Gracious: Day 3

I had a mental/psychological break-through this weekend. I'm not sure how much I want to explain in the forum of this blog, but it actually fits pretty well with the topic of being Gracious.

Quickly, I had a work thing on Saturday. The speaker talked about tons of stuff related to working with kids. One thing he talked about was Shame. He listed many, many symptoms of having grown up in a "shame-based culture." I had every one of them.

So now, I'm going to try to work on that. He suggested that the best solution for these people is therapy. I tried that long ago and it did no good. I'm still paying the bills for it, and it did not help me AT ALL. I'm not doing that again, even with a new therapist. No way.

Actually, when I start to think about it, this entire blog experiment is surface level, and what I really need is to go deeper. That's probably why I haven't seen much change over the past 7 months. Being able to take complements (which is what I was thinking when I added "gracious" to my list) would be a RESULT of dealing with all the other crap I apparently have to deal with.

I did just start thinking about the Shame thing, and came up with several memories that helped. I was raised with the idea that what people think of me is, in fact, important. I think that's the biggest reason for most of my "symptoms." These are specifically:
people-pleasing
perfectionism
comparing self to others
setting unrealistically high expectations for self & others
beating self up when things don't go exactly right
not being able to handle it when things don't go your way
several more I can't remember

I have every one of these.

Now what?

Passionate: Day 26

It was in front of me all the time, but I've discovered what it is I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about being a good mom. And lately, I feel like I'm already failing completely. Without the details of my failures, I'm worried about the results. I'm afraid that working full-time and sending my daughter to a day care center three days a week is what's keeping her in a constant state of illness. I'm worried that, as she now knows what she wants and is getting better at communicating it, and has started throwing fits when she doesn't get it, that I'll consistently react wrong, and she'll become a selfish, spoiled only child. I think I'm turning into my mother, and I think that means my relationship with my daughter will repeat histroy; and that isn't good. And I'm afraid that my uptightness about all of this is making me an even WORSE mom!

So, maybe passion isn't my thing. I think she'll learn that better from her dad anyway!