Chapter 36: Responsibility

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Adult children are either

super-responsible or

super-irresponsible.

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This is another symptom that came from how I managed my feelings and my anxiety. 

Since I never learned that anxiety comes mainly from emotional constipation — burying feelings that want and need to be expressed — I blamed it on external stressors.

Like the endless To Do list that was my life. 

This list chased me.

It felt, to the damaged Kid inside me, like an endless test of my personal worth.

So sometimes I tried to reduce my anxiety by finishing everything on that list.

And when that failed, by saying Fuck it and turning my back on responsibility entirely. 

Neither approach worked. 

Since hyper-responsibility left me anxious and exhausted.

And hyper-irresponsibility left me anxious and guilty. 

So I swung like a pendulum between these two unhealthy extremes, confusing the hell out of myself and everyone around me.