Dear Cali Chica:

Not a bad idea, to have those workshops without a therapist. It may be a great motivation for you and for your husband to work together this way and save all that money that would go to therapy. The paying of lots of money to a therapist while not being sure the therapist is making a significant difference is a frustration that is added to the original distress. So if it works, keep doing it.

“jumping into it to make sure that she felt secure and better”- this is what you did with your mother, make her feel secure and better. True, “who am I to make her feel secure and better”? I am referring to your mother in “her”: you were only a child. But someone had to make her better, so you imagined you are a super child, capable of making her “feel secure and better”.

“If I had stayed more emotionally reserved and detached from her own personal scenario”- again, “her” being your mother: you couldn’t be reserved and detached from what a child perceives to be her lifeline: her mother.

So, it is about no longer seeing other women, be it cousins, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, strangers.. as your mother. And no longer seeing yourself as who you are not, a super you, a savior, one to make other people feel secure and better.

Good you sat at a park typing this.

anita