As one man told me, “I just can’t shut the voice up. My mom used to pick on me no matter what I did—for eating my dinner like a pig, wearing the wrong clothes to church, watching too much TV, whatever. ‘You’re never going to amount to anything,’ she’d say over and over again. I hated her and promised myself I’d never raise my children that way. The irony is that even though I’m a loving, supportive dad to my kids, I’m a complete bastard to myself. I tear myself to shreds all the time, even worse than my mother did.” People with critical parents learn the message early on that they are so bad
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