Overcoming Self-Doubt

by mxkx

Self -doubt is probably one of the hardest obstacles I will have to overcome...

It's interesting how now that I've learned to recognize enabling behaviors in myself how much better I am at recognizing controlling behaviors in others. I'm finding that controlling behavior doesn't just come from family members and spouses, but it can come from "concerned friends" as well.

I'm also finding more and more that many of the worries and much of the "paranoia" I had didn't really come from me but instead came from these concerned people that projected their fears on to me.

Recently I had just such an experience with someone that was supposed to be a professional there to help and support me. I'm not going in to details over the transaction, but I am going to note some of the tactics that were used in the attempt to intimidate me in to taking actions that they felt were more "right" than the actions I was taking:

- encouraging me not to talk to others about my personal affairs for fear of them gossiping about those affairs

- criticizing me for not handling a surprising and traumatic situation in a different and more "socially acceptable" manner

- "informing" me that if I did not do one thing or another that there were going to be assumptions made about my behavior and bad things would happen to me as a result so I should go ahead and make sure no one could make those assumptions. (I call this "social paranoia" because it's encouraging me to worry about what people "might" think and adjust my actions accordingly instead of encouraging me to interact with people to find out what they think and make a decision based on what I think is the right thing to do)

- interrogating me about my personal affairs such as where I went and who I went there with as if I had something to hide

- "spying" on me in order to interrogate me about my personal affairs

I am starting to learn that even if I can't immediately pin a description on controlling behavior or describe exactly what is going on, I can still trust the emotion that such behavior brings on me to let me know that someone is overstepping my personal rights and/or boundaries.

I feel shamed, defensive, helpless, hopeless, and generally like I have lost some form of control over my life and like I am unfit to make my own decisions about my life and therefore should just give up. It's kind of hard to describe but it's definitely a distinct feeling that I only get when someone is trying to exert control over me.

I remember how I originally thought that recovery was all about getting rid of these feelings. Now I think I am starting to realize that these feelings will probably remain because they are natural reactions to unhealthy circumstances. What's further is they will probably always be "exaggerated" to some degree in me because I have seen what these type of circumstances lead up to. It's kind of like cringing every time you get close to a fire because you've been burned before.

What's different about recovery though is I'm learning to accept these feelings as a valid form of danger signal being sent from my brain to tell me that something is not right about the situation and I need to examine it further. I'm no longer just thinking that my feelings are inappropriate and that something is wrong with me and not the situation itself.

There's still a lot of doubt, however. Even now I sit here wondering if it's the right thing to do to just follow what I believe is right and what my personal understanding of the situation is rather than just going by this person's warnings and "faking" my behavior in order to stay out of trouble, even though logically there has been absolutely no evidence that I have any reason to worry beyond what this one person has unofficially said.

I think a lot of this ties in to the religion I was raised in which taught me from a very early age to distrust myself (mind control tactics). Once you distrust yourself it's kind of hard to say I'm right because I believe in this.

There's a fear in the back of my mind that I am simply too imperfect to trust my own decision making process and I need someone authoritative to step in and tell me what is the best route to take. There is also the fear that things are going on behind my back that aren't going on in front of me and that I'm being spied on - both circumstances that I became accustomed to as being "normal" in the religion I was raised under.

I don't really know what it's going to take for me to finally convince myself that it is really ok to trust myself and it is really ok not to have all the answers. I give myself permission to but I'm still scared. Maybe it's one of those things that will just need time spent practicing my new emerging behavioral pattern and seeing it work in action. At least now I'm confronting these questions instead of just shoving them in the background out of fear they will drive me right back to the controlling religion that took so much for me to leave in the first place!

Any thoughts on any of this? I would especially love to hear from anyone that has also been through some of the more rigid and controlling aspects religion can take on and that can possibly relate to all of this.