Not rewired

Stop being enabled.

I realised that all this time my parents were enabling me. I wonder what kinds of cultural effects this has.

I also realised today that I’ve lived out of a suitcase for all of my life – something my therapist noticed of course.

My parents, rather than giving me strict ideals and principles, seem to enable a kind of helplessness that was borne from the things that they hadn’t done well. They weren’t really there for me, body and spirit. Growing up I had been constantly jealous of the people who had their parents with them, mentally physically and spiritually. But as I’m grown older I’ve also realised some important things, which is that not everyone had been loved the way that they ought to be loved. That for them as well there has been so many pieces that had been missing. In fact in my family it seemed that narcissistic traits were particularly strong.

And it produced in me a need to please people at all times. This is especially true when I am surrounded by people of both cultures, because then I have to do double the amount of people-pleasing that a normal people-pleaser would do. I could people-please within two cultures, and even though it was double the amount of work, it was psychologically draining.

And it comes from the lack of stability or at least not having had it in my childhood. But it was terrible the way that people also took advantage of this inherent lack of stability that I had had, and had always had. Because my life is inherently stable, and I’m able to admit that.

But the people-pleasing two different sets of people is weird.