Posted by Dinah on March 10, 2005, at 0:55:38
In reply to You have to change to be acceptable, posted by fallsfall on March 8, 2005, at 11:59:42
I just don't know what to say. I'm ruining my health in a stressful job because I believe that I have to maintain doing what I'm doing to be acceptable. In fact I need to do it as well as I used to do it, doing it as well as I'm doing it right now isn't enough. And I get plenty of support for that position. My husband thinks I need to work harder, my bosses think I need to work harder, my therapist thinks I need to work harder. Everyone thinks that if I used to do it, I can still do it and I'm just not working hard enough.
Maybe they're right.
Moreover, the message I got my entire life is that performance counts. I was the beloved daughter because I was good and did well at school and did my chores. My brother was an example of what happened if you didn't do those things. You might still be loved in some sense but you were also despised and degraded. I had a taste of it myself when I slipped.
I don't even think it's on my therapist's list of things to do to get me to think otherwise. He himself is very performance oriented. Hence the coaching sideline.
I want to tell you that of course you don't have to change to be acceptable. You are intrinsically acceptable, loveable, and perfect just the way you are. And on some level I believe it. For you, anyway. But for me to tell you that with any real conviction, I'd have to believe it for myself. And I can't do that.
So the best I can do is to hope that all of us who feel like we need to change, or meet a certain standard, to be acceptable can learn that that isn't so. No, what I'd really like is for that to be not so.
Which it isn't of course. For you, anyway. Not for me. Thank God for Provigil.
poster:Dinah
thread:468228
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050305/msgs/469085.html