To not understand why I am the way that I am

[SleepTill]

Long story short. I honestly have ruined my life or at least I've really hindered progressing in my life.

I have low self esteem / zero confidence / I hate myself / I dont value myself / I don't trust people / I'm afraid of getting people angry / I have crap boundaries / I have social anxiety / I have a very strong freeze response which comes into force every time I'm in a social situation.

All this has come from therapy and really learning about myself which has been interesting but the CBT I had didn't do anything for me apart from make me feel like a failure.

The thing is I feel like an idiot because I didn't have a horrific childhood with horrendous abuse. Tbh I don't really remember much of my childhood at all really. I didn't particularly enjoy it and I was lonely most of the time and just left out but everything I read about my behaviours etc talk about abuse. And it makes me feel like if I was abused then things would make sense at least. (not that I'm wishing I was,of course)

Why am I so fucked up when really there doesn't seem to be any reason for it?

How long have you been doing therapy for?
It can take years, even decades to unravel the belief systems you developed as a baby/toddler/child.
You don't have to have been explicitly abused to end up with mental health issues.
I believe that if you don't get your basic needs met as an infant you develop a belief that you are unworthy, inferior and flawed. By basic needs I mean food, shelter and warmth, but also intimacy, touch, mirroring, being heard, being listened to, being loved and approved.

You felt lonely and left out as a child and didn’t particularly enjoy your childhood. So these are all reasons why you’d be struggling as an adult. Ok so you weren’t “abused” but being emotionally neglected (if you were) can have a huge impact.

I don’t know why I put abused in quotation marks. I just mean that if you experienced rejection and loneliness it can be very detrimental without it being something as clear as abuse.

Abuse is a multi spectrum scale. Just because there was no physical or sexual abuse doesn't mean you weren't abused. Also what effected you might not effect another person in the same way. It's not black and white.

I was like you, same sort of symptoms and thought my childhood had been average. However I've learned in the last 5 years that my mother is a classic textbook narcissist and the reason that I feel anxious all of the time was because I was emotionally and mentally abused. I couldn't trust my mother's reactions, I never knew what child to be so that I wouldn't make her angry. I wasn't allowed to have independent feelings and I was told to cop on if I did. If I stood up to her she cried and called me a bully which made me feel shame and guilt. It was stunning to realise that my eccentric mother was actually an abuser and I was left with a lifetime of anxiety and PTSD symptoms.

Her behaviour was subtle but powerful and it took work to uncover the real reasons. They might look not so serious on the surface but that doesn't mean they didn't cut deep and leave lasting scars.

It's hard work OP but worth it to get to the crux.