Maybe there's not much difference? Just a random thought, b/c sometimes for me defending is to get others to see what I've accepted. Peace to you.

Yup. As you know, I grew up in a war zone as a missionary kid overseas, arfie, so I'm programmed for chaos, not peace. Sending you support for doing things differently rather than self sabotage.

((((Arfie))))
Yea you making sense, I mean I don’t know if you really want to be making sense to me lol but yea for sure I get what you’re sayin

I wish I could articulate better my words still aren’t so good today but
I think you do amazing job & for me you give me inspiration a lot to never give up

((((Abrazos))))) <3

thank you, guys.

leo, for sure, the lines are fuzzy, at best.

muji, healing hopes for moving on from the chaos of our youths. life in the underbelly of luxury and masked pretense often feels an undeclared war zone.

missy, thank you for the validation. your words are better than you are giving yourself credit for. may you one day believe in yourself as solidly as i believe in you. anima.

Recognizing my accomplishments are hard to. Both in my work life and in recognizing myself.

It also comes from feeling that there are always people better than me. And it's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy because it prevents me from moving forward if I'm not paying attention.

ditto here, pineapple. i always feel delusional when i recognize my own accomplishments and hysterically mistrustful of people who compliment me on those accomplishments. from the therapy angle, i'm still on the step of accepting a compliment at face value. a simple "thank you" is a vast improvement over threatening to cut people's tongues out if they don't take their filthy compliment back. god bless the brave souls who called my bluff and refused to take their compliments back.

and then there's the feeling that there are always people better than me. . . i'm not sure i have it in me to type that much today. . .

sigh. . .

mark not where you are today. mark how far you have come. ~anon

I think it was wrong of people whom I looked up to who have said that there will always be people better than you. It was a way they used it to motivate you. All it did was motivate me to do hard work. But I feel despite hard work I have gotten nowhere. Again that self-fullfiling prophecy. But I still value my hard work regardless. I guess what I am saying is I haven't felt recognizes. Yet this feeling of unrecognituon comes from me being unable to recognize myself. I become this robot so to speak that does things but have felt I am not deserving of any rewards that may come with it.

Which also goes back to what people have told me before "you shouldn't have to do things and expect a participation award everytime"

Thus the environment I grew up in- I became the product.

under that paradigm, we are ALL products of our environment. as a child prostitute, i am not even eligible for the bottom rung of that metaphorical ladder. that's me, among the unwashed masses drowning in the cesspool beneath the ladder of your birthright. let us not speak of what is trickling down the ladders of your metaphorical birthright.

for my own self-esteem, i had to drop that body of metaphors, altogether. life is not a competition and it is illogical to expect perfection from mere humans.

for what it's worth
thank you for the unintended grin with your "robot" analogy. in 1979 when my hubby was just a cute refugee from the "milk carton" of his racially exclusive upper middle class neighborhood, he was poetically humorous in his refusal to "be an industrial robot." a few decades later he was an official "robocop" (internet security) and routinely irritated when i chided him about ^it^. he retired from that career earlier this year and is finally developing a sense of humor over the evolutions.

insert mark twain here.
"of course fact is stranger than fiction. fiction is obliged to make sense."