East Wrote:...The thing that f*cks me up...(I have this written down for my therapist)...I was fine thinking they were just evil because it was easy (and true) but over the years hearing about mental illness not being anyone's fault I felt guilty for not liking or helping them ...and that I should have tried to fix them or accept it.....
...maybe I am trying to compensate now...UGH
Sounds like.
In brief: None of us are responsible for our birth families' dynamics, whatever they may be. We did not cause them nor can we repair them as children. They are the psychological environments into which we are born (no less 'accidental', perhaps, than the geographical location), and to which we learn to adapt and (in some instances) survive despite them.
But the external is internalized. Everything we think we know about the external world takes shape within our neuro-phenomenological structures (biology+meaning, broadly speaking).
I ask myself this question: Who would I be had I had different parents, a different family dynamic, had been born in completely different circumstances? Would *I* be "me"? It seems to me there are fundamental, essential, qualities that are innate; however, around that--and to a certain extent emanating from that--a 'personality' is formed in direct response to the conditions of early life. Yes, I would be me, but then again, I might not recognize myself if we met.
To an extent, then, "repetition compulsion" is the reconstruction of the familiar ('family', get it?) *which reinforces our constructed sense of identity*.
Somewhat jokingly I like to say: "We're all just figments of our own imagination." It's a joke but I believe there is far more truth to it than most of us are comfortable admitting.