Affirmations in (W)hole

My therapist asked me if I would do some self affirmations. I laughed and told her no. I just feel silly. I can’t. So she now has me “working up to it.” I have to start listing things I admire in those around me, and then list 3 strengths about myself. I’m supposed to jot them down every day for two weeks and then she’ll give me a new step. I wonder if it’s cheating to write the same 3 things every day? :/ I don’t really like me very much.

She asked me when I think all of this guilt and blaming myself for everything started, and I said probably late elementary school. I specifically remember in the 4th grade, a conflict with my teacher where she pulled me up out of my desk by my arm and left fingerprint bruises on my arm, then knocked my desk over and spilled it all over the floor and told me to clean it up. I told her no, she made that mess and that I wasn’t going to clean it up. I had my mess contained in my desk until she spilled it everywhere, how much sense does it make for me to have to clean that up? I didn’t do that! But my parents 100% sided with her and said that I should have listened the first time and if I had been doing what I was supposed to be (keeping a neat desk, I suppose, as I think this was the only reason she was upset with me) then none of it would have happened. “This is all your fault,” basically. Similar situation in 7th grade, a teacher grabbed me by my HAIR and pulled me up out of a desk. Because I wasn’t sitting in my chair “correctly.” Again, my parents said I shouldn’t have been sitting on the chair that way and it wouldn’t have happened.

Here’s the worst part.

I think I’m passing this on to MYYY kids. What I’ve been thinking of as “teaching them to take responsibility for their own actions” is now beginning to sound very similar to this trend from my childhood. I think the biggest difference is that my dad would NEVER, evvvver apologize to me for anything, and I make sure to apologize to my kids when I’m in the wrong. But I think I’ve been pointing out too many negatives and not emphasizing the positives when perhaps it wasn’t completely necessary. OR maybe I’m just having mom guilt. I mean, I definitely have mom guilt. About everything all the time.