From: anon-1534@twwells.com (Suzanna)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Failed Mail
Date: 12 Jan 93 00:13:18 GMT
Organization: Anonymous Posting Service at twwells.com
X-Email-Accepted: yes

Nancy writes:

[Much deleted.]

 >    It isn't very nice. However, as far as I can tell, it's true.
 > 
 >    I believe that "nice" actually means pretending that you don't want
 >    anything very much and letting other people have what they want.
 >    This can sort of work when you're around other people who are also
 >    "nice", though it can leave life a little drab since no one is
 >    clear about what they want for fear of not being "nice".
 > 
Is it only "pretending"? :( Other people deserve to get what they
want, because they know what they're doing and they don't do things
incorrectly. 

 >    I believe that anyone who *tells* you to be nice is trying to get you
 >    to give up what you want in favor of what they want--and trying to make
 >    it look to you as though capitulating is the moral thing to do.
 > 
I don't know what I want, except for a friend to talk to. If someone
wants something, it would be wrong for me to stop them achieving that
desire. 

 >    >Is that why children are noisy? They run around and yell and scream
 >    >and do all sorts of things. I never did anything like that, I wasn't
 >    >allowed, but I didn't think it would be bad not to. 
 > 
 >    It's an interesting question how much children can be easy to be around
 >    without having some adult overcontrol them. (I'm an ex-child, but not a
 >    parent.) I suspect that that people need some exuberence or expansiveness
 >    to enjoy life.

Oh. That will explain something of what's wrong with me.

 >    >I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by "strategy you depend on a
 >    >lot". I always try to be right, but most of the time I get things
 >    >wrong and that's bad.
 > 
 >    I think of trying to be right as a strategy--I think you depend on trying
 >    to be right as a way of feeling more secure. My impression is that you
 >    don't trust your own knowledge/instincts/desires/emotions/perceptions
 >    to get you through life and you want to have an external standard for
 >    everything you do so that you can be sure not to displease people.
 >    My impression is that you're so caught up in "being right" that it
 >    hasn't occurred to you that it's a mental structure and there are
 >    other ways to live. 

If I get something wrong, it's bad and I will be punished. Other
people know more than I do, and they are the judges. I do try not to
displease people, but I do, so I must be doing something wrong.

If I didn't try to be right, and didn't mind being wrong, then I
wouldn't do anything, and lose my job, and be removed from university.
People would hate me for it, instead of just thinking I'm pathetic.

 >    I'm not sure that this is applicable to you, but I have a vivid memory
 >    of the moment when I realized that every time I had any chance of living
 >    up to my standards, I made the standards more difficult to achieve. I
 >    was (and to a lesser extent, still am) playing a game with myself of
 >    "Oh, what a failure I am". It's a distraction from actually being alive.

I don't want to fail! I just do, even though I do try! I don't want to
be punished.

 >    Before that moment, all I saw was that I kept failing. It was quite 
 >    something when I realized that the standards weren't objective reality,
 >    they were just something I was making up--and specifically making up
 >    to guarentee perpetual failure.
 > 
Oh. But I succeed sometimes, don't I? I couldn't stand being wrong all
the time, I wouldn't deserve anything then except being punished.

Suzanna



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