feeling like a disappointment/burden to family?

[eastofeden]

Recently I've been feeling like such failure and disappointment to my parents/grandparents. It all started a few weeks ago when I had a fight with my mum (who has always been very supportive) and she blurted out that she was sick of having to support me and I need to grow up and stop being such a baby, and threatened to kick me out. My mum is very long suffering but she reached the end of her tether, and now I feel like this is how she's really felt about me the whole time, she was just hiding it in order to spare my feelings. It hurt because I know it's completely true and I've been feeling like a useless big baby for years.

I'm 21 and I've never had a job, because I have a severe social phobia and suffer from agoraphobia. I'm really afraid of talking to people in general, and it impacts on my life badly. I've lost a lot of friends, can't make new friends, I don't know how to talk to boys, or anyone for that matter, even over the phone, and when people try to talk to me I freak out and usually try to make a quick exit. The less I socialize, the more bitter and misanthropic I become. I basically just hide in my room and hope people forget I'm there.

I do anything to avoid rejection or abandonment, and I think there is a deep rooted underlying cause from an extremely traumatic childhood event there. But I don't want to blame everyone else. Anytime I talk to people, I just get the vibe that they either are bored of me, hate me, or just simply don't even notice me at all. I've always been hypersensitive to the opinions of others. I won't do something if I feel someone else won't like it. I need constant approval. My nickname in primary school was Crybaby because if a teacher yelled at me I would start crying. Most people develop a thick skin, but I feel like I have never developed a thick skin, and probably never will. My personality is just hypersensitive and emotional by nature, and I always care what other people think of me too much. It stops me doing anything I want to do, or saying anything I want to say.

The other thing is I feel like I'm disappointing my grandparents. They're very responsible and hardworking, and they are really worried about me. The fact that they're worried about me just makes me feel even more embarrassed and humiliated. My grandma was so worried about me that she actually bought me Vitamin D tablets because she was worried I wasn't going out enough and getting any sunshine, which was really nice of her, but I was so embarrassed by it that I ended up crying for hours. I just think they must hate me and think I'm a complete joke, which I kind of am. I thought I was getting my act together, but it feels like I've just gone on a slippery slope back down to the very bottom. I really don't know what to do. I'm going for therapy again soon, the last sessions didn't help me. I just really feel like I'm living the same day over and over. Sometimes I really don't think I'm cut out for this world. I don't think I'm strong enough to handle it.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Sometimes people say all sorts of things in the heat of the moment and many of them are overexaggerated or simply not true anyway. We just go for it and then spend hours kicking ourselves.

What I think is that your mum is under pressure and has snapped. She probably thinks about why you are this way and what she did wrong to cause it. Our parents want us to outshine what they achieved in life and if we don't reach our potential, I reckon they think about whether they are to blame. Hopefully some of the parents on here can answer some of this because I don't have kids. I just know thats how I would feel about it. I would see my child suffering and feel powerless to help them and my thoughts would be along the lines of whether I contributed to this in all sorts of ways.

I hope you don't read that and add it to your perception of failure. You haven't caused your mum to think like that, she will likely think like that on her own no matter how successful you were if something went wrong. You're her daughter. Just look at all the parents in hospitals with sick children and how they always feel so upset because they can't heal them. Thats the natural love of a parent.

But I say that because I think you can use it to see if from your mother's perspective and hopefully understand how she may have thoughts & feelings that attribute to her snapping.

You are not disappointing anyone. You don't want to be like this, nothing is intentional.