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November 4, 2023 at 3:41 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #424775
anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle and hachling:
Thank you for the note and I do hope you did well last night…!!!
anita
November 3, 2023 at 12:11 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #424763anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle and hatchling:
You are welcome and thank you for your appreciation and kind words!
“He complimented my physic, I will never forget him commenting how fit I looked in the ‘love-handle’ area while at the beach in Hawaii, I remember feeling odd about it but also satisfied that he was proud“- there was a touch of incest, covert incest, in his comment. So, you felt odd about it, a mix of odd and proud.
“Is the solution here also emotion regulation skills?”- practicing emotion regulations skills regularly makes it possible to come up with effective solutions to real-life problems. In other words, you have to lower your stress level regularly and feel confident in your ability to do so, in order to think clearly throughout the steps it takes to solve problems effectively.
“What type of therapy would you recommend?“- the type I had in 2011-13: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a strong touch of Mindfulness.
(I am the one adding the boldface feature to the following quotes selectively):
“N is not aware that being at his parents house caused him to feel the same as when he was a child… I actually asked him this morning, how he has felt since the trip or reflected on how he felt back at his parents, and he just said ‘I enjoyed it and didn’t feel badly there this time..‘”- he said this time, meaning that at other times he felt badly… If that’s what he meant (without necessarily meaning to express it to you), then he is aware of feeling badly when in his parents’ home.
It may be that he told you that he didn’t feel badly this time because he didn’t want to talk about it yesterday’s morning.
“As I am really putting effort into how I feel and why, I have this feeling like he is not on that same path and I have a desire for him to be on it too. I want him to be aware of his feelings on that torn up path… I can’t help but crave the same self awareness“-
– it is unrealistic and unfair, really, to expect the same awareness from a person who had a different childhood from yours. Something about your childhood was positive enough to make it possible for you to have the level of awareness that you do today. Maybe he wasn’t that.. fortunate.
“My rational self, outside of the feeling, can see that he didn’t do anything wrong in the game situation… a part of me, I am assuming hatchling, who still believes he can be nice enough to heal me”-
– Sea turtle (the adult part of you) thinks rationally, and hatchling (the young child part of you) feels and believes. CBT is effective when it comes to challenging the inner child’s emotion-led thoughts (aka emotional reasoning) and leading her into believing what is objectively true vs what she feels is true. Over time, hatchling will believe what is objectively true.
Sometimes what you believe to be true, really is objectively true; sometimes it isn’t.
“When I am in the emotion I can see it overpowering me, I can’t escape it cause I don’t yet have the tools, but I find myself searching for tools when I am in the emotion. I realize there is a lack of emotional regulation skills”- emotion regulation skills and Mindfulness skills (related terms) are the tools that you need.
“I am circling back to this, you mentioned much earlier in your last post, but it stuck with me. When you used the analogy of a fawn and her mother and abandonment = death, it got me wondering where exactly this fear of abandonment is from. These are my two hypotheses: My dad did was not really ever emotionally there. But as far as physical abandonment, he did move out… My mom was emotionally in and out… she would get extra affectionate. But her wine self is almost like an inauthentic affection feeling .. Then when I moved out with my dad, I left her, so she didn’t abandon me?”-
– A fawn needs her mother’s physical presence and her mother to feed and protect her. Children need so much more than food and physical protection.. Children need predictable affection, approval, and gentle and clear guidance. And more. Because a child needs so much more than a fawn, and because people use elaborate languages (which makes life way more complex), there are many more ways to abandon a child than there are to abandon a fawn.
“I often felt free-er with my mom, but safer with my dad“- I didn’t know that you feel safer with your father… Would you like to elaborate on this sentence, the whole sentence?
“Are the messages sort of like realizations of the true reason hatchling is afraid…?”- the messages behind our physical sensations and emotions are simple, not at all complicated, ex., these: hunger=> need to eat; thirst=> need to drink; tired=> need to rest; scared=> need to run away or hide or fight; angry=> need to fight.
Here is what makes it complicated: when a child goes through a scary childhood, the child adapts to it so to minimize the stress level. We adapt by figuratively closing our eyes to what scares us/ minimizing awareness. Fast forward, as adults, our eyes are still closed and our awareness- blocked to one extent or another, often significantly.
anita
November 2, 2023 at 5:27 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #424745anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle and hatchling: I will read and reply Fri morning,
anita
November 1, 2023 at 12:24 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #424421anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle and hatchling:
I will continue to read one part, respond, then read the next part, etc. (the usual way I reply), so, I’ll start with the rest of your yesterday’s post:
“hatchling thought she would literally just die if there was a scenario where he had an ex/crush there that I thought was prettier than me“- for a little girl, a young child (hatchling), a scenario where a parent abandons her for another child (a prettier child, a smarter child, etc.) means death. Imagine a fawn (a baby deer) abandoned by her mother: with no one to feed her and protect her from predators.. the fawn will die.
Back to what you shared earlier about your father’s “love”: “I didn’t receive unconditional love from my father… If I wasn’t doing things to his standards, I received a very cold version of him, versus his warm personality when I was doing something he defined as efficient and effective”- being “loved” so conditionally means that.. if another child did things to his standard, your father would have chosen to “love” and care for that child, and not for you.
Fast forward, projecting your father into your boyfriend, you fear being abandoned by him for another young woman.. one who is more to his (N’s) standards, and the fear feels like the fear of death.
“In the end, N was really there for me and helped me through the panic attack and I felt strong enough to finish getting ready and make it work. Once I arrived at the wedding I instantly felt safer as I met his friends and did not feel less than them…“- yet another testimony to N being a good boyfriend, a good partner for you.
“I love how (N) pays attention to world affairs and has such a level head about what is happening around him. It makes me feel safe“- I can’t think of a better partner for you.
“Once we got back to his parents’ house I still felt connected to him up until after dinner and we started playing a board game with his mom… then N comes in and finishes his, ending the game, leaving me unfinished. When I looked at him he had a straight face with a “sucks to suck” attitude…. in that moment I felt he didn’t love me, didn’t see me, didn’t care about me or my feelings, I felt like he completely abandoned me“-
-if a fawn is completely abandoned by her mother the deer, the fawn will die. If a young child is completely abandoned by parents, the fear is the same, it is an instinctual animalistic fear. Hatchling grew up with this instinctual fear being triggered. She is still afraid of being completely abandoned.
Objectively, N ending the game when he did, and the way he did, was not abusive or even rude, in my estimation. Subjectively, it felt terrible to hatchling because she is so very sensitive to any event that, to her, has a taste of abandonment, no matter how vague, weak, or minor.. or non-existent the taste is in objective terms.
For hatchling, any taste of abandonment from someone she needs emotionally (N), is a clear-and-present danger, strong and major.
“Next day we drive to the airport… so I tell N how I felt about the way the game ended. He said that my feelings were not warranted for the actions that he did. He said what he did, should not lead to my reaction. I told him he didn’t understand my trauma… He said ‘it’s just a game’ MULTIPLE times, but this only made me feel invalidated cause obviously I was expressing feelings that went beyond a game. To which he responded ‘so then it sounds like we just can’t play games together because you can’t be a good sport.’ I literally wanted to strangle him when he said this, my body was so uncomfortable I felt like I could burst with energy and run a 5k”-
-like I said at the start of this post, I read and respond to one part before reading the next part. So, as you can see in my previous response, I (still) don’t think that his behavior in regard to the game was objectively rude, and I agree with him otherwise: your feelings/ emotional reactions in regard to the game were about hatchling’s trauma/ fear of abandonment (which took hold way before you ever met N), and therefore, it is not about N’s actions.
Your anger toward N was misdirected: he is not responsible to what happened to hatchling, and her resulting trauma.
“When I told him that having all those uncles growing up, like 6 older brothers I was bullied in games… I tried to express to N that I was bullied in games growing up… when I told N I felt unloved, abandoned and like he was like one of my uncles who teamed up on me while I was abandoned and left alone to fight an army, he comforted me. N told me that he was always on my side and that he loved me, this melted me into tears… It is all I needed to hear to feel safe again“- more evidence that N is a good person and a good partner for you. Even though he is not responsible for what your uncles did and how they played games (way before he ever entered your life), he comforted you anyway. I am very impressed.
“But there is still a part of me, I realized as I wrote this, that just wants him to be ‘nicer’ to just ME, his life teammate, when it comes to games. and I think we still disagree here and I am scared to revisit it and be told he won’t do it or it’s just on me to be less sensitive”-
– N can’t be nice enough to undo what your uncles did to hatchling, nor can he be nice enough to change the conditional “love” of your father, and turn it into an unconditional love. Your healing may require quality professional therapy.
Your post today: first, you are welcome!
“Those hopeless thoughts of ‘will this ever end?’ ‘how many more times will I feel like this with him, is it going to be the majority of our relationship?’ ‘can I handle this?’“- these triggering events (like the game) and the distressing thoughts and emotions that accompany these events will happen again. You need as much emotional healing as possible for you, so to be triggered less and less.. so to talk sense to yourself and comfort yourself when these events happen. You can handle triggering events when you are able recognize them for what they are as they happen, and regulate your emotions the best you can, lowering the intensity of your distress so that you are not overwhelmed.
“The fact the disconnect is on his end I feel alleviated of blame, but then I still feel the concern for its end, because it is in his control and that feels unstable to me“- I am not sure I understand this part, but I’ll say this: N is not Perfect, but reads to me that he is.. close enough to it (and nobody is perfect). He makes mistakes and he will make mistakes in the future.
I don’t think that he made mistakes while playing the game, the way he ended it. You will need to be able to distinguish between his real mistakes and what only feels to you like mistakes.
“Perhaps I can still ask him even though the feelings are not fresh on his mind?“- you asked this in regard to the unpleasant walk in nature when taking a break from being in the distressing company of his parents. I suggest that you ask him this if and when he brings up the topic of his parents.
“To say to myself ‘these feelings are not my fault.’ Does that give the feelings less power?… Or is experiencing these feelings simply human and will always be there, it’s just a matter of how loud you let them be?“-
– reading this I am again reminded of how intelligent you are, and I am yet again impressed by you (!). My answers to both questions is Yes: (1) Telling yourself (the truth) that your feelings are not your fault (not your choosing) will give them less power because shame and guilt will be peeled off from them, and so, their intensity will significantly lessen, (2) Experiencing these feelings is human and there will always be feelings that are uncomfortable to feel, but you can lower the intensity of these feelings via emotion regulation skills, which means to indeed lower their volume.
“I just wonder where these insecure feelings stem from so that I can pull it out by the root“- hatchling already told you and she has more to tell you, but be gentle about pulling the feelings out by the root.. hatchling needs you to be gentle with her. Every one of her feelings carries a message with it. It is only after you thoroughly heard each message, that each feeling- having served its purpose- will.. no longer be there to distress you.
anita
anitaParticipantDear DC:
You are again welcome and thank you for your empathy, kindness and grace. The ways you’ve express your kindness and grace in 2021 and currently, are evidence to me that you have a lot of experience being as kind and gracious as you are.
Oct 31, 2023: “My mother has just passed away – she died in June after fighting cancer for about a year. She was a fraction of herself – very thin, utterly helpless. I felt sad to see her that way”-
Back in Sept 2021, you wrote on the topic of unethical behavior in regard to the Strata Committee (SC) and in general: “I am often the ‘unwelcome’ voice which calls out on such unethical behaviour. Most SC members would not call out such behaviour for fear of retribution… I find it hard to be involved and not blow the whistle on such unethical behaviour… I simply cannot ‘unsee’ things that I see…I continually go out of my way to see that perpetrators do not get away with misdeeds“.
You shared back then about the major perpetrator in your personal life: your mother, “a narcissistic and toxic person. She has little capacity for empathy, is self centred, controlling, critical, etc… very ungrateful and demanding… it is all about her“, and that when you were 5 and all the way to your late teens, she had an affair with a married man who “tortured and abused.. physically and emotionally” you and your siblings. “When we were kids.. no one held her accountable. We were little and utterly vulnerable. No way to defend ourselves. Therefore easy for her to exploit within the walls of our house. Cane marks were hidden… She hit us to vent her anger“.
Why am I repeating this.. is it disrespectful of the dead? Should I not close the topic with the standard I-am-sorry-for-your-loss and let it go?
My answer (to my own question): NO. Because what you wrote about yourself back in Sept 2021 is true to me too: “I simply cannot ‘unsee’ things that I see…I continually go out of my way to see that perpetrators do not get away with misdeeds“.
The great majority of abusive parents all over the world get away with their misdeeds when they are young (the excuse, paraphrased: they didn’t live long enough to.. be held accountable), when they are old (the excuse: they lived too long to be held accountable) and when they are dead (…the dead are not to be held accountable and if we hold them accountable, we are judged as rude, petty and .. bad people), and so, many millions of abusive parents, generation after generation, are never held accountable.
“It is my culture to respect elders, so all my siblings just give in to her whims and wishes. She is getting older now, and those demands are increasing” (Sept 2021)
It is our world culture to respect (to not resist, to not condemn, but to excuse and to tolerate) abuse by parents. And in turn, too often, abused children become abusive parents, or we become parents who are blind to our children’s emotional experiences, and in so, passing abuse to the next generation, and to the next.
“Maybe my preoccupation with justice, albeit a little trivial, stems from what happened during my childhood… perhaps my attempt to right the ‘core injustice’ that happened to me and my siblings all those years ago. Perhaps within me is an anger – a burning flame – that has never been extinguished” (Sept 2021)-
– May the burning flame in you continue to be about righting wrongs. Notice about anger: your mother hit you and your siblings to vent her anger (“She hit us to vent her anger”). This is where her anger went: to do what’s wrong and unjust. Your anger goes to righting wrongs, to promote justice.
My mother used to hit me too, during my first decade of life, my second, and then.. my third. I was 20 something when (I remember) her running toward me. She was only a few steps away.. but she needed to run to me. It was passion in her heart that made her run those few steps.. but it wasn’t passion to hold me gently, to take me in her arms and tell me she loves me, that she is there for me.. No, it was her passion to cause me physical pain and as quickly as possible.
I reacted that time in a way I never did before: instead of cowering, I held my arms straight in front of me and as she reached me, I grabbed her hands in mine, so she wasn’t able to use her hands to hit me.
Next, I stood there and she stood there, no one moving (I extended just enough force to counter hers), and then.. she withdrew, quietly. That’s all. Nothing happened. And I was livid, thinking: this is ALL it took all these years, for me to not be hit..? Why, I should have done this years ago!
In my mind, all those years, I thought of her as Strong and Courageous, someone who will not back away with the slightest, real-life resistance. All those years.. I gave in to a coward.
And this is my point about abusive parents: most if not all, abuse their children- into their children’s adult years (in one way or another)- because they easily get away with it.. no real resistance, not from their children (who love them nonetheless), and not from other adults, neighbors, etc.
I haven’t been in contact with my mother for ten years. I imagine she is dying, or soon. And I love her so much. I always loved her. All through my life, I would have given anything.. everything to make her happy. I would have easily given away my life to make her life worthwhile. And in some major ways, I did (But all in vain).
When I used to feel any kind of love for her, I used to also feel confused; I needed to feel anger at her, not love, so to protect myself from her, so to not resume contact with her. Fast forward, I can feel love for her without the confusion, without getting scared about the possibility of resuming contact with her. (1) My responsibility, my duty is to the child that I was, the child that I still am.. to be the one whose passion is not to cause her pain, but to hold her in my arms, love her and protect her. (2) The love I feel for my mother, an early-life, natural, instinctual love of a young child to her mother.. that love was never an indication of who my mother was as a person, but an indication of nature: an automatic love every mammal feels for their mother. (3) The love I always felt for her was an unrequited love. It was not returned. I only imagined there was love in her heart for me because I needed there to be love for me.
Back to what you wrote yesterday: “As they say, nothing is permanent. Death is grounding for all of us“- let us not die before we do what we can do, in any possible way, to hold our parents (young, old or dead) accountable for the real abuse that they perpetrated against us, so that we can open our eyes to what really, truly constitutes abuse in our current lives and in the world at large, and then- right those wrongs, in any way that’s possible for us.
anita
October 31, 2023 at 3:56 pm in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #423871anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle & hatchling:
“I apologize for my later response, my trip to see my partner’s family was consuming in many ways and I am just now reading this response“- I understand. I wanted to send you a how-are-you inquiry earlier, but figured you are probably busy with the challenging visit and long flight back to AZ. (I was concerned about your relationship).
“The following day him and I stayed at an Airbnb together for a friend’s wedding (the main reason we went on the trip) and I just wanted to do my best to be present and not make the drive about me, which I inevitably would have done if I saw a response from you, I would have needed to express it to him, but I did not want to overwhelm him with my feelings“- E x C e L l E n T Choice on your part, I am (yet again) impressed with you!
“I am now reading your response. Wow your view of what happened is very perceptive and I appreciate it so much. I now wish I had read it before so I could have better seen the hurt n“- you didn’t know what my reply would be back then, so .. still an excellent choice.
“I completely blamed myself for feeling disconnected”- please don’t blame yourself for feeling anything: happy, sad, hurt, angry, jealous, envious, etc. Feelings just happen; you don’t choose them. No Choice=> No Guilt.
“When I feel disconnected from him I tend to think something is either wrong with me or the relationship, but if the disconnect is happening from his end, how to I detect and remedy this?“- feeling disconnected from one’s partner on occasion is normal. No two people remain close to each other to the same extent at all times. If you don’t get alarmed by this fact of nature.. you won’t feel alarmed on top of feeling disconnected.
In the scenario you described, that walk in nature, what I would have done in your shoes would be to gently, kindly invite N to talk about how he was feeling, if he wanted to. If he said no, or ignored my invitation. I’d just endure the walk and try to be calm about it (not taking his disconnected/ angry behavior personally).
“As soon as we got to the cabin, and I mean AS SOON AS we got there, I felt more connected to him than ever. We had such a bonding moment where I believe we both felt very safe. We cuddled on the couch, then I gave him a haircut for the wedding and we got ready together. We again were connected the next morning and through our whole drive home, even at his parents house“- I am so glad to read this (like I wrote in the beginning of this post, I was worried).
“There was however another issue I had, it wasn’t between US it was, I am pretty sure, between seaturtle and hatchling.. While we were getting ready for the wedding, I tried on the dresses I brought… and did not feel confident. I thought about how I would be compared with the other women there .. I am not proud of this and new it was not a helpful thought but I felt it very deeply.. thoughts like “N will be attracted to another girl and I won’t compare”-
– like I wrote earlier in this post, feelings just happen: No Choice=>No Guilt. I am adding: No Choice=> No Shame (regarding feelings like envy, jealousy, anger, etc.)
* The way I am answering your post is I read one part, reply, then read the next part, etc., and so, I didn’t yet read the rest of your post except for its ending. I am so tired and I want to continue to read and reply.. probably better that I do Wed morning. Good to read back from you, Seaturtle and hatchling, love back to the two of you!
anita
anitaParticipantDear Milda:
You are very welcome and thank you for your appreciation and grace. I am looking forward to discussing more with you.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Milda:
“I am not thinking on stopping having contact with her, but I do not want to stand in the care-giver and emotional supporter role anymore, who tries to fix family problems“-
– You can practice the NPARR strategy that I wrote to you about on Oct 26: Notice when you are about to say or do (or you just said or did) something that’s in accordance with the old family role/ old habit you want to quit, Pause, Address the situation, Respond-or-not, Redirect.
This strategy is about quitting an old habit and forming (via a new Response, or no response when in the past there was always a response) a new habit, gradually and over time.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Milda:
You are welcome!
“I am as scared, with fear and in danger as a little child… I feel the same and I let those thoughts and emotions control me the exact same way that it did when I was a child- keeping mom’s company, cheering her up, comforting her and doing everything I can to fix the situation and how mom is feeling“-
-your healing will take removing your focus from how your mother is feeling to how you are feeling, and it will take lessening your fear (via emotion regulation skills).
Because as a child you needed to look up to an adult for safety, and the adult available to you was your mother.. she was your hope for safety. So, you focused on her, and you tried the best you could to fix her (and the situation) so that she can become the adult that you needed her to be. Focusing on her became a mental-emotional habit. This habit needs to change, but like any kind of habit, it is not easy to change.. but it is possible.
“Actually another problem there is that I have an older sister… I decided not to talk with her and just delete her from my life as she was giving only negative emotions to me“- it was possible for you to delete your older sister from your life because while you were growing up, you didn’t look up to her as your hope for safety, or as a significant hope for safety. On the other hand, it will be very, very difficult, if not impossible, for you to delete your mother from your life because (to the child within you), she is still your primary hope for safety (this is why you still focus on her).
“But mother used to say to me, that I have to talk to sister, I have to fix this, I never understood why. I never understood why do I have to fix deep family problems“- because your mother (and father) didn’t feel capable of fixing deep family problems.. and didn’t.. and someone had to.
“because none of the parents were/are in adult role, they always step back and do nothing, waiting for me to fix family problems. I feel a huge guilt inside of me that I am not trying to fix anything, because living without my sister in my life is all good to me, I never miss her, but seeing that my mother is devastated because of that makes me want to comfort her and get back with my sister JUST BECAUSE OF HER, not because I WANT IT. This constant feeling that I have to shape my life somehow in order for my mother to feel good is exhausting me”-
– it is exhausting to regularly FOCUS on someone else’s feelings and function instead of focusing on your own. Imagine you are on the driver seat of your car: You know your destination. You want to turn right=> you turn right. You want to turn left=> you turn left. You want to avoid a collision=> you avoid it. You want to park=> you park.
Now, imagine that you are on the passenger seat of your car and your mother is on the driver seat. She doesn’t know where she wants to go, so you try to help her figure it out: do you want to go shopping? Do you want to go to the doctor’s?, etc. Let’s say she says she wants to go shopping, but she doesn’t know where to shop, so you try to help her figure it out: do you want to shop for food? For clothes?, etc. She looks tired as she drives and you watch her anxiously: you are afraid that she’ll get into a collision with another car, so you try to warn her, maybe you hand her a bottle of cold water to keep her awake, or turn on the air conditioning to make her more alert…
It is all very exhausting, isn’t it, to have someone else in the driver seat of your car. It’d be so much easier to take the driver’s seat of your own car/ your own life.
“I do not want to feel the guilt“- it will take you taking the driver seat of your car/ focusing primarily on your life while feeling guilty. (Practicing emotion regulation skills will help ease up the guilt a bit).
“I try to understand that family problems are not for me to fix, and because I was doing that for so long from a very young age (comforting everyone in the family), my parents got used to that and they are always waiting for me to care for them and help them”-
– you got used to trying to fix family problems and comfort everyone in the family, a habit still fueled by guilt, a long-term habit, from a very young age… a habit that will be difficult to change.
“I feel so sad for that, always scared when I see my mother calling me“- there is an association, in your brain, between your mother calling you and fear.
“(I) just want to be in peace. But I do not feel the peace as I never felt it in my childhood. What are your thoughts on that?”- all your efforts as a child to bring peace to yourself failed (understandably, as it was mission impossible).
“What is the deeper work you think I should do on myself?”- start with committing to no longer do what has proven- long term- to fail.
“I see myself as a highly sensitive, emphatic person, being in a reverse role in my family and it is draining me completely. Is there an way of changing this role reverse?”-
– it will be easier to change it in the context of your parents if you no longer had contact with your then because they are still fueling your old, long-term habit of trying (and failing) to fix their problems. But of course, Guilt (with a capital G) is in the way.
“Do I have a chance of living my life as a child and not as parents’ (more mother’s) emotional support?”- when you say “living your life as a child”, you mean while having contact and interacting with your mother? Can you elaborate on this question?
anita
anitaParticipantDear Stacy:
“I was so sure about how serious he was about me…. It would be nice to know if he ever saw a future with me or not… I still just stare off into space daily trying to understand and accept that this person didn’t care about me as much as they seemed to“-
– this is what was true to me (you can tell me if it is true to you too, in principle or otherwise): I entered adulthood as a very needy child in a young woman’s body (thin, not womanly). I needed so much. No young man could have possibly given me what I needed even if he was very serious abut me and saw a future with me and cared a lot… There was simply TOO MUCH that I was missing: a sense of self-esteem, a sense of any amount of confidence in my ability to function independently and effectively in the world.. There was too much SHAME in me.. and GUILT. Too much unfinished business from a bad childhood.
From that disadvantaged position with which I entered adulthood, I looked up to people as the capable adults that I was not. I figured everyone knew better what was going on and what I should do to get along and make life work for me.. They had the answers, so I thought. Since I felt powerless, having no power in my ability to direct my own adult life, I looked for others’ power to help me. (I definitely needed help).
What I needed was a second childhood, a redo, so to re-enter adulthood with the minimal+ self esteem and confidence that is needed by any person entering adulthood. I wasted decades of my “adult” life wondering the world, (unknowingly) seeking the second childhood that never came through for me.
I am now an adult. FINALLY! And as an adult, I no longer look up to people: I no longer view people as superior to me, as powerful while I am powerless. I now have some confidence in my ability to choose correctly and figure out best plans of action in life situations. Sure, I wish I was an adult much earlier in life.. but it’s nice to have it happen sometime before I die.. to finally feel like a capable adult, to finally become a capable adult.
anita
anitaParticipantDear DC:
You are welcome and I hope that you have a good week ahead!
Before I answered your original post in your current thread five days ago, I noticed that we communicated in the 4 pages (Aug 31- Nov 13, 2021) of your first thread Letting go of injustice, but I didn’t re-read it until this morning. I will be doing so this morning.
In your first thread, you shared that you were a member of Strata Committee (SC) which made decisions for the 45 owners who lived in a block of townhouses where you were one of the tenants, and the Treasurer of the SC “has been paying for certain repairs for his own unit without the permission of the SC”.
“I am often the ‘unwelcome’ voice which calls out on such unethical behaviour. Most SC members would not call out such behaviour for fear of retribution… I find it hard to be involved and not blow the whistle on such unethical behaviour…I simply cannot ‘unsee’ things that I see…I continually go out of my way to see that perpetrators do not get away with misdeeds“, you wrote back then.
As I often ask members, I asked you too about your childhood, and you shared that your father died when you were five, and your mother had an affair with a married man who “tortured and abused.. physically and emotionally” you (and your siblings) until your late teens.
You shared this about your mother: “We were parented by a single mother, whom I came to realise is a narcissistic and toxic person. She has little capacity for empathy, is self centred, controlling, critical, etc. If you read about the traits of a narcissistic mother, she has all of them. To this day, each time I contact her (we don’t live in the same country), she would never ask about how I am doing but instead, focus on what she wants from me – in a very ungrateful and demanding way. It is very clear that it is all about her. It is my culture to respect elders… I find myself wrestling with a dislike for her as a toxic person/parent, but a deep care for her because she is my mother“.
On Sept 2, 2021, I wrote to you: ” I want to jump straight into what I’ll call The Core Injustice: the biggest and earliest Injustice that you experienced… I know that it is in your culture to respect parents (and) elders. Thing is, culture does not make an exception for very abusive parents or elders. Without such exception, culture teaches to respect abuse…. What kind of justice is it when a woman is allowed to hurt her children badly for years.. and she get away with it, no one holding her accountable as she keeps abusing them into adulthood: no apologies, no regrets.. no guilt, no justice… Your mother used and still uses her position of power to abuse you and her other two adult children. It is society and culture that give her this position of power to keep for the duration of her life, turning the other way when she uses her position of power against her children… It is society and culture that instill in children this Guilt, a terrible pain of being a bad-boy (or a bad-girl) if you act to correct the injustice of parental abuse… saying: well, look at your mother.. she is elderly now, harmless.. about to die.. don’t upset her now, take the non-physical abuse (as she is too weak being elderly.. to hit you herself or to have an affair with a man who will) for just a little bit longer.. okay? Good boy!”.
Your response on the same day: “Your insights have enabled me to again revisit my childhood, and realise that maybe my preoccupation with justice, albeit a little trivial, stems from what happened during my childhood – and to put in your words, perhaps my attempt to right the ‘core injustice’ that happened to me and my siblings all those years ago. Perhaps within me is an anger – a burning flame – that has never been extinguished“, and you asked: “to heal and move forward, would the way be to accept that all of us are flawed (including my mother), and then let go?“.
I answered: “True: all of us are flawed.. but some people go out of their way to be repeatedly abusive, month after month, year after year, no regrets, no efforts to correct. There needs to be a distinction between being flawed and being abusive. To heal and move forward, do let go after you no longer avail yourself to your mother’s abuse… Many adult children of abusive parents, wanting to heal, insist (because of Guilt) on keeping contact with the abusive parents, figuring they can find a way to not be affected by the ongoing abuse.. it doesn’t work”.
In your reply, you agreed with what I said but added: “I find it next to impossible to go no-contact with my mum. Sorry to disappoint. Instead, I think that I will write her messages to show that I still love her. She needs the assurances as she is now frail and elderly – and has health issues… Perhaps she does love me in her own selfish way. Or perhaps I really want to believe that. While there are tiny moments of love or kindness towards me, they are largely swamped by her abuse…. She is like that, perhaps because of her own childhood and biology. I don’t know that it is her fault“.
In your next post, you wrote: “You have this gift of clarity and getting to the guts of things. I really like that! (I copied and pasted this just now because it makes me feel good to read it). It is true that she could abuse us when we were kids as no one held her accountable. We were little and utterly vulnerable. No way to defend ourselves. Therefore easy for her to exploit within the walls of our house. Cane marks were hidden and I used to go to school with Elastoplast in several parts of my arms to hide those bruises. She hit us to vent her anger – not to help us be better humans. Perhaps she did not understand how else to release her own frustration“.
On Sept 5, you asked me: “Why do you do this Anita? Why do you go into these forums and put in so much effort, time to help people like me? You are also unrelenting and unwavering in your support. Most people would give up. I am curious as there are very few gracious people like you on this planet” (Again, makes me feel good to read this).
My answer the next day: “Because to me, on the other side of my computer screen, I can almost see you: you are a real person, flesh and blood, thinking, feeling.. just like me. I know how you feel when you feel hope or sadness.. pain. You are just like me, so when I am helping you- I am helping myself, no difference. In yet other words: you are important, there is no person in the world who is more important than you. You matter, your experience of life matters no less than mine. You are therefore worthy of my effort and time”
On Nov 13, you posted an update on the issue you presented in your original post 2.5 months earlier: “Managed to deal with the committee issue and exposed the dishonest behaviour within it at a general meeting of all owners. As a consequence, the treasurer resigned, which is an excellent outcome. I have decided to relocate as it is not worth my while to be engaged in such toxicity. I am sure that this is merely a short-term reprieve and there will be further undesirable incidents later down the track“.
And as you predicted back then, there is currently a “further undesirable incident” about which you posted 5 days ago in your second thread (the current).
My input today: (1) It is interesting that on both threads, I assumed that you are a man, and sometime along each thread, I was surprised to find out that you are a woman. I think that two of the reasons I did not even consider that you are a woman are that a– I assumed (wrongly) that your courage to fight-and-right-wrongs indicated that you are a man, a gender stereotype that I need to correct, and b– because you were so kind and gracious to me in both threads, I assumed that you were a man.. Because of my personal experience, I learned to expect aggression from the female gender.
(2) Injustice in the world is massive in magnitude, mind boggling.. almost unbelievable in extent, the extremes of it. Abuse of children and of adults is about the Abuse Of Power: political leaders/ people in the position of financial power abuse the power they have over millions and billions of people.., and parents in countless homes abuse the power they have over their children, and society/ culture at large.. allows it.
If you’d like, we can talk more about any or all of this…?
anita
October 28, 2023 at 9:43 am in reply to: Telling the difference between gut and fear in relationships #423808anitaParticipantDear Seaturtle:
“I asked him if we could go on a walk, hoping to feel connected to him and for it to remind me of why I am doing this, because I love him. We go on a walk and he begins exploring the outdoors and starts leading me down this very torn up valley of dead trees, hard to walk through and calls me a baby for complaining about the mud and the ‘trail’… I kept having to remind him not to keep walking so far in front of me as I stumbled... I truly don’t like his parents relationship, they are so passive aggressive and constantly hurting each other… pretty much live separate lives… I have felt disconnected with him ever since we got here and I want to understand why and find out how to ease this anxiety”-
– Continuing the inner-child theme (“N” is your boyfriend the adult, “n” is the child that he was/ his current inner child), what probably happened is that once he spent enough time in the company of his parents, in their home, his childhood experience was triggered/ became alive in his mind and heart, and N became n: a hurt, sad, angry boy, very distressed by his parents hurting each other passive-aggressively and living separate lives. Very distressed, he led you to a scene that resembles his childhood experience, “down this very torn up valley of dead trees, hard to walk through.. (no) ‘trail‘”.
In his childhood, there was no trail/ no guidance for n. He felt down and dead and torn up as he witnessed his parents fighting. it was hard for him to walk through his lonely childhood, from one hour/ one day to the next. He felt disconnected from everyone. Walking with you down the valley, n (for whom there is no Past vs Present) felt angry at you and disconnected from you, and consequently, you felt disconnected from him.
It’s like he took you for a walk down the valley of his childhood, showing you how it was for him, how he stumbled with no one in front of him to guide him, with no clear path ahead.
anita
anitaParticipantDear DC:
In your original post you wrote that you checked with the regulator and verified that indeed it is against the law for her to do what she did. In your 2nd post, you wrote: “It’s also against the law to just go into someone else’s property and then proceed to fix whatever you think is wrong with it… She has done that because she feels protected by ‘the family’. She would not have done that to a family member“.
In your original post you asked: “I can always file a formal complaint against Bella and the regulator will investigate. This will be a mark against her. Question is this – should I? If I did that, I would put her offside even more. However if I did not do that, she may carry on bullying. I would therefore appreciate any advice“-
– Based on my limited understanding, what I’d do if I was in your shoes, would be three things: (1) Do not pay the unlawful bill she presented to you, (2) File a formal complaint against her, (3) Move out…
Unless she apologizes, offers to take care of the bill herself, and corrects any and all unlawful practices against you.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Milda:
You are very welcome and thank you for being as nice and as kind as you are! I want you to keep feeling comfortable, heard and understood by me, and so, at any time that I misunderstand something you are trying to communicate to me, please let me know what it is.
* To let you know, I usually reply to posts by reading, copying and pasting a part of a post, then I respond to that part before I read the next part. Then, I read, copy etc., the next part before reading the next, etc. This helps me to develop my thoughts along the way.
“This situation caused my natural reaction of helping my family, and I want to know how do you think I should have responded to that. I was text messaging with my mother. Started with random topics and (as always) at one point when I asked mother what are the plans for weekend, she replied: well, father is again not talking to me, built a silence wall, so I will be doing my own things, and he his. After reading this message, I physically felt a stress reaction: my heart was racing, head spinning, felt nervous, scared and had an immediate thoughts of “I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, I HAVE TO SOLVE IT, HOW CAN I COMFORT MY MOTHER, HOW TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR HER, WHY IS FATHER NOT TALKING, I HAVE TO MAKE THEIR RELATIONSHIP RIGHT, I HAVE TO KNOW THE DETAILS, MAYBE KNOWING THE DETAILS WILL HELP ME SOLVE IT”. It was a true reaction of stress, tension, fear.”-
– I am quoting all this because it is so very meaningful. On the 24th when you shared about your childhood, you wrote: “I had a need inside to always solve their problems, so that maybe then I can live in a happy, stable and calm family“- you needed and wanted a calm family because as a child, you were too often, very scared, as is indicated by your scared reaction earlier today. In all capital letters are the thoughts you had as a child, resurfacing.
Notice what triggered this fear reaction: your mother saying, “well, father is again not talking to me, built a silence wall, so I will be doing my own things, and he his“. In your adult life circumstances, there is no danger in what she said, no danger to you, no danger to her (she survived that silence wall for many years). But in the child’s mind, in a child’s world, that silence wall was danger because you didn’t know what will happen next, and what you feared will happen next was something as final and catastrophic as death.
The child that you were is still very much a part of you (true to me as well). The known term for this child is Inner Child. For the inner child (who was traumatized as a child) there is no Past vs Present: there is only Present. She is still living at home with her parents and she still gets scared for the same reasons she was scared back then.
“But I paused. I didn’t write anything, I just put my phone away. Tried to challenge those thoughts and said to myself that I do not have to comfort her, solve her and father’s relationship problems, cheer her etc. But then I started facing new thoughts, which were: ‘How dare you not helping her, comforting her, she is lonely, go do something, say something, you are not taking care of your mother, which is your duty. Doesn’t matter that you do not think that it is your responsibility to do that, JUST DO IT AND DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HELP HER AND MAKE HER HAPPY!!’. Those thoughts were the ones that made me really sad and stressed out. I didn’t know what to do”-
– Evident here is Role Reversal which started in your childhood: the child-daughter feeling that it is her duty to take care (to parent) her adult mother. The daughter took on that role because… no one else did. Someone had to be the adult, solve problems, create and maintain peace/ safety in the home! Of course, it is mission impossible for a child to be an adult, but the child tries her best.
Part of her, of the child, becomes a pre-mature adult/ parent to her parents. Being still a child herself, living in a home that feels unsafe, she doesn’t have the emotional (or other) resources to parent her parents, but she is driven to do it anyway.
“I wrote to my mom: ‘Oh ok, get it‘. That’s it. No comforting thoughts, no questions, solutions, nothing. After writing that I felt very bad, as the worst daughter ever”-… as the worst.. parent (to your mother).
“And I feel till this moment that I made a wrong decision, that I had to help her, that she is poor and sad, with no one around to help her, I am the only one that can do it. A huge guilt inside of me. I would appreciate a lot your insights on this situation, maybe this could help me reshape the way I think and see situation.”-
– the child-parent (you) is feeling guilty for not helping her “daughter” (your mother). Talking about role reversal.
If your mother really was a child and you really were her mother, you would have had the opportunity to make her a happy child because she would be in her Formative Years when under your care, her brain developing/ being in the process of being formed- with your input, your care in it.
As a child, you unknowingly took on an impossible task: to change a sad brain that is already formed into a happy brain. Mission impossible. But someone had to make the home safe and no adult took on the task, so you did. And you did the best a child can do to accomplish mission impossible.
As you can see by reading your mother’s words, you failed all these years to.. silence that very loud silence wall in her home. You failed because any child/ daughter would fail.
We will talk more about this, for as long as you want to.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Saje:
“Why did I speak up? Because I am important“- Yes, you are! You are important, and I am glad you spoke up!
“I made the decision to put myself first. To remind myself that I am important as much as anyone else. I deserve to be seen, to be heard and to be celebrated“- beautifully articulated!
“I spoke to my sister about it. She said I was asking too much“- I disagree with your sister.
“I am a middle child and without a doubt I have the middle child syndrome. Growing up I never received the attention, care and love that I wanted. Everything felt so conditional“- it may be that your sister and perhaps your other sibling.. and maybe parents, all got used to not giving you the attention that you need, sort of in that habit…?
(We communicated for a short while back in July 2021 in your first thread, by the way).
anita
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