ADD and the effects of AVOIDANT Behaviors

Views others as undependable
Views self as unlovable or "too good" for others
Relationships feel either threatening to one's sense of control, not worth the effort, or both
Compulsive self-reliance
Passive withdrawal


Wow It is so amazing when my eyes are opened. At 3 a.m. I awoke. All of a sudden I saw it.
The "Views self as unlovable or "too good" for others" statement. I never really saw it before.

In the esteem development it is 5 phase
security
sense of self
affiliation
mission
competency

In my family of origin I never ever felt safe, EVER! That is the foundational asset of bonding and attaching. I was the last of 8 kids, 7 that lived. As each sibling that was home in my youth left I had little to no affiliations with them afterward. Almost all of them never looked back once they got out they wanted little to nothing to do with my parents. I think that only in adult hood a few of us have gotten acquainted but only one sister and I are friends. We are safe together, we each know who we are and we both have dealt with the abuse in recovery. She is the one who came forward in my early recovery and affirmed all that I had remembered. We have a sense of affiliation with each other. Even so we are both broken in our ability to really attach. But we have more so than any of the others have with me or I with them.

Two of the brothers are somewhat affiliated, I think three loosely. They were all stair step in age.

So is it any wonder that these things apply to me. I will only speak of how they apply to me for that is all I can face or change.

I had little to nothing to use as a reference in life. A measure to asses my safety for I survived not thrived during my youth and yet even in small nuances yet. These things are those being challenged.
It occurred to me that I have always looked as if I thought I was better and I always compared myself with what my siblings did and tried to learn from their mistakes. It was all I had to go on.
Then I became a Christian and the Bible became my Guide Book. It is the only thing that taught me what my life was suppose to look like. What I was supposed to be like and how I was suppose to act.
All the while NEVER feeling safe around ANY of my siblings or parents for that matter.
It has left me a stranger to their children and their children children. And so it continues as it is said the ADD of families is passed on.

I think I found a false sense of safety in that measure and that I was better, or doing life better than what I had witnessed before me. How arrogant that not only seems but is! At least I am sure it appears so. But I really do not choose to believe that. I think I found safety all these years though in believing it. That my life would somehow be O.K. If I could just learn by watching and try so hard to gain from their examples both positive and negative. But it was the negative that got focused on because it was that that left me so threatened. When threatened I passively withdraw to try to keep safe. I compulsively depend on self-reliance and then I know the motive (good or bad) and what the effects be they were my doing...it was not going to be "done" to me anymore. I could not depend on my family, even if or when they have been dependable in adulthood. Broken I could not relax to rely on them. I had to stick to that only safety net I knew. Self Reliance and Passive Withdrawal.

What a yo yo that must be to others in my life. Especially my siblings. Is it any wonder though? We were not raised to be friends. We survived youth until we each could get the h--- out of there! Then there was no looking back for each one ( with the exception of a sister who came home from a violent relationship) She made a beautiful outfit for my graduation from high school. However she was going to have her first son, it was only a few months after I had lost mine. I could not emotionally deal with it all. I was a teenager then with that attitude to match. I was not about to hang around when graduation and a boyfriend could make my escape. My siblings left home then had to try to survive on their own out in the wide world with many a ship wreck.

Grace is unmerited favor, somehow in my adult life I have received a lot of it. Perhaps I owe my sibling a debt of gratitude for they struggled the road before me. They taught me unwittingly so, to keep going. Fighters they all are, tenacious souls. In that thought I think for the first time in my 48 years I feel a little more affiliated with each one of them. I always saw them as strangers. As each one before me was kicked out, run away, eloped or given a way I believed a lie. That lie got rooted deeper as each left. Often violent exits, and I remained there. Somehow I was going to do better than that. I was the only one who did not run away. Oh man trust me I wanted to. But they showed me what could happen to me if I did. It made me look so "better than thou". I wasn't and am not. I was just trying to learn and live and get out of there in one piece. My Parents tried to by their way out of the guilt and that made me "have" more things in my youth. All those things I gave away literally. I was terrified. I even tried new things. I got on honor role, worked so hard for it thinking that my parents might love me "if". I did not change anything. Just made my siblings think I thought I was better than them...well truth be told in the sickness of ADD that must of somehow made me make it through the madness. I am not nor never have been any more worthy of favor than anyone else.

I made better choices because I had better teachers. My siblings unwittingly were some of them.
I held against them that they were not there. I felt abandoned as a child. Well you can't abandon an Adult.
Relationships feel either threatening to one's sense of control, not worth the effort, or both.
As an adult I would just walk away. If I felt out of control of my safety it was often the only solution I knew to do. It would be so hard to make amends over and over again with the craziness that familiar dysfunction can have. Often with all of the other things going on in my life it did feel like it was not worth the effort. Not worth the strife. The conflict however of what that Ol' life manual said would press me back to relationship with them. That Bible must of seamed a hammer to some of them.

Well boy howdy I think I am growing a sense of self.
Coming down to where I ought to be.
Humility.