Rejection (Big R) is something I've never stopped feeling. If not the Big R , a non or ambivalent acceptance, a wondering how I'm regarded by whomsoever. I think I felt that way when I was in hospital and those all-powerful doctors deliberated on whether I could go home, or not. Or, at least I thought that's what was going on in their heads. It probably wasn't because my stay in hospital was possibly below the average number of months. Some poor kids were in hospital for two years. But the thought of my or their stay saddens me and angers me. Those bloody doctors had me in their hands as I looked up from my bed hoping for the "you can go home" words. And now, I often feel not good enough to "go home" which translates to "not good enough (NGE)".
I might be over-thinking this but I need to write it down as a possible way of dealing with my NGE feelings. Oh how I hated those doctors - pompous, distant, up-themselves men in white coats calling the shots on my life. And I reflect back on a psychotherapist who never got close to understanding or treating the NGE feelings. So long on his couch and it's only now I, without his help I can understand my sense of non-acceptance and my expectation of rejection, which sometimes, and probably not often enough I curb the spiral which stops me fro doing anything and just waiting around to die so all of this will come to an end. And I have to curb the deluge of self-hatred which I see as the end point of feeling rejected and expecting non-acceptance.
I don't want to be self-indulgent but I've never expressed these feelings in therapy, but they are so prominent in recent months, probably triggered by the virus and my subsequent and first time exploration of the polio virus. And the discovery of photos of a convalescent home where I was sent after my time at the Kids Hospital.
I want to like myself more by not trying to impress people in the dumb hope that they will like me, accept me. But, I can see that no amount of my 'try-hard' behaviour will deliver what I want. I know it has to come from within. Are there any 'Learn to like myself' pills at the chemist shop?
S M