Looking inward

As I described yesterday, I want to have a conversation with myself in order to challenge my depression, and my blog is a good tool to use as a beginning. So with all of you as my audience, I want to know: "Why do I have trouble believing it when people say nice things about me?"

This is usually where I stop and let my resistance take over. The stuck feeling inside of me wakes up that inner critic who promptly asks me whether I've spent long enough on my blog entry for the day, if I have more important work to do, and why bother even asking the question if I have no immediate answer? But if I just fight this urge to quit, close my eyes, and just focus on that one question, what happens? Let's see....

OK, I have to confess that it is now the next day, that I did not feel comfortable closing my eyes and meditating at my work desk, for fear that someone with authority would walk by and think that I was sleeping. So after several attempts at focusing last evening I have a possible answer to the question "why don't I believe it in my heart when someone compliments me?"

I think that in order for me to truly understand the "Why" I need to be mindful that this all has to do with having been emotionally neglected when I was growing up. My song and dance went something like this - I would receive a compliment, for example, my mother might have said "You are fun to be around." I would take that comment to heart revelling in the thought that she loved me and would always be there to nurture me emotionally. But then she would go away, as she did often, because she travelled a lot in her business. And that left me to ponder the authenticity of her compliment "Well if I am so much fun to be around then why does she keep going away? Aren't I enough to keep her at home?" Later when I started dating I've had dates say to me that I am beautiful or a wonderful person, and then sometime later, I would fomd out that there is another beautiful and wonderful someone that my date would rather be with.

It appears that I associate the words of the compliments with actions, but only with people who I've come to rely on emotionally, specifically my family and certain friends. So now, when a friend or family member compliments me, I am in the habit of dismissing the compliment as mere, unimportant words in order to protect myself from getting hurt, even if the person does feed me emotionally in our relationship. I stay on guard because I have no way of knowing how long the relationship is going to last.