When I was a very young child, I quickly learned to jump out of myself whenever my mother was angry at me – which was often. Her anger was very scary to me and I wanted to get her to stop. Sometimes I felt so crushed and shattered by her anger that I felt like I was going to die. So I would jump out of myself to try to please her, hoping that this would get her to like me instead of hate me.
Of course, I continued doing this in my marriage, as my husband’s anger scared me just as much as my mother’s. I didn’t realize that any time I went out of myself instead of going inside and tending to my own feelings (which I couldn’t do as a child and didn’t know how to do as a young adult) I was abandoning myself.
