“I Was Told That I Was Useless!”

I remember listening to Dov Baron in 2006 and thinking about I would love to know as much as he did. At this point, I had already been learning about self-development for about three years, so it wasn’t as though I hadn’t come across anyone like this before.

However, although I had listened to other people who spoke about self-development before, they didn’t have the same effect on me. This was someone who had all the qualifications, and he had the experiences, too.

I was hooked!

I listened to all of the audios that I could find of his and the eBooks that he had written. Unfortunately, the courses that he taught were a long plane journey away, so I wasn’t able to get to them.

If someone had told me when I was younger, that I would be reading books and listening to these kinds of people, I would have found it hard to believe. I didn’t particularly enjoy school – I preferred to spend time outside.

It Was Always There

What become clear as time went by was that even though I didn’t enjoy school, I did have the desire to learn and to expand my mind. That was, of course, as long as it related to something that actually interested me.

I have always been curious, though, as I would often ask questions as a child. Yet, if did ask questions when I was younger, I was frequently criticised by my mother for doing so.

A Number of Factors

I found it hard at school, incredibly hard, and I wasn’t expected to do well at school, either. The only thing that was expected of me was to help out our guest house and to behave; that was all that mattered.

But even though I started to read books a number of years after I had left school and appreciated learning, it didn’t have much of an effect on how I saw myself. What I mean is that I didn’t still myself as someone who was intelligent.

Verbal Abuse

And along with being told criticised for asking questions, I was also criticised for making a mistake or not doing something as fast as my mother wanted. If I did something wrong, I would often be told that I was “useless”, and what would make this even more humiliating is that I was often told this when other guests were around.

As a result of hearing this word, and other words, over a number of years, I came to accept what I was told. I then did what I could to make sure that I stayed out of the way, which meant that I would spend a lot of time by myself.

One Moment

I remember having a reading in 2011 or 2012, and being told that I was an ‘intellectual’. I had no idea what this meant, so I asked him and he went into some of the reasons as to why this was.

I appreciated hearing this, but it wasn’t possible for me to completely accept what I was told. If anything, I was just a pretender, and someone who saw other people as having all the answers.

Inner Conflict

On one hand, then, I wanted to be seen as someone who was intelligent and capable, and, on the other, I couldn’t accept it when someone gave me positive feedback. This didn’t stop me from reading and writing, though.

The wounded child within me wanted to be recognised, and this was one of the things that gave me the drive to keep going. I gradually came to see what was going on and this allowed me to work through the pain that was within me.