Old dogma dies hard

I'm sure that Jews and Roman Catholics don't have a monopoly on guilt by any means, but damnation! those two religions certainly know how to set the pattern for lifelong guilt-tripping. Hubby and I've sometimes playfully argued which one is better at instilling guilt tendencies. I say it's the RC's since they built upon their Jewish antecedents and added their own exclusively Christian touches. He says it's the Jews because they've had more millenia to perfect guilt.

Hell! I can feel guilty about things that happened years ago...things that were honest mistakes (should have caught that sooner...done better...avoided it...etc.)...things I've long since been forgiven or apologized for...you name it, I can feel guilty about it.

Granted, in my case, some of this stems from co-dependent tendencies, but it really is difficult to get free of those old patterns of self-blame.

Anybody else have a religious background that fosters ridiculously beating yourself to a pulp?

I don't think that it take a religious background, Dot. Many women are raised to be people pleasers. We are taught to feel guilty if someone else feels they were slighted, or to think that we did something wrong if someone else is mean to us - we weren't nice enough! We feel guilt that we aren't pretty enough, popular enough, thin enough, popular with the boys - remember high school? We feel guilt for forgetting someone's name or birthday, for not being Superwoman, able to do it all with not a hair out of place, for not pleasing our parents or mate, for not being able to give our children everything we would like, for ruining dinner, saying something thoughtless, for not keeping in touch well enough.

So yes, I used to beat myself up all the time. Now I try very hard to move on when it comes up.

I was brought up RC.

I can't really say that I have guilt at breaking their rules, but I did do things specifically because they told me not to.

It was this last year that I discovered that I was letting them control me as much if I purposefully broke their rules, as if I was specifically following them.