Being afraid to be happy

One of the biggest challenges that I've faced on my road to recovery is a fear of success, a fear of happiness. Several times on my journey, I have arrived at a point, a state of mind where I was happy, and contented, and full of energy and optimism. But each time this happened at first, it was very short lived.

As I began to start to live and enjoy life and be happy, old messages started playing in my head, and convinced me that I didn't DESERVE this, and to stop right now. What are these messages:
"You're being selfish."
"How can you be happy when there are others who are not... You don't deserve to be happy and enjoy your life and the happiness and contentment that you've earned.
"Don't show emotion, or your true self, it will only bring more pain, or ridicule"
"Don't enjoy this, it will be taken away"
"You're not good enough to have this life"
"Don't take any chances... you might make a mistake and be punished"

Where did these messages come from, I ask myself... They came from the abuse.... the physical abuse that I endured from my parents, that taught me that I was bad, that I was wrong, no matter what. This was re-inforced by the messages I was taught in my Catholic upbringing. These messages were:
"Do NOT be selfish ever" - And happiness was equated with selfishness. To be happy meant I was being selfish. To take care of myself in any way meant I was being selfish. I was depriving someone else of something if I took for my own needs.
"Obey and respect your father and mother" - (Even when they are abusive and do not show love, and are but children emotionally themselves?)
"Good behavior will result in being loved"
"Follow all of the commandments and do NOT sin, and you will be saved" - (Impossible for any human. Only God is perfect, WE all fall short.


All of these are messages of SHAME, designed to control, and keep children behaving as these adults would like us to behave. Whether or not the negative, shame based teachings given to me by the adults in my life we intentional, they all had the effect of keeping me in a prison of shame. I have wondered, how could people of God, priests and nuns... those who were to teach and show Gods love, so off the mark? Because THEY were fallible human beings!!! They had their own skewed perceptions, and their own ideas of what they thought was "right". Trouble is, they didn't know what was right. None of them were perfect. They honestly had NO idea the damage they were doing. Now, these same teachings, given to a child who had not been abused by his/her parents, would probably have been percieved by that child in a completely different way. A positive way... as a goal to strive for, not as further proof of condemnation.

But, I came from a family and parenting style that believed not that to "spare the rod is to spoil the child", but that when frustration and anger builds, the appropriate response is to blame someone around THEM, and vent the frustration, and control the source of frustration. To beat the child, who is percieved to be the problem, because that child is the closest being around, and therefor MUST be the problem. My father could NOT look at himself, and see that the problem was inside HIM, not inside his children. He never learned that he was a shame based person, and had been raised to believe those wrong messages. He still doesn't have that realization to this day... His psyche simply cannot deal with the fact that HE may have been wrong for 80 years.

And this, is where my fear of happiness and success came from. But I know this, and I have the realization that these messages were WRONG. I am good, I am worthy, I am deserving of happiness. I am NOT a mistake.

- Steve