She lived in constant fear that someone in authority, perhaps a boss, was watching her like a hawk and waiting for her to fail. In her childhood, her moralistic parents had been so scrupulously judgmental and punitive that she never felt safe at home. They frequently punished her for things she didn’t even know she had done wrong. Betsy remembered as a little girl she only felt truly safe when she could hear her mother vacuuming or talking on the phone because then she knew she wasn’t about to be punished.
