☯ RISKS

   taking too many or not enough - addiction to 

   excitement, physical danger, making constant

   changes OR not taking advantage of

   opportunities or making appropriate changes

   Assumption: it’s inevitable that any risk will

   lead to abandonment

☯ SELF HATE

    DEF  : ‘Everything bad that happened to

                 me as a kid was my fault! ’

   Self-hate is a defense mechanism - defending

   against the pain of all the original abuse,

   abandonment & neglect we experienced as kids.

   The child’s assumption is that if I caused it I 

   should be able to fix it,  ie: change myself in 

   order to stop others from hurting us,  by

   somehow pleasing or placating them.

   Since that didn’t work very well the child

   feels like a failure & is hopeless.

BUT we still blame ourselves, even now, & keep 

       trying to figure out ‘what we did wrong’.

☯ SUCCESS averse

   (may be related to 'survival guilt'): sabotage

   ourselves when close to success, don't take

   advantage of good opportunities, make

   unnecessary mistakes AND when near failure -

   work even harder, but with little appreciation

   or fulfillment

☯ TRUST issues

   difficulty sharing emotions & true feelings,

   fear of abandonment and intimacy, guarding  

   secrets, AND not trusting our own judgement,

   values, feelings, experience & knowledge

☯ VICTIM-hood

   unnecessarily continuing the role of victim -

   carried over from childhood. ‘Learned

   helplessness’. Don’t believe we can take care

   of ourselves AND don’t want to !

☯ WORRY

   about everything, 'awfulize', always expecting /

   assuming the worst, convinced that being

   abandoned is our only option! - & worry about

   passing on bad genetics & abuse (alcoholism,

   depression, incest, illness, etc) to our children

☯ MISERY

    finding many ways:  internally - to torture 

    oneself, & externally - to be mistreated in

    most or all relationships (work, love, friends)

☯ MISTAKES

    extreme fear of choosing anything incorrectly,

    as if it were life & death (leading to pain of 

    abandonment). Not allowed to consciously

    know what we want or prefer, fear of  

    rejection if we don’t agree with some else’s

    demands, expectations, even tastes

☯ MOURNING

    endless sorrow, bitterness & complaining

    about not having good parents, family,

    lost opportunities etc, but not willing to 

    improve oneself. True mourning takes time

    but leads to healing, not continued suffering

☯ NORMAL

    is guessed at: poor parental role modeling,

    gaps in learning, inadequate social skills, not 

    knowing  basic realities, not reading social

    cues, naive, not street smart

☯ PAINFUL EMOTIONS dominate:

    depressed, lonely, hopeless, helpless,

    inadequate, suicidal,  'why bother' attitude.

    Living in extremes - too high or too low 

    emotionally. Evenness is considered boring

☯ PERCEPTIONS

    always testing, not trusting our perceptions

    & intuition, ‘forgetting’ what we already

    know, not learning from experience,

    devaluing or negating good things that happen

    to us as being accidental or unintended

☯ RELATIONSHIP Difficulties:

    repeatedly choose inappropriate, unavailable, 

    selfish people.  Either find it hard to keep

    friends, stay with someone, get married, cope 

    in the workplace, OR never leave them, no 

    matter what

☯ RESCUE

    fantasies underlie most choices:  marry an 

    alcoholic or otherwise 'disabled' person, go

    into the helping professions, unable to leave  

    harmful family, attracted to depressed, 

    unavailable people we can can 'fix'

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