that comic about the monster lady not being monster enough for the support group got me thinking, and i think i have the answer to my shrink's homework for me this week. after i was sick last week, we spent the sesh talking about my pathological independence (my term not theirs) and how not only do i never ask for help, i don't know what help i would need.
we managed to narrow it down to pinpoint the conditions i would ask for help in, and what i would ask, and basically i would have to be at a breaking point combined with not knowing what to do. the only kind of help i would ask for is to be taught how to cope on my own/solve the issue on my own. to be given the tools, not have someone else do the work. i never want people to solve my problems (or even offer me comfort while i solve them myself)
which actually leads me to something i didn't expect. i often see a lot of my reactions to my mother in my neuroses/traumas like this, but i think the icing on this one is actually from my dad. my dad, who never taught me how to do anything, and would berate me for not being able to do it on my own. it sounds so obvious now, but i'm not surprised it didn't click. i understand now why the memory of getting my first bank card has been rattling around in my head this week. because it was such a blunt example of him refusing to teach me, to give me the tools to figure things out on my own, then humiliating me (literally in public) for not understanding. i remember nearly crying in that bank. because no one would explain to me how atm cards worked—not that i would have been in any sort of position to learn prior to that— and therefore i couldn't be trusted to be mature enough to handle the responsibility. i had to beg him to let me have that much.
and then i think to the start of the pandemic, when i was 26 not 17, and how he took the reins from the back seat to control getting me enrolled in unemployment payments. he guilted me for not being able to do it on my own, saying how he wouldn't always be there to do these things for me. i didn't have the guts to stand up to him, but i know i spent a lot of time talking to my therapist about how all he really needed to do was teach me.
i'm sure a lot of my independence comes from my mom. her paradoxically neglectful helicoptering created the perfect storm for that. nothing could be done on my own, and i could never be trusted to be able to learn (because i was so delicate and infantile), but i was also always left alone in my most vulnerable moments. and then dad would come home and blame me for scraping by alone instead of innately knowing how to thrive.
my parents wanted a child they only had to parent and raise when it was convenient, when it made them feel good, when it made other people like them. the rest of the time it was up to me to maintain the image. the rest of the time it was up to me to figure things out on my own. that i did a damn good job raising myself goes without saying, but it's left me not knowing how not to know what to do. and i don't know how to ask for help about that.
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