Dear anonymous03:

You are welcome. I read your correction: your father passed away of a sudden heart attack when you were 14. I am sorry to read this.

Regarding your mother, I imagine that you are not interested in the following input (not anything I didn’t mention before), but I will give it to you anyway because it is very relevant to your state of anxiety which predates and accompanies your IBS. You are welcome to not respond to it, and if you don’t- I will abandon the topic of your mother and your relationship with her altogether (and will be fine with it):

If what you shared about her is factually true (“I always got the full force of her anger. I was terrified of her.. she screams a lot…I’d score a 95/100. but she’d say ‘I thought you’d get a 97’… She comments on my body, how I am too skinny… brings me down… I have different hobbies than she does. When I pursue one of them, it literally was hell… She’d also give me the cold shoulder treatment.. look at me with absolute hatred, if she would talk to me, it would be to yell at me. I didn’t even understand what I had done wrong… she treats me like her emotional punchbag” and much more, April 2020),

then for as long as your empathy is with her and not with you; for as long as you minimize her abuse of you and make believe that her abuse of you was her best efforts (“I know I make my mom sound like some monster. She’s not… Life’s been rough for her.. she tries her best”, Jan 19, 2021),

then you will continue to feel that you are the one who is bad and guilty of anything and everything (“I am always nervous and on edge and full of guilt… I’m such a horrible person… I felt extremely guilty… I think I am a horrible person… I must be a terrible person…. I feel guilty about almost everything… I multiple times have felt everything is my fault… I believe everything that goes wrong is my fault… I shouldn’t have done that… I never meant to… I had no right to”. and  much more).

* You wrote in April last year: “I wasn’t really an easy kid to her… I always got yelled at”-

– it’s the other way around: you got yelled at not because you were not really an easy kid to her, but because she was not really an easy mother to you, to put it very mildly.

anita