Related to the previous post, here’s an example from Boundaries and Relationships that felt familiar to me:

Joe was a 40-year-old man who grew up with an over-controlling mother who told him and other family members what to feel and what to do, and she still does. Although this was frustrating and hurtful for him even as an adult, he still waits for others to tell him what to do. This causes him to have serious problems in most of his relationships.

Robbed of his inner life, he didn’t know his Real Self. His mother repeatedly invaded his boundaries as she attacked the integrity and well-being of his True Self. But until his recovery, most of these dynamics were unconscious to him — they were outside of his awareness.

Early in his recovery he felt guilty for telling the trust of his experience, which he sometimes interpreted as saying bad things about his parents. (emphasis added) Later, he felt helpless over not being able to change the way his mother treated him. He began to see that the only thing he could change was the way he reacted to her. The only thing he could change was himself. In his therapy group and in individual therapy he learned to grieve the pain of these ungrieved traumas and to begin to set healthier boundaries and limits with his parents and others.

Before I dig any deeper into this topic at all, I need to make something clear: my parents are good people. Seriously. They’re stellar folks, and I’m blessed to have them. So, if coming from a fairly “good” household, I could have so many issues, is it any wonder that so many people out there are in pain?

That quote, as I said, felt familiar to me. In no way is/was my father as extreme as Joe’s mother, and I’m much more skilled at setting boundaries at 34 than “Joe” is at 40. My question is this: at what point did I, as a child or later, subconsciously decide that what I thought didn’t matter? At what point did I completely tune myself out in favor of trying to figure out what/who I was supposed to be? What caused this? Was it my being sensitive as a child? Was it a parent(s) being overbearing? I wish I knew.

But more than anything, I want to understand so that I don’t repeat it.

Of course, I know that I become a role model for my daughter. That’s a good thing. But one of the things that I want to model for her and encourage her to do is to think for herself. For me, I feel like I grew up being fed fish, but never taught to fish. (You know, the old saying…give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish he’ll eat forever.) Yes, I’ll do things *for* my daughter as appropriate, but what I really want to do is to help her learn how to do things for herself, so she’ll have the confidence that she CAN.

Included in this is the full expectation that:

1. My daughter will see me make mistakes, and I’ll acknowledge them to her. I want her to know that perfection is unattainable, and honestly, undesireable. Imperfection is reality.
2. She’ll be pretty challenging (and frustrating) when she questions me.
3. But at least she won’t be a sheep.

And that is the issue of the day.