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  • #101562
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Marie:

    I didn’t know you are only 19, my goodness! I agree with you that “wisdom does not equal age.”

    I also agree that the child in us is “the truest and most innocent thing we own” and that giving the child in us “attention, love and caring” is the way to go, necessary for our mental health. When you repress your emotions, you shut down the child in a kind of a jail cell. It takes a very gentle and patient approach to free the jailed child. It is not as easy as opening a door. You have to take her hand and lead her step by step, with tons of patience as she is scared.

    anita

    #101834
    Eris
    Participant

    Hi Anita, I like this thread and its gentle message. I really enjoyed Seaisland’s poem and Marie’s contribution which have given me a new insight into my own problems.
    My relationship with my mother was poor, When she died a few months back I hadn’t spoken to her in 25 years. I thought I had dealt with the issues, but all of the well-meant messages of condolence describing what a lovely person she was, hurt me more than I could ever have imagined. I fel as though this invalidated the years of abuse and betrayl I suffered. To see my mother as not a bad person, but just a bad person for ME, is both liberating and painful and will require further reflection in the weeks ahead. Thank you for getting me started.
    Now to share a technique I have found helpful. I sometimes visualise myself as a set of Russian dolls with the little tiny child in the centre surrounded and cared for by my older child & adult selves. Sometimes we walk had in hand enjoying the wind in our hair or dance in a circle. But sometimes we nest inside each other for peace and protection.
    When a child has not been protected as she ought to have been, she develops ways of dealing with the world to protect herself. For me this might involve distancing myself from people in order to avoid being hurt, for example. My older selves need to remind my younger selves that we do not need to be afraid any more. We are all safe now. I try to repeat this message frequently. It used to be a message that we desperately needed to hear, nowadays we just enjoy sharing the feeling. I guess that is progress.

    #101848
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    Your post speaks to me… a lot! A whole lot. I like the Russian dolls analogy and thought about it in the past as well. I too had this very thought that you expressed only a few days ago: that my mother was a good person to a few people in her life, maybe to many people she spent a short time with, but she was a bad mother to me.

    And it was also only a few days ago that I said to myself when calm: she was a bad mother to me AND I did not feel that distress as in part of me disbelieving what I just said. I used to believe such a claim only when I was angry, but when no longer angry, the doubts returned. It took five years and one month (and going) of my Healing Path to get to the point when I now said a few times to myself: she was a bad mother to me and believing myself when calm. The Healing Path takes what I call excruciating patience. Core beliefs take a whole lot of time to change and extreme patience and gentleness with oneself is required.

    Thank you for your post and please do post again, anytime. I would like to exchange thoughts and experiences with you!

    anita

    #101898
    Eris
    Participant

    Thanks Anita, I’ll make a point of opening up a little bit in future.

    For now I’ll just add that I think in many ways the toughest hand a child can be dealt is to get an abusive – or otherwise inadequate – mother. Tough in the sense that it is extremely difficult to open up about this topic as the world has a tendency to blindly believe in the inevitability of a mother’s love for her children. The unfortunate consequence is that when one tries, tentatively at first, to speak out, one is often …. what’s the word….. disbelieved isn’t quite right……..hmmmm…. I think what I mean is one meets with a wall of incomprehension. And, of course, it is then easier to turn the blame for being unloveable back on yourself. After all it is an immutable law that all mothers love their children, right?

    Happily my inner children (why stop at one!) and my adult selves are now starting to understand that we are loveable just as we are. As you say, it takes time and patience.

    #101910
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    I encounter the same attitude my whole life and it handicapped my efforts to heal big time. Mothers do get almost unconditional protection by society, including psychotherapists. A mother has to do the most horrendous acts to be considered a bad mother, nothing short of blood and gore will do, it seems, to convince people that cutting contact with one’s mother is okay to do.

    It is very unfortunate. I hardly ever…. did I ever come across someone like you who expresses what you did the way you did.

    Please do open up when you are ready, if you choose to. And when you do, tell it like it is. I refrain from telling my story of my mother/ myself because of this societal unconditional protection of motherhood.

    anita

    #101925
    Eris
    Participant

    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.

    #101938
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    I am glad you shared here and so soon. I would like to continue this, very much so. Like you, this is my first time too: normally I am afraid to share about my mother/ myself, details,that is for fear of my reality denied, my perceptions criticized. Oh, how it hurt every time it was done. So I stay away from inviting that into my life. I am thinking you will not do that. Of course, this is a public forum and anyone can jump in here and criticize me or you and defend our mothers! There is also some chance, in my mind, that you will criticize something, even a small part of my perception of reality. It is scary.

    But what is scary is also often enough an opportunity to heal. You and I may be up to something significant here.

    One point regarding those who criticize: I thought they were the fortunate “normal” people with good mothers (if not good parents) and I was the unfortunate exception. It is only recently that I learned that abuse is way, way more common than I thought and many if not most of the “fortunate ones” are simply choosing to see what they want to see in their own childhood, encouraging others to see things their way, that is to filter reality and keep out what is distressing to see.

    No one is more invested in seeing their parents as loving and their childhood as good- regardless of reality- then children. And then children carry on this investment into their adulthood and discourage realistic viewing in others, like in you and me.

    I can very much relate to you being scared of the boss criticizing you. It is only very recently that I am less afraid every time almost that someone just looks at me, sighs, hesitates. “What is next?” “What terrible thing is about to happen?” were and less so, still are my automatic thoughts.

    Let’s continue, as long as you are willing. I believe I have a full understanding of your fear and reluctance to share about your experience with your mother because I share it, and it has been intense for me. So I know I will not hurt you that way.

    anita

    #101946
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    It just occurred to me that in something that I wrote you might see an invalidation or a misunderstanding of your own real experience. I know the sensitivity and fear of being invalidated yet again, told I am wrong in seeing things the way they were. It is possible for me to see such invalidation where it is not. So please, anywhere in what I write that you perceive an invalidation, a misunderstanding, point to it for me and I will read what you write, and honestly elaborate on what I wrote, then ask you if my explanation is satisfactory to you before proceeding. I will be honest with you, and not use convenient or manipulative thinking. If I perceive invalidation of my experience by you, I will do the same as I suggest for you to do. I will point to where I see it and ask for what you meant by writing this or that.

    anita

    #101948
    Eris
    Participant

    Agreed anita, it is very easy to misinterpret the emphasis in a written communication. With such a sensitive subject it is even more important not to see an issue where none was intended. If this is to work we must be able to say “I disagree” as easily as we can say that we agree.
    My experience may be similar to yours but it is not YOUR experience. You are the only person who knows what that it was like for you. No one should be able to invalidate your experience. How sad that the people who most need to believe this (you and me and a thousand others) are the people who have been brought up by a parent who denied us the opportunity to learn our true worth and instead handed us a burden of fear and self-doubt.

    Time and Patience is going to be my new mantra.

    #101950
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    Time and patience is the only way to heal from such a deep, ongoing injury that happened in our formative years, when we were formed. Self doubt, my mother attacking my very thinking, again and again, telling me how wrong I was thinking and promoting her distorted thinking, was very harmful to me as it took away from me my ability to think through her abuse of me, to call it what it is and it kept me stuck.

    For example she told me I was wrong to remember what she told me in anger. She said: Everybody knows (as in saying: you should know, stupid, EVERYBODY knows) that whatever a person says in anger, they don’t mean it, and you are not supposed to remember it after (her) anger is gone. So, I felt like a weirdo and like a bad person for remembering what she told me in anger (and she said a whole lot in anger).

    Regarding disagreeing, your note above, before I figure that I disagree with you, I will ask clarification of what you meant by this or that, so that once I understand, then I know if at all I disagree with you.

    anita

    #102024
    Eris
    Participant

    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 7 years, 11 months ago by Eris.
    #102031
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    I am glad today was a good day for you.

    I used to be very, very angry at my mother, consumed. Recently I am just afraid. She is not in my life at all, no contact whatsoever, yet I am still afraid. This ongoing fear (anxiety) is pointless too, because the danger that brought it about (she) is gone from my life.

    But this fear is stuck in the brain (literally in established/ formed connections between neurons). It cannot possibly be a simple act of will to stop being afraid, and with all the will in the world, it takes lots of time and practice of skills and going on and on, on this Healing Path for those connections to weaken. And still, I was very much aware of being anxious just a few moments ago.

    It is getting better, but my goodness, it takes excruciating patience with the process, with my walk on this Healing Path.

    Hoping to keep our communication going, hoping it continues to work for you. Thank you for walking this stretch of my healing path with me.

    anita

    #102269
    Eris
    Participant

    Hi anita,

    How are you getting along?

    I have been very busy the last few days and I’m absolutely exhausted, so I will sleep like a baby tonight.

    I know what you mean about the fear thing; so pointless (in most situations) and yet so hard to control. Control? Hell, it’s hard even to step outside it and observe it objectively, never mind control it. I have give some thought to why that is – especially since I am having some success in controlling my rage these days.

    Fear and anger are different for me in that I become angry with a situation or person whereas something external creates/triggers my fear. This is possibly may be because I am further down the path with my anger than my fear and maybe one day I will get the fear under control too. I live in hope.

    I’m finding it really helpful to talk to you about this stuff. Writing down my thoughts is very helpful. Firstly because I can see that I have already made quite a bit of progress along the path, and secondly because the very act of writing forces me to consider carefully both the feelings and the way I choose to describe them.

    Thank you for listening.

    All the best, eris

    #102274
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear eris:

    You are welcome and thank you. We have something in common that is quite rare and it feels good for me to correspond with you.

    You asked how I am getting along, well i hardly slept at all in the last two nights, it was a torment of sorts, to lie down awake hour after hour. I have a cold, symptoms, chills, congested.

    I am not surprised you are further along on the path with anger than with fear because fear is the most powerful emotion there is, because it is so crucial to survival of animals, and we are animals.

    What do you mean by “something external creates/ triggers (your) fear, for example…?

    Till later:

    anita

    #102277
    Eris
    Participant

    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

Viewing 15 posts - 31 through 45 (of 67 total)

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