Things that shape our self image

I was reminded the other day of how much other peoples words can shape our self image. I would like to caution all parents to be very careful with the words you say to your children when dealing with their challenges, the wrong word spoken can have a drastic impact on their lives.


I have spent sometime lately trying to remember things from my childhood. I don't want to sound negative, but I don't remember much of the positive stuff from my childhood. Sure I remember the birthday parties and the youth ralies, the afternoons spent riding 4-wheelers with the cousins, and the time spent in Florida(the beach and Orlando). What I also remember with more vivid detail are the not so nice moments, I'm not going into detail with them here but let's just say they were there.


No my parents were not abusive, or were they? The most vivid detail I remember about many of my moments with dad is him yelling at me, for what? I honestly don't remember but I remember him yelling at me a lot. It seemed like I could do nothing right in his eyes, and in some respects I still haven't heard anything from him except negative comments about the way I do things, my expectations of my kids, my way of discipline, and my lack of self image. I am now a grown man and have been dealing with this stuff for many years. My wife and I are in marriage counseling and this aspect of my relationship with my father has surfaced as part of the problem, I have resigned myself to a point of either don't try or fail, that success is not possible for me.

This is a cycle that is furthered by the fact that my father is a very successful business man, having owned multiple businesses over the course of my life and managed to build a nice, more than comfortable lifestyle for himself and my mother, while me and my wife struggle to keep the bills payed and food on the table (while having to occasionally ask for $$ help from HIM).

I'm sick of this cycle, I'm tired of the rat race, it's time to disconnect from this cycle and move on, but how? How do you "reprogram" a human mind, a computer is easy, format the hard drive and reload the new operating system, but how do you do that with the human computer? You can't just wipe the hard drive, you somehow have to get the "corrupt" data out and replace it with new data without damaging the person further..This has proven to be a formidable task.

I've found myself getting bitter and lashing out about things I cannot change lately as I try to come to terms with this stuff. How do I mount this problem without becoming depressed? How do I move forward with the memories of the past laying so heavy in my mind? How do I find time among 4 kids, a wife, and a full time job to squeeze in time to reflect with enough time left over to rest?

I find myself at the point of falling into depression and it is scaring me. I fell into depression once already in life and ended up in the drug and alcohol abuse for a period of about a year and a half, not a place I want to revisit.

My counselor said to try to bring back the memories, I have made effort but I have managed to push them so far down that I can't get them out, I remember the yelling but I can't recount the individual instances, I found the box but I can't find the individual "film". Not only that but I am still dealing with this stuff on a daily basis from him even today, I still use that "box". No he is not yelling anymore, but the belittlement continues even today. How do you take things out of a box you are still putting stuff into?

How do I break free from this prison? HOW DO I REPROGRAM?