drop out of college for this semester. (Months ago when problems first began, Jenny asked me what would be the worst thing that would happen. I said, "having to quit school." Look what happened.) I feel like I disappointed my parents, and myself. Like… I’m such a failure. And after listing off my values, she then asked me, “ok now where in your values does a bad grade or not being in school fit in?” And I thought for a moment…. Then it hit me, and I said, “it doesn’t.” So every time I hit a speed bump in life, particularly when I go through times of being physically sick and unwell, and I am lying in bed thinking, “I can’t get out of bed today,” or when I feel depression consuming who I am- I have to remind myself what my values are. Hope. Trust. Love. And then turn them into sentences-- I’m going to LOVE myself by getting up and making breakfast. I’m going to HOPE that if I just keep going things will get better. I’m going to TRUST myself that I AM capable of taking care of myself, I’m NOT helpless and powerless and going to let other people dictate my life for me... like I have for mostly all of my teenage and young adult years so far. Get it????
Another huge part of who I am. Because of these patterns I have, this makes me prefer the “beginnings” of things in my life, not necessarily the middles or ends. Because there’s no disappointment at the start of something new for me- I feed off of the challenge and the risk and the high energy and excitement that exist in the beginnings of things in my life. That is why all my life I jump from thing to thing, whether it be a job or where I live or what I do, or whatever. When I no longer have what I had in the beginning, especially when disappointment and those associated feelings enter in, I either quit and say no I’m done with this, or I go and withdrawal and isolate myself to kind of get me prepared to go back into it, but eventually…… I will change things… eventually it makes me ACT… and this makes me constantly want to be in another place in my life, so that I can have those “starts”, those “beginnings”, the freshness that comes along with it.
With my relationships though, those are very different. Because of what I value most about myself (trust, honesty, love, joy, laughter, loyalty, etc), this makes my interactions and relationships with people around me the most prominent part of what makes me who I am. Nowhere in what I listed as my values does it say “success” or “achievements” or “money” or “career” or “education” or anything like that. But in the ways that I love, share laughter, show loyalty to friends, am honest and trustworthy with people, that’s where I find value and worth in myself and my life. I think that’s why I will pretty much do anything to stay committed to people whether a boyfriend or a friendship or whatever…. And that holds true even if they don’t deserve my commitment. Does that make sense? I’m saying, sometimes I do it at the cost of… myself. Like if I’m in a bad relationship, I will hold onto it even when it’s destructive to my own life. I was explaining to Jenny how I just hate having tension between people, like it seriously makes me physically cringe knowing that someone might be angry or upset with me. And she let me say that and then quietly stopped me and said, “Emily. Sometimes people don’t deserve you to fix the relationship.” And I didn’t get it at first. I was like, no, I want to try my hardest to make sure things are good and sustained. And she was like, “ok. But, sometimes it’s best to just cut something off for good- because that person does not deserve you.” That was eye-opening for me. I will do anything to keep the peace and harmony in my relationships with people, anything to NOT disappoint, anything to help (characteristics of children with alcoholic parent). I will do anything to keep it together (so I do not get abandoned, my biggest fear, and so I do not lose value and worth in myself from not being loving, not being loyal, not being joyful, not being faithful in my relationships).
It’s crazy to me how this is all coming together in my mind, and my heart. I thought I had myself figured out so many times prior to this, and here I am still learning so much more than I ever imagined. There will be so many times in the future I will learn more about myself too, I’m finally letting that sink in. It’s great to know yourself the way you were made to be. It isn't pretty all the time and a lot of the times it's pretty messy, but hey at least i'm not boring. To keep increasing in knowledge of who you are, it brings great peace to one’s soul.
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