Dear Louise:

You are welcome.

You asked: “how can this be effecting me now?”- to consider this question, think of how your brain worked as a young child. It is now, as a woman, that you have an understanding of her mental illness, of her hearing voices at the time, of the insanity of her behavior. But back then, it was not so.

For a child, her mother is perfect, right, loving. When a parent tells her young child that she is wrong or bad, the child does not go: let me examine this statement, this message my mother is sending me. Let me evaluate it, if it is true. No, the child believes. The child does not challenge what her mother says- that comes later. At the time, the child takes it is, and a core-belief is formed: “I am bad.”

“And how is this impacting on my current relationship?”, you asked. Well, with the core-belief “I am bad”- it is just a matter of time for your boyfriend to find out and leave you. As you suggested.

anita