….is a good thing.

Mighty shared a list of 25 things adults that experienced childhood abuse may do.

https://themighty.com/2017/06/childhood-emotional-abuse-adult-habits/

When I started counseling I scored 25 out of 25.  Ugh.  After 10 years of counseling and 4 years working on my own I lowered my score by a lot.  If I still do some of them, it is not as severe or often.  I discovered that some of the things like Overachieving became a habit that I like.  I like doing more than expected.  I get praise and positive feedback.  However, I don’t freak out if I don’t overachieve, which is a bit plus.  I can still be indecisive but that is more because I am thinking things through.  Now, I can make a decision and see it through.  I would practice with my friend by going to different restaurants and making a choice off the menu.  Lowering some scores is a beautiful thing.

This is one of the challenges:

“I always feel like I am doing everything wrong… It’s very hard to convince me I am good at something.“

In counseling, I learned to recognize that there are somethings I do right.  I was taught to evaluate criticism with a series of questions:

1. Did I do something wrong?
2. Is the other person having a bad day or just being critical?
3. Is it a matter of preference with no right or wrong choice?
4. Would I make the same choice again?

The big one I learned in counseling that there is a ton of criticism in life that has nothing to do with what I am doing and everything to do with how the critic is feeling.  This blew my mind at first and took many sessions to comprehend that criticism usually says more about the critic than the person being criticized.  Now when I listen to criticism I am viewing the words totally differently.