fear of success

I must have a fear of success as I have a fear of everything....my fear of success is a variation of the "more" theme. Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like I always need to be doing something more. To say I was successful would be bad...tempting the gods...I am not sure what would happen if I admitted I was okay with my life but it wouldn't be good.

Work - Unless I was president of the company how can I say I am successful as there in another position above me. I could admit I am a successful gardner but I only have two rose bushes and only one blooms, to be successful I need to have the entire fence around my house lined with rosebushes, but then that is not enough as I need a vegetable garden...then a herb garden.

I never think anything I do is good enough or at least I am never willing to say so outloud.

I know this comes from childhood. My fear of success is based in not wanting to draw my parents attention or to make their insecurities come out. Growing up my mother's favorite refrain was "Look what you made me do!" She would burn dinner and blame it on me instead of the wine/gin she was drinking. Since she was my mom I believed her. Even though somewhere inside I must have known it wasn't true.

This is the source of the "edge" that I drank to get rid of. My parents were very vindictive and if you said you liked something (ie Girl Scouts, an upcoming slumber party) they would take it away as punishment for something wrong I did. I can see now I was a great kid, did chores, got good grades, didn't sass. I was basically a meek little mouse and they liked that because then they could feel powerful. When they weren't putting me or my siblings down, they were putting down our neighbors or relatives. I grew up knowing if I wanted attention from my mom I just had to gossip negatively about the neighbors, my friends mom's etc.

I am a grown woman but I keep this negative self-talk going because it is familiar to me. I am overly critical of any success I have have. Nothing is good enough for me, somewhere deep inside no matter how proud I might be of myself I think I am burning dinner somewhere and I just don't realize it yet. I am constantly not satisfied. I worry if I say I am happy...the gods, my parents, someone is going to sweep down and take it away as punishment so I better verbalize dissatisfaction.

I meet with my sponsor one morning a week. We are done with the AA steps. We decided to do something fun but meaningful so we are completing the pull-out sections from Oprah magazine (they have stopped including this section in the mag but I am a hoarder so I had old copies).This week we had this question.

Just as children have special toys that never fail to delight them, we need to have people, activities, music or books that bring us joy no matter what. Who or what is on your pleasure list? Is it time to add a few items? Strike some? If you haven't made room for pleasure in your life on a regular basis, how could you do so now?

She read it out-loud and as she read I got all fearful. "shit I thought I need more pleasure things, what would I strike, add". She went to a place of peace and started listing tons of items, small ones like..."doing the crossword puzzle and sudko from the paper". She finds joy in life and I look for ways I am not enough, ways I should be doing more - even more pleasures.