How bad is it that I still get hurt when someone from my college deletes me as a friend on Facebook or doesn’t invite me in a group or invites my ex-husband as a friend without inviting me? Yeah, sounds pretty ridiculous when I write it out. Is it that I am just getting upset out of habit? These people proved over and over that they don’t care about me. Why can’t I just shrug it off?

The truth is, I am terrible at just shrugging things off. If I knew how to do it, I would. I don’t like feeling overdramatic, whiny, overly sensitive, or having my feelings hurt. I just don’t know how to let it go.  People I don’t even like can hurt my feelings by ignoring me or making gestures of ill will. Of course, usually I like them until they snub me, so I guess it’s a chicken and egg question. I have to admit, the one thing my ex-mother-in-law ever got right about me is that I am overly sensitive. When you live your entire life for the approval of other people (be it God or other Christians), it’s hard to change overnight. And really, I’m so used to trying to please other people that I don’t know how to stop. I took a huge, gigantic leap when I separated from Bob. Yes, it was actually a thought process I had to go through: What will everyone think of me? This ran through my head for about two years before I realized that those people didn’t care about me. That I was living my life to please people I never talked to. I still do it. It’s a habit. It’s embarrassing. I’ve figured out how to live my life in the bigger decisions, but the smaller things still bug me. How do I gain self-esteem without others’ approval? Without God’s approval? My whole life, I was taught not to seek others’ approval, but God’s approval. But people were the ones who decided what God’s approval was, and it was dependent on the things we did, disappearing the moment we make a mistake (of course, he still loved us, but our sin grieved the Holy Spirit (Hebrews something  or the other), so we had to deal with God’s disappointment in us; we let down the God of the universe and deserved hell if we had so much as a mean thought! Of course, supposedly he is love and forgives us, but you get my point.).  Now that God is gone, what do I aim for? Doing our best was never enough for God  so I never had good self-esteem as a Christian either, but for different reasons; our comfort was pseudo self-esteem in the knowledge that he loves us anyways. Of course, we were still supposed to strive for perfection: to be like Jesus, who was perfect. Now I am a perfectionist when it comes to myself, and I don’t know how to cope when I make a bad grade, lose a friend, or make a mistake. I don’t know how to allow myself room for error without feeling like I am a complete and utter failure (and yes, I do mean a complete and utter waste of space, a good for nothing person who fails at everything and is good at nothing. You can ask my husband if you don’t believe me!). Now that it’s just me, I can set more reasonable goals: to gain self worth from who I am, not what I do; to allow myself room for mistakes and errors, but while I may know in my head to let things go, I don’t know how to actually do it.  How do I make that come from within when I don’t always get it externally? Actually, I get quite a bit of external approval on the outside, but one small thing still has the capacity to knock me to my knees for a little while. I am pretty sure I learned something about this in one of my psych classes, but I don’t remember exactly what.  I do know as of now, I am definitely not self-actualized .  . .

I tell it like it is when it comes to the church. Now I am telling it like it is with me: I have an unhealthy need for others’ approval, am overly sensitive, emotionally/socially immature in many ways, and am a very imperfect perfectionist. I am flawed, too.

I need therapy.

Tags: approval, Christianity, deconversion, ex Christian, religion, self esteem

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 12:46 am and is filed under Life Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.