Hi,
My mother rang me last night and expressed her anger about my situation (I'm agoraphobic). Her points basically seemed to be:
- I have to find the strength to recover inside myself. No-one else can help me and I'm not trying.
- I'm 29, much too old to be experiencing this kind of problem. I need to grow up and take responsibility for myself.
- I'm wasting my life. I'm young and attractive and have potential, which I'm not fulfilling.
- I'm too sensitive. I worry too much about what other people say. In particular, if I can't handle what she's saying, I should do what she would do and be strong and cut off contact with her. Because that's what she does with me - tries to ignore me. (These are her points, not mine).
- She would be able to handle my situation much better. For example, she has a fear of public speaking but she just pushes herself out there and gets over it.
- I need to just get over it.
Basically I feel that she's right on every count, although I do spend several hours a day doing exposure and therapy work so perhaps it's not true that I'm not trying to recover. I am having a problem dealing with this though. I couldn't sleep last night and feel depressed. I think that believing these things is giving me low self esteem, but I feel sure everyone must agree with them. I don't know what to do or to think. Does anyone else have any suggestions on how you can deal with people saying this sort of thing or how you deal with thinking it about yourself?
