#262 – What made you take ownership for random mishaps?

Internalizers seek within to find what went wrong – externalizers blame the world. Which are you?

Some time back, my husband proposed a thought exercise to understand more about my son's case. Starting with, "None of this would have happened if...," he suggested we go over each event that led to our present circumstance.

I first completed the sentence with, "...I hadn't been such a wuss about my 'trauma' story." Meaning, if I had a mature relationship to narcotics, if I hadn't been freaked out by the idea of having one coursing through my veins, none of this would have happened.

"Yeah," he said, "but you wouldn't have freaked out if..."

Right! The doctor had injected me a narcotic without my consent (which is illegal), and yet I felt responsible for my trauma around narcotics, which was due to my sister's history of addiction – Grow up, already! my Ego shouted rolling its eyes dramatically.

I'm an internalizer, as I learned today listening to Dr. Gibson's book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.

That's why I didn't complain – it must be my fault that the doctor gave me a narcotic without my consent. I should've run, I should've taken my arm from his hand.

Oh, and also the classic: he must know best what's good for me.

Growing up in a family that held little respect for personal boundaries made me prone to fix everyone's problems – to keep the harmony. When someone blamed the world for what happened to them, I volunteered to be "the world."

I learned that people loved me more when I did, and so I trained my Ego to remind me. I was the kid who said "I'm sorry" when someone bumped their pinky toe in the nightstand, or ate the dish that someone else had ordered but then didn't like.

To protect my own internal sanity now, I'm working on setting limits to what I'll assume as my responsibility.

It's not my fault that my sister is a heroin addict, that the doctor behaved illegally and improperly with me, and that he assaulted my son when he felt threatened by his words.

Which "not my fault" are you ready to claim?

Love,

Carolina