Dear Kkasxo:

I never know if a member will return to a thread or reply to me, so I will offer you my thoughts from yesterday, so to complete all the input I have for you at this point. What I will do is share with you my experience as I think it may be relevant to yours, plus some other thoughts:

1. You wrote, “My mum is very very loving and compassionate”- my mother too was very loving and compassionate to others, but not to me. She suffered a terrible childhood, and poverty at some point. So  she was very compassionate to anyone who was hungry, or may be hungry, animals, strangers, and me, if she thought I was hungry. But she was severely lacking empathy for me for feeling emotional pain of any kind. I was very scared and sad for so many years and she didn’t see it.

And then, on one occasion, when I shared with her how a certain individual who was a drug addict harmed me terribly, her empathy, for some reason, was with him for being a drug addict, not for me for having been harmed by him.

2. “I honestly wouldn’t know as I haven’t had that conversation with her nor do I wish to so I can only assume”- I didn’t have conversations with my mother either. When I suggested something she didn’t like, she killed it, immediately and swiftly, killed the topic, that is.

3. When we live with a parent who has no empathy for us as children, doesn’t see or hear us, doesn’t see we are scared or sad, some of us go silent, others get very loud, trying to be heard. It is like a person living with a person hard of hearing, raising one’s voice so to  be heard, and then getting into the habit of speaking louder with everyone. Some of us adjust then by overstating our pain, expressing it louder or in the most dramatic ways possible, so to be heard. Maybe we do both: sometimes we go silent and at other times get very loud so to be heard after all.

4. You wrote: “I feel I don’t have a safe and comfortable place to be right now and instead I am looking for ways out or to run away by staying with friends or going away so I think a flat right now is the ideal time so that I can be on my own and comfortable”- it doesn’t take war or hunger to feel unsafe and uncomfortable. When we are not seen or heard, when we live without empathy for us, that feels unsafe and uncomfortable.

5. Healing is about seeing Reality for what it is. It does feel like the carpet is being pulled from underneath us, but if you persist and keep your eyes and ears  open and see reality for what it is, your mind and your life will be so much better for it.

anita