Dear Lindsey:

I am putting together what you shared about your father: “My father was always working… My father was recently diagnosed with anxiety and severe panic attacks. During their marriage he used pot, alcohol, and food versus meds to cope with his disease… I really can’t talk to my dad too much. He has to take benzodiazepines daily but is on a low dose. SSRI’s and other meds did not relieve the daily panic attacks. This started 2 years ago; we visited for Christmas and I was at the ER 3 times in 2 days… He’s going to different doctors and trying to get off the benzodiazepines but this situation has aged him”.

You shared about your mother: “I was really just an extension of my mother kind of like a doll. She had me at 19 and we grew up together. She really good at mothering until her kids became teenagers… She is really good at the baby/child stage as a mom. When I and my siblings were older, she seemed less patient and wanted us to figure it out on our own and stop relying on her too much… she did not try to make it happen gradually, it was like overnight. For example when I went to college, she pretty much said you are on your own now and they moved into a new house without a room for me. She emotionally cut herself off from me overnight. I was vert lost for a long time… My mom was busy trying to raise my brother and sister who were 12 and 14 years younger than me… I can’t call my mother because she is away at a tennis tournament and last time I spoke to her she made it very clear she has her own problems to deal with and for me to figure it out on my own. This is her tone 75% of the time”.

My understanding: your mother had you when she was 19, sometime before or after she married your husband and 12 years later, when she was 31 she had another child and then, at 33 had another. When she had you at 19, she treated you as if you were a doll, playing house, I suppose. You got a lot of attention, she fed you, clothed you, played with you. When she had her second child, you were 12. Soon after, if not before, she was no longer playing house, you were no longer her doll but a Problem, so she unloaded the problem eventually by moving to a house without a room for you. You went from being her Doll to being her Problem. And still, all these years later, you are 40 and she is 59 or 60 and you are still a Problem and she doesn’t want to be bothered by you.

You wrote earlier that you are a closure type of a person. I think that you need closure regarding your mother. You wrote earlier that you have a good relationship with her and that you suffered no childhood trauma, but reads to me that you are angry at her and understandably so. Her abandonment of you (from Doll to Problem) was traumatic and it is probably feeding your anxiety regarding M, the begging him to not leave you, being afraid of people leaving you.

Maybe the closure then needs to be done with her.

anita