Trauma: Whenever someone compliments me, my reflex reaction is to undersell my achievement
Core wound: I will be rejected and abandoned, once they see me and find out how broken and unworthy I really am
Two days ago, when talking on the phone with a friend, she gave me a wonderful and long list of why she thinks I’m an amazing person, and after that, as I wanted to tell her about what that did to me, she told me how she was puzzled about how that didn’t elicit a reaction from my end.
In about the last two years, I started feeling less threatened by receiving compliments, but having said that, the woman I was in a wonderful relationship with last year; she gave me one amazing supportive compliment after the other, especially as we got to know each other. And while I could receive them, I also tried to tone them down. Not nearly as much as I had always done so, though. We both noticed that I felt unease when receiving compliments or gifts, and she became less free with complimenting me; and I am sorry for that; to both of us. It’s her way of showing love and appreciation, but for me it was threatening. Words of affirmation and gifts, two types of love language felt lilke a threat to me then; not anymore.
I’ve “known” that, for about 8/9 years now, and as I grew more aware of it, the “need” for me to downplay these started diminishing. Still, I couldn’t put my finger on the “why”. Why would a grown person feel threatened by a gift or a compliment?!?!?
I think I finally figured out the “why”.
Receiving a heart-felt compliment, or a gift, which is a physicial compliment, implies that the other person sees me, and appreciates me, or appreciates something I did. But why does that feel threatening? Life-threatening?
In my life the two people who mattered most to me, saw me. saw me for who I truly was. and they left me.
My father when I was five years old, and my mother a few years later. This is the how and when.
They both figured out I wasn’t their sweet little boy; they saw me, broken, different, not a boy. And left me.
Yet, I received gifts, and compliments. I had received presents for my birthday, for good report cards. All the same, they left me. Again. And again.
For me, receiving a compliment or a gift, was the prelude to being left, rejected, abandoned.
The only way to counter it, was to diminish my accomplishment, react lukewarm to the compliment;
How telling is it, that after my father left me, and my mother prepared or bought a birthday cake for me, I begged her to not make a big fuss out of it, and when she insisted on displaying the number of candles corresponding to my age, I literally said “no mom, one candle is enough”. A few years later I simply wished my birthday wasn’t even celebrated anymore; and tried to get out from under it. It felt like bigotry, like sparkly, shiny rejection and abandonement. Fake. If you’d truly celebrate me you’d not have left me in the first place!!!
This summer, I was happy my mother didn’t insist on celebrating my birthday; and I hoped that she wouldn’t even send a message; which she did. I do, and would like to celebrate my birthday; but with people I do not feel rejected and abandoned by.
Too often, have I received sparkly and shiny compliments and gifts from people who had and would, again, reject and abandon me.
