Hi anita,
I hope you are well.
I’ve been away on a trip and getting on with life. My matador has been travelling with me and I think we make a good team. I experience less fear these days but interestingly, now that I have learned to sidestep those emotional blows that used to floor me so easily, I have identified another challenge. I need to learn to stop sidestepping things that I should confront and deal with. Given my history with my mother it is no surprise that I associate dealings with authority figures of any sort with deep pain and humiliation. As a rational adult I know that not everyone is out to hurt me, but the child still quakes in her boots and tends to run away to avoid being hurt.
My matador is good at helping me deal with the fear, but I need to remember to stand firm when I should deal with issues.

It is certainly an interesting journey along this healing path. Thank you for inspiring me to start along it.

Leslie

That thought about anger serving no futher purpose is very profound Anita. I thought my mother being out of my life for 20 years was enough for me, but her death affeted me more than I expected. I clearly had never really dealt with her primary role in my inner critic. Now she no longer exists, maybe that has given me the opportunity to properly tackle my Bull. (Still loving my matador!!) Could it be that my unspoken need for a ‘happy ending’ stopped me addressing these issues before she died? And hanging on to the pain long after its ‘sell-by’ date. What was that about?

Another bit of background – My father died some years ago. I had always thought he was a charming, funny man and I never doubted he loved me. After his death I realised that he must have been quite a weak person to have failed to address issues in the family he knew about (although not necessarily the extent of my abuse). He finally divorced my mother and remarried in another country.

For me, that final separation, has given me the freedom to see them both for the people they were. Not hero and villain, saint and sinner, but just flawed people whose combination had very unfortunate consequences for them and their children.

And there were good times too. Nothing is ever black and white.

I will will strive to remember the good times and make them a focus for my childhood memories in future. If I do anything else I will remain a victim. Leslie the matador and Leslie the victim do not need to co-exist.

Sorry again for taking such a chunk out of your thread. I am again grateful for the opportunity you have given me to come to this understanding. I’d be pleased to keep up this discussion, but I want you to knoe what a difference this has made already.

With much gratitude, Leslie

I recognise the feelings you describe, anita, Of course we did not have the same story, but I think the pain was very similar. That’s why we understand each other’s story and why, for me, our conversation helps me move on at a fast pace.

The anger is strong, but I think the sense of betrayal is even stronger. Betrayal is a horrible thing. It makes one feel that it is one’s own fault, to be imperfect, unloveable, a tragic disappointment, a dissolution of mother’s dreams. But looking at it from an outside viewpoint, it isn’t hard to see that for the crock of sh!t it really is. It is not a child’s job to make her mother’s dreams come true. Compeletely the opposite, if anything. What a massive betrayal for any mother to make her daughter feel that way! Especially to make you feel so unsafe that you did not know if either one of you might wake in the morning. That is horrendous and it’s no wonder it evokes intense feelings even now.

I am still angry at my mother, furious even, but as I come to understand the enormity of the injustice I suffered, I also – strangely, and somewhat against my will – begin to feel sorry for whatever tragedy made her do what she did. I suspect she had no more control over what happened to her than we had over what happened to us. It doesn’t make it right. But it puts it in perpective. How very sad to think that she might have written about her pain in the same way we have written about ours.

I’m not feeling THAT forgiving yet, but it is certainly something to think about.

I know what you mean about the “happily ever after” existence, a “problem solved” status. I was looking for that too. But I think that is also part of the baggage we were loaded with.

My success with the bull seems to be telling me that there is no ‘Promised Land’ or ‘Knight in Shining Armour’ or Happy Ever After’. But that is not a problem, instead I think it is a huge relief from having to be ‘perfect’ in order to deserve good things in life. All of that is part of the bull.

Good things and bad things happen to everyone. You deserve the best, so be the best you can be. Your best is different on different days. That’s OK, it’s part of being human.

Background info, my mother was a beauty queen who wanted me (and the rest of her life) to be perfectly beautiful. Well – on the days she wanted me at all, she wanted me to be perfect – mostly she just resented me. I guess she was carrying a lot on her shoulders too. Not an excuse for abuse, but maybe I’m lucky to be able to see the reality of the burden. I don’t think she ever understood it and was definitely in denial until the day she died.

Interesting question, who has the bigger problem; the person in denial (who drinks themselves to death), or the person who understands it isn’t right and struggles to get past the pain without esorting to substance abuse? Hypothetical question since the person who is dead has neatly removed themselves from having do deal with anything.

Hi anita,

I’ve been really busy, so not had time to get on here much. I hope you are well.

I have an important deadline looming and normally I’d be in a pretty fearful place right now. But I’m not; my matador is doing a pretty good job for me here. He has Senor Fearbull on the ropes, to mix a sporting metaphor. I still get the bad feelings of course, but their ability to get to me is massively reduced. Why did it take me so long to start dealing with them? Maybe that is a new thing I could beat myself up over?

That’s a joke, I have no intention of giving myself a hard time over anything new!

I’m posting today as I got some further bad news this morning – just what I needed on top of everything else that is going wrong right now. A few weeks ago all this would have sent me into a downward spin that would have taken weeks, or months, to get out of. Today I watched from the sidelines as things went crashing down – but I did not feel the need to go down with them. I’m a little sad, frustrated, a bit angry, but I’m coping. Things are definitely changing for the better.

I am sorry to hear you aren’t well. I hope your cold clears up soon and isn’t one of the lingering ones.

When I said that the triggers for my fear are external, I mean that I currently have no control of it, no choice but to feel it. , Whereas I now recognise that the anger is my choice of response to a situation. Of course I know that they are both just chemicals in my brain, but I experience the two very differently. My anger comes from the same experiences as my fear but, as you say, fear is very powerful. I’m not sure I’d call it the most powerful emotion, because that feels like it is abdicating responsibility somehow. I can master it, I am sure. It won’t be easy, but I struggled with piano lessons too and I bet if I’d persevered with those I could have learned to knock out a decent tune eventually.

Time and patience and perseverance. New mantra!

Take care

Leslie

Dear anita

Following on from what you said yesterday, today I have been thinking about Anger. Anger is a very strange thing, at least it is in my life. I get angry about so many things. I just have to think about the word and my jaws clench and my shoulders rise. If I rethink all of the reasons I have to actually be angry with the world I get even more wound up. Soooo much energy goes into such a (mostly) pointless feeling. There is no point in my being angry with my mother, she would not then, and now never can, admit that she was wrong to treat me like she did. So now I feel angry with myself for holding on to the anger for so long. Oh dear, that is NOT an improvement!

Except the anger with myself is brief because I can see how ridiculous it is to blame myself for this feeling. I can unclench my jaw, lower my shoulders, take a deep breath and remind myself that to blame myself or others is pointless. It may be justified, but it is still pointless. Time and patience…. and breathe …. take the time to exercise the patience, examine the painful feeling without feeling the pain, and a beautiful calm follows. My calm may last only a few moments, because it is not a natural state for me, but it is something to work on. Calm is so much nicer than anger, why would I not want to get rid of anger and replace it with calm.

So now I’ve decided that this is not about my mother any more. She was what she was and she did what she did. I don’t need to carry that on my back any longer. She has no power over, unless I choose to give it to her. This is about me and how I
get on with my life.

Another long post, I’m afraid, but I feel so much better for getting this written down. I can’t thank you enough for giving me the space to share this.

Today was a good day.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Eris.

Dear anita,

You are one of the few people I have ever met who understands where I’m coming from, I am so glad I took the time to post in your thread. I am happy for all those who don’t comprehend this pain, but I get angry with people who use their good fortune to try to deny my reality.

If I consider the consequences of the abuse, I definitely see patterns of negative behaviour that I have repeated throughout my life. I m better at spotting them now, but they still seem like a very uncomfortable ‘comfort zone’ that I return to over and over. As you say, core beliefs are hard to change.

A major issue for me is that I find it almost impossible to ask people for help. I quite see how this came about when my main source of help as a child was unpredictable and physically and emotionally abusive and would arbitrarily elect to not help when I needed it. I also am terrified of offending anyone in authority over me – for obvious reasons. If my boss asks to see me, for example, I will think of every tiny thing I might have done wrong and possibly even have to go and be physically sick before I can go into his office. I more often than not end up getting praised for a job well done, but I never expect that to happen. I can now stand aside and observe these frightening feelings without being swept away by them, recognising them for what they are. I can’t yet stop them coming though. Time and patience, time and patience.

Since my mother died it has become clear to me that, despite our lack of contact, I harboured a deep desire for everything to magically turn out all right one day. When they nailed down her coffin lid, all those hopes were finally, and permanently, dashed. (They were vain hopes anyway; my brother tells me she was in denial to the end, insisting that we had normal childhoods.)

Writing this down is very helpful as I begin to see that this new surge of rage and pain is not the backwards step I feared and is actually quite healthy. Hopefully my grieving for the mother I never had and the childhood that was stolen will now be able to complete properly and I can finally move on.

Please do share your thoughts and experience, I am finding this discussion really helpful and I hope you do too.