Is it personality?

I just literally heard someone say that it was their personality to be hard on themselves.  And I started musing.  “Is it?  No, really.  Is it?”  Would that be your personality?

When you are young and someone you admire always points something out to you that is incorrect, does that make it a learned behaviour?  Or does a child get born with one?

I must admit that I think I learned it from people being negative about and to me.  I can remember thinking that my life would never be right no matter what I tried to do.  But do you know the amazing thing?  I had a slight thread of hope left in me because I had ONE person who helped me send poems into competitions and I knew she believed in me.

And then when our son was born, he refused to crawl (but I knew that was pain in his tummy) and COULD have walked alone at 11 months but didn’t until 19 months because HE wanted to be absolutely, positively, 1000000% sure that he was NOT going to fall over when he launched out alone.  And this kind of thing has continued throughout his ten years of life.

So, now that I have written out the reasons why Johnathan did and I did, it makes SENSE to realise that actually people have different REASONS for being “hard on themselves.”  

And I will know that although we don’t necessarily use the same language, the exercises we are given DO help if and when you use them.