This is a follow up thread to Therapist Thread in which I wrote about a thread on Threads that really spoke to me. I did have to google it to find out what the first part said, which was this:

I opened up to my therapist that I develop feelings too quickly. She handed me a journal and said, “If you lose yourself when someone gives you attention, these 10 questions will show you why their attention feels like the oxygen your nervous system searches for.”

In the first post, I wrote about the first question this Threads Therapist mentioned. Today I’ll be writing about another question that hit home with me. You may remember that in the first post I had thought that the original tweet of the thread was talking about anxious attachment or inconsistency. It really makes everything more relevant knowing that it’s about developing feelings too quickly. That being said, I feel like not knowing what anchored it was important for me too. The question is important regardless of the context.

But here is today’s question:

5. Do I give more than I receive because generosity helps me avoid being abandoned? Over giving is often fear — dressed as kindness.

I read that and I thought ‘oh god’

I guess I haven’t really talked about my parents that much. And they are important. A lot of who I am, and crucially, how I am is because of my relationships with both my parents.

I did learn from an early age that neither of my parents were stable in their emotions, in their behaviours, in their reactions to me. My dad was finally diagnosed as having bipolar shortly before he died having lived with it untreated for most of his adult life. I don’t think you need a medical degree or lived experience to understand that having a parent with untreated bipolar disorder was a challenging thing.

Apologies for the oversharing in the rest of this post.

My dad was erratic, unpredictable and unstable. It was chaos at home. His moods swung wildly between the mania and the depression. He had no boundaries and would overshare wildly. He had the highest expectations of me. He’d suggest spur of the moment crazy plans or projects. He’d go through long stretches of depressive episodes that led me to grow up really, really early. He was short-tempered, irritable, angry.

My mother checked out both emotionally and physically when I was 11. She decided she could no longer ‘deal’ with my dad, with me, with my brother. And she left. I’d only see her a handful of times after that and I haven’t seen her in person since the age of 17. We would talk on the phone ever 6-7 years when she remembered she had a daughter and the emotional scarring from her abandonment has been something I still struggle to get through.

It makes sense within the context of my relationship with my parents that I might over give in my relationships. I have experienced the worst kind of parental abandonment and I’m keen to not experience that level of rejection again. I’ve known previously when I’ve reflected on myself and my own behaviours that I’m maybe overly nice as a way of counteracting my parents. It feels very much like ‘Please like me, and stay. You’ll stay, right?’

It’s breaking that cycle that’s the hard bit. How do I maintain a sense of myself and only give of myself in a healthy amount? How do I navigate relationships and not feed into the idea that I have to pour myself into the needs of others. How do I set boundaries for myself? How do I start to believe that I am enough?