always feeling responsible

[silentrhino]

One of my issues is always feeling responsible (in the extreme) for any bad behavior of other people, even strangers.  I have a very hard time looking at others and ever judging them as anything negative i.e. cruel, angry, jealous, crazy, mean.  If someone says something hurtful or mean or out of the blue to me I feel as if I must emit something that makes them speak to me in such a manner.  I don't have good perspective to keep these type of people on the outside.  I think it's because I was tortured physically and emotionally for attempting to fight against my abusers for so long that I don't separate well. Does anyone else struggle with this.  I can literally see an obviously crazy person on a train for example and if he or she says something mean to me I will automatically wonder what I did wrong.  Then I go home and have to self harm.  It's endless cycling, I'm trying to stop.  Having trouble knowing what is outside the self and what is the self.

[Blueberry]

  to you silentrhino.

I used to feel responsible for "bad behaviour" of everybody in any group I was in, but not for strangers. "Bad behaviour" meaning something that would upset / anger M of course. I was terrified of the haranguing that would come, automatically assuming I would be harangued and not the others. So other people experienced me as very controlling, but I was just trying to avoid a repeat of my childhood.     It's not too surprising really. My M said more than once that the family's problems started at my birth. They didn't and I even knew that back then, but obviously the words still had a long-lasting effect.