Like Words Together Reflections from the deep end of Practice.

Smoke and Mirrors

I’m realizing more and more how childhood logic created my belief that I’m utterly toxic. It explained why people left, it explained why my Mother hurt me, and keeping it propped up was less painful than confronting the feeling that I’m worthless.

This logic comes up when I find myself walking through my Mother’s last years of her life. I catch myself in the act of noting all the ways I failed to heal her. I notice that I’m sure I hastened her death.

My “core of toxic danger” is a smoke screen. Something easier to work with since I get to just blamed myself. Accepting I have this deep chasm of worthlessness is so painful that of rather be blaming myself for her death than accept that her abuse told me again and again I was worthless.

The more I keep going into it, the more clearly I see that the core message of my early childhood was that I was worthless, or, as as my Mother was fond of saying*, “You’re more trouble than you’re worth!”

*If called on saying things like this, my Mother, and other family members would reply, “I’m joking! Don’t be so sensitive, can’t you take a joke?!”