In what ways do you find yourself trying to break cycles of harmful behaviors/thoughts that your parents may have inflicted on you?
Trying new things without too much thinking about failing/breaking things. Sometimes I need to make mistakes to learn.
The first couple of months we had computer at home, my dad always warned me and my sister to be careful when working with it. One night when my dad came home, he found out that the mouse is not working. He blamed my little sister [four or five years old at that time] for it and yelled at her. She cried. It wasn't her fault. Something was wrong with the mouse for some time. Anyway this kind of experiences had negative effect on us especially my sister. We were too afraid to try new things because we worried that it might break and dad might yell at us.
I look to other people I admire whom I can make my role models. Essentially, I follow their example. That's what I've slowly been doing since immigrating, observing the best lifestyles and attitudes of those around me and changing what I've been raised to think and do. I've become way more open-minded and kinder with myself this way.
My parents emotionally abused me and then inadvertently encouraged me to repress my emotions, not just as a coping mechanism for that abuse, but by essentially telling me (and other people) that repression of my emotions is most impressive "quality." They only ever praised me or bragged about me for being "a trooper" or having a "high pain tolerance" or "never complaining." When I was a child, my dad would brag to people that I was so 'stoical' that he never knew I was sick unless I was so sick that I couldn't function at all. Which is actually fucked-up, and should have been concerning because you need to know when children are ill. I never felt like I could tell him when something was wrong, or when something bad happened, because it would have been complaining and then I would be departing from the only part of my identity that was valuable or not shameful.
So now I try to remind myself that emotional repression isn't an identity, or a virtue, by complaining all the gd time. Like my shoulder hurts rn, fyi.
My parents wanted me to respect respectable people so much they trained me to be humble and basically a servant before I saw the lot. I sometimes fall back into that behaviour. I act as if I wear a black ultra-short dress with white blouse and a ribbon in my hair and like at age 12. This sort of zombie infection in my brain is really disturbing.
Always get up. Never give up. Don't let the world destroy me for being a horrible person and a loser*.
*Thank's daddyo!
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