ACA Laundry List – Trait 7 – “We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others”
Growing up our parents guilted us for saying something wasn’t fair. They used us for their own devices (in a dysfunctional cry for love) and told us we were selfish for feeling sad or upset. It bent the lens that we saw life through and we learn to see what was unfair as fair, and what was fair as selfish.
As we heal we often bump up against this bent lens of life. We peer through the lens and we see our boundaries as unreasonable demands and we see our unreasonable demands as justified acts of anger. As we heal we learn to look around the lens.
We learn to trust our guts when we’re being fair and we learn to realize when we’re caught up in our own stories and being angry little kids with those we care about. We learn to clean up when we make mistakes and learn to set boundaries that we know are right, even when our guilt feelings tell us we’ll get in trouble if we set them.
