Exposure Anxiety-Donna Williams

"It can propel the person into projecting the want or need onto someone else, compulsively distracting from self, even giving away that which was wanted or needed so badly. Eventually, Exposure Anxiety conditions the person to experience want and need as a source of extreme frustration, self-sabotage and loss of control over self-expression. The result is the person becomes conditioned by this internal invisible prison-ward/parent to experience want and need as a bad experience. Eventually, the person can only use those mirrored wants and needs of others or appear to have none -- so easy-going, so easily pleased. This leaves the person appearing functional but too often deeply disturbed. Their trappedness is now successfully hidden, even socially applauded by those who see the person as something far removed from the extremely frustrated, invisible, disconnected or buried person they may feel themselves to be."

*sigh* That's the story of my life. I will comment on it more after I finish the book.