Therapo

Which do you fear most; judgement or punishment?

That was the question my therapist asked me to go home and ask myself, taking into consideration the long list of things I constantly beat myself up over.

My first thought was that the answer had to be a fear of judgement. I can handle pretty much anything thrown at me, even if it feels like I’m drowning. Punishment doesn’t mean much to me in the sense that I can atone or apologise without sincerity, as I’ve done many times before. Hell, anyone can. It’s hard to work through in my mind let alone on a computer, but when I think about the notion of judgement vs. punishment, judgement feels far more final, permanent. Once someone’s made a judgement on something or someone, it’s difficult to change. Unfortunately, I’m constantly changing and in the process, making mistakes.

As I was running over time (thank Jeebus for Bulk-Billing, a definite perk of working medical) going through my stream-of-consciousness, my therapist stopped me and asked a couple of very valid questions that I had not even factored in: Who is anyone to judge me? Who am I to judge myself? Only God can judge me, etc.

Okay. So I consider myself an Agnostic so didn’t care too much for that last statement she so casually threw in there, but I have a lot to think about with the two questions she asked. I don’t know what anyone else is going through, and in the way she put it, my convoluted perception of everyone watching and caring about how I live my life… well, I felt a bit awful because it was/is nauseatingly self-indulgent. As much as I don’t like having the mirror pointed back at me, she had a point. Damn her and her qualifications from working and studying for so very many years, she had a point. Wench.

All of this is part of a process that we are going through together. We’ve determined that as much as I don’t like to say it aloud, I actually do hate my mother. My end-goal is to forgive her. My first goal is to forgive myself. Part of both is to delve into the things she’s done, the things I’ve done, the motivation behind action and reaction, etc. I’m prone to sabotaging relationships for fear of people getting too close, and am in many ways extremely comfortable with being alone, despite hating the feeling of loneliness. I carry a lot of guilt and shame that hasn’t made sense for a very long time, and I am dedicated to finding a little bit of that inner-peace before I turn my mother’s hate and my hate for her onto my own daughter.

So. While I think about that between sessions, tell me which you fear most if you *had* to choose; judgement or punishment?