Dear Gaia:

I just accidently deleted the study I did this morning, collecting quotes from your threads since summer 2016, which I re-read, copied and pasted, and then the collection disappeared. What I am going to do now is write to you my understanding from memory, without adding the quotes which are very revealing of what I am about to express. The good part of this disappearance is that this post will be much shorter than otherwise.

First my premise, my belief: there was nothing wrong with you when you were born, no predisposition to anything more than any human is born with. All humans are predisposed to anger, for example. So nothing inherently wrong with you.

Second, I see mental problems like this: it is like a ball  of wet mud at the top of a hill, that small ball of mud is the original problem that you experienced in your life, the beginning-of-trouble. Then over time, this ball of mud rolls down the hill, and as it does, more and more mud is added to it, and the ball grows bigger and bigger. For example, what you referred to as having been mildly bullied in school, that was mud added to the Original Ball of Mud (I’ll call it OBoM, for simplicity). Every rejection or perceived rejection in school was added to that OBoM. OCD- that was a huge addition to that OBoM, a very unfortunate addition. And then, your very intelligent abstract thinking didn’t help you, and instead it added more and more mud to OBoM.

Third, I will jump to defining that OBoM: having re-read this morning, once again, your posts since you were 18, 3.5 years ago, this is the OBoM to the best of my understanding at this point (warning: I don’t think you will like it, because it has to do  with your mother):

OBoM: we can’t see ourselves,  our faces that is, we have to look in a mirror to see our faces. A child can’t see her nature, can’t see who  she is, her identity, unless she looks in the mirror. A child’s mirror is her parent (or a combination of parents, depending on their roles in her life. But because you shared only about your mother, I will refer to her only).

Your mother was your mirror, your self identity was your reflection in her, the image staring back at you from her. What did you see in that mirror: someone very wrong, something that had something very wrong with her.

This is the image of yourself that she projected out to you. This is why you felt, as a young adult, so repulsed to be in her company, fearing she will ask you questions. No one likes to see an image of themselves that is so faulty and wrong and unacceptable.

Your mother saw the dark side in everyone, including you.

This is why you wanted to be someone else, to come with a different identity- someone who is not wrong. Also, your fantasy about being watched by a crush while you have light hearted fun and being seen that way, light hearted, that is in contradiction to how your mother saw you: dark and heavy, like her.

This is it, this is the original ball of mud- being seen by your mother as a dark, heavy, something-is-very-wrong-with-me kind of person. All the other mud was added later. As a result of that growing ball  of mud, you suffer a lot, and when we suffer, feeling stuck in that suffering, seeing no hope, we get angry. Anyone who is stuck in an unpleasant situation, suffering a lot, gets angry.

Let me know what you think, if you want to, of course.

anita