Dear Tee:

“that was beautiful! ❤️ And so profound… your conversation with Little girl Anita. Wow!”- thank you!

Your Wow, the Inner Child Expert (that’s how I see you) means a lot to me!

“In your conversation with LGA, you’ve come to some incredible realizations: that your main fear in your childhood (and beyond) was that your mother would commit suicide, because that’s what she was threatening to do, on a regular basis. Up until the moment your sister told her “then do it!”. That’s when the threats stopped… because she was seen through, I think.”-

huh.. it never occurred to me.. So, I didn’t see through her. I didn’t see that she was bluffing.. All Those Years.. I didn’t see! (I am reading a part of your post, quoting it, responding, before I read the next part)

“I think she’d realized that she cannot manipulate and emotionally blackmail your sister anymore with a fake suicide threat – so she stopped. If I’m counting well, you weren’t living with her at that time anymore – you were already in the US, so it was only her and your sister. And she realized her tactic had turned against her… so she stopped.”-

Yes, you are counting well, thank you. You said it, “fake suicide threats”, I wasn’t sure. No one called them Fake before, not that I remember.

“I’m amazed by this profound (and heart-breaking) realization of yours… So, your main motive in your childhood, starting from the age 5, was to keep your mother alive. You stayed home and didn’t socialize with other kids (unlike your sister) because you were afraid your mother would hurt herself when you’re not watching. And so you sacrificed yourself in a way, you let her use you as her punching bag – because you were afraid that if you don’t, she might kill herself.”-

Yes, true, just like you said it.

“You allowed very severe abuse, without defending yourself, because you thought that would keep your mother alive… That’s a very profound realization, Anita. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t have agency, but that you gave up that agency because of a higher goal: to keep your mother alive.”-

I had never thought that.. I had agency.. but sacrificed it for a (perceived) higher goal: keeping her alive..?

I definitely wanted to fight her, at least from one point on (teenage years, I remember).

“And beyond that, another goal of yours was to make her proud of you, to be her hero, to save her from the miserable life that she was complaining about all the time. I imagine she portrayed herself as the victim (not just yours, but of other people and life circumstances, right?)”-

Yes, BIG TIME! Always, 100%, no nuance, no shades of grey.

“And you were hoping you could do something to save her from that miserable life. And so you took upon yourself the role of her savior – both as in saving her from suicide, but also saving her from misery, unhappiness, sadness.. Little girl Anita expressed that sentiment here: ‘Yes, she needed a big-time hero, someone special, someone unlike any other, someone great enough to save her!'”- Yes. I had no greater hope, or aspiration.. desire, commitment.

“That’s a typical stance of covert narcissistic people: they portray themselves as perpetual victims, and there’s nothing one can do help them. They want to remain victims, because that’s how they manipulate those around them, specially people who love them and want to help them.”-

So, no way to help her.. because she’s been helping herself by being always-victim. That I figured out some time ago.. She’s been helping herself the only way she knew how.. How did I say it before, in one of my other threads: I tried so hard to help her, feeling so guilty that I failed.. while all along she was helping herself to me, at my expense. So, I helped her simply by being her victim.

“It seems your mother had covert narcissistic traits and she used her victim mentality to emotionally blackmail and guilt trip you and your sister. But you, the little girl Anita, didn’t know and couldn’t know that her mother is using suicide threats and constant complaints as a manipulation tactic. She thought her mother is in real danger, and that she would really do what she is threatening to do.”-

Yes, exactly! Again, I am having this strange feeling that you were there. Didn’t have this feeling with anyone before, not irl or online.

“Little girl Anita also believed her mother’s words that she is a victim who needs to be saved. LGA believed that she is bad and is making her mother unhappy. She also believed that other people are trying to make her mother unhappy.”- I hated everyone for trying to make her unhappy, including myself.. of course.

“LGA believed her mother’s narrative and wanted to rescue her – which is a normal reaction of a child who infinitely loves her mother.”- Yes.

“Little girl Anita suffered a lot and tried everything to make her mother happy – but nothing ever worked. And unfortunately, nothing ever works with covert narcissistic people, because they want to remain the victim. Pleasing them and making them happy is mission impossible.”- mission impossible, rogers that.

“I love the conversation between the adult Anita and LGA, where the adult Anita explained to LGA that her mother was actually lying when she threatened to kill herself. That she has been threatening since she was 25, and she’s now 85.”- L.Y.I.N.G. It makes me angry!

“LGA remembers your mother as being 25 years old, but now you reminded her that she is 85. I’ve been reading that our inner child often remembers our parent as young – because the inner child is still stuck in that same period, often in that same scene that traumatized us. And so it’s good that you gave her the reality check: that your mother is now old and that she never attempted to harm herself. That she’s still fine.”- if I only knew that when I was 5, 15, 25, etc.

“It is heart-breaking to read how on that fateful night, you were running to your mother, relieved and overjoyed that she is alive. You were running towards her with your outstretched hands… and she met you with anger and coldness… You say that’s about the time when your Tourette’s symptoms started. Now I can’t find it, but I think you said your tics are mostly in your shoulder area (not sure because I can’t find it now).”-

Now mostly in my shoulders, back then they were everywhere and more severe, every single voluntary muscle tic-ed. It was difficult to fall asleep, and the social embarrassment was acute. As a teenager, I clearly remember my head jerking from right to left, as in saying NO. That tic happened a lot when she was talking to me. I remember thinking: Doesn’t she see me “saying” no? Why wouldn’t she stop talking..???

.. Lost electricity some time ago. about to lose internet. I’ll try to send this and read and reply further later.

Anita

Dear Tee:

This morning, before getting to the computer, I felt different, still do, a sense of calm, more than a sense of calm, a sense, or an experience of something settled, the day after kind of feeling. And then I looked at the first paragraph of your recent post, where you wrote: “Wow! I wonder how you’re feeling the next morning – if there is a change in you?”-

Yes, I am breathing more comfortably, the words: my brain feels more comfortable, come to mind. And it is you, Tee, who is making this possible for me 🙏 ❤️ 🙏

I will read and write more a bit later today (it’s easier for me to attend to other members than to.. attend to me).

🙏 Anita

Dear Tee:

Only 2 hours ago, the capital of Ukraine was attacked by whom I believe, in the other thread, you referred to (rightfully so) as The Bully.. whom others try to appease. I read with great interest all that you wrote there, and I wholeheartedly agree.

I’ve followed the devastating Oct 7, 2023 massacre in Israel and the aftermath.

Within these global tragedies, injustices, severe wrongdoings.. Is there space for me, this one individual?

I suppose I am taking the space right here because you, Tee, you are here, and I trust you.

I want to process what I didn’t yet start to process, right here, with you.

Maybe I should offer a Trigger Warning

* Trigger Warning: the topic of suicide will be mentioned here, as well as other childhood trauma *

Whatever comes to mind (purpose: to heal, to transform, to transcend):

As early I can remember, my mother threatened to commit suicide. Actually, that’s my very first memory (at 5 or 6, don’t remember). Twenty years later, she threatened the same.. and throughout the in-between, and beyond, into my 30s.. until my sister told her (I was 30, maybe 40): “Then just do it!”

And.. magically, she never threatened it again.

For all of my childhood and after, day after day, I was afraid that she’d do what she said she would. I used to pray to the stars: “Please, please, please.. please, keep her alive.”

I stayed Home (in that prison cell) all of the years when other children played outside, socializing. I stayed home with her to keep an eye on her, to see that she doesn’t kill herself.

I absorbed everything she dished out at me.. received the severe shaming and guilt-tripping.. so to keep her alive.

This is the truth, neither minimized, nor exaggerated.

I lived under her suicide threat. Day after day after night, year after year.. almost a whole lifetime.

Funny, not.. not funny, she’s still alive at 85, so I hear.

The first memory I have is that of her threatening to kill herself and running to the street at night-time so to do the deed, so she said. My father was there, they divorced when I was 6, so I imagine it happened when I was 5-6, only that it might not have been just that one night, but a combination of nights. He repeatedly came home late and she accused him of being with other women. Screaming and yelling. Don’t remember him yelling, don’t remember.

She left into the dark, I must have cried really hard, really loud because to silence me he hit me with a belt. And my screaming halted.. that may have been when dissociation took hold. I sort of exited my body, or my mind, imagining I was in a movie, a bold actress, filmed into an exciting movie, and I left into the dark, looking for a dead body.. all the way to the street.

And I saw her then, a dream come true.. she was alive, I ran to her, RAN to her, Ima, Ima, Ima.. You are alive!

The response, her response: angry, accusatory: “why wouldn’t I be alive?”.

She didn’t hold me, she didn’t calm me.. She was Ice.

That was about the time the tics (Tourette) started, tics that follow me to this very day.

I’ve never processed this. Always felt dissociated from this, as if it didn’t really happened, as if I was exaggerating, making something out of nothing.

I don’t know where I am going with this. I think I want to integrate this experience, to reassociate it, so that I can transcend it.

It really happened, again and again and again, practically on an ongoing basis for 20 years, in-person.

Before the topic of self-worth, there was just this one thing: God please keep my mother alive! The dread. And then add the shame, the guilt. Not a good recipe for good mental health.

What if I let little girl Anita (inner child) talk about this.. will she sound different from what I shared right above.. What will she say?

Anita: talk to me little girl Anita.

Little girl Anita (LGA): (Nothing)

Anita (A): Remember, sweet little girl (here’s a hug, shhh.. it’s okay, little girl, you are safe now)

LGA: tears in her eyes.

Anita: Tell me, tell me.. please talk to me, you are safe.. and Tee is safe too, she is our friend!

LGA: Our friend? A: Our friend. LGA: She won’t hurt us?

A: No, she will not. She is for us, not against us. So, please talk to me, talk to Tee. Tell Tee how it was. LGA: Why?

A: So that we can help you! Tee is an Inner Child Champion, an Inner Child Warrior! Talk to her. Tell her about that night, or nights. It was dark, you heard her loud, what happened.. ?

LGA: I ran to her, I was going to save her!!! I was going to be a hero, a hero for my mother.. Her Hero!

A: Little girl Anita, a Hero..? LGA: Yes, a hero! A: You wanted to be her hero?

LGA: YES…!!! A: What would it’d be like, to be her hero?

LGA: She’d look up to me, her hero! A: She needed a hero?

LGA: Yes, she needed a big-time hero, someone special, someone unlike any other, someone great enough to save her!

A: a movie star, someone rich, someone more? LGA: Someone .. not me.

A: Tell me. LGA: She needed someone else, not me.

A: Who is “me”? LGA: someone who needed a mother, not a daughter.

A: You tried to mother her? LGA: She NEEDED a mother. A: What did LGA need?

LGA: I needed her alive, needed to keep her alive.

A: What did her suicide threats do to you? LGA: They kept me scared.

A: What did you need back then? LGA: A mother who didn’t want to die.

A: Did she want to die? (She’s still alive at 85) LGA: She lied to me?

A: She never killed herself, started the threats when she was 25, now 60 years later, she’s still alive.

LGA: She didn’t mean it? A: No.

LGA:.. ??? A: She bullied you, sweet little girl. LGA: Just like that?

A: Just like that, it was easy for her.

LGA: She lied. A: She lied.

LGA: So, hmm… just a lie. A: Just a lie.

LGA: So, I don’t have to be afraid anymore? A: She will not kill herself, she will die of natural causes.. no suicide.

LGA: Natural causes..? A: Natural causes, ageing.

LGA: I remember her young, 25! A: 60 years ago.

A: This has been quite a conversation! LGA: Will you hug me tonight, as we go to sleep?

A: Yes, I will hug you tonight, and every night. I love you. You are a good little girl. I am with you. You are not alone.

… Anita and Little girl Anita