Hi Alessa:

Thank you for the support and encouragement ❤️

Today was- still is- a bit of a ☀️ and lots of clear sky. I am grateful for that!

* Dear Tee: I’ve been thinking about you today, hoping you are okay..?! Still 🤞

🫶 ❤️ Anita

Dear Tee:

I am glad you liked the quote, and that you have realized in the last few years that indeed your body is more resilient than you think!

I think that you are courageous, that you embody not only superb intelligence and wisdom but also remarkable courage. 🫶 ❤️ 🫶

And now, I will attend to your earlier message:

“I can imagine no one said it out loud (“fake suicide threats”). However your sister, once she was already a grown-up woman and had spent decades listening to the same threat, probably realized that your mother is using it to emotionally blackmail her. Probably that’s why she told her ‘then do it!’ You don’t say that to someone who is truly struggling with suicidal ideations, but to someone who has been repeatedly using it to emotionally blackmail you. And indeed, after your sister’s remark, your mother stopped mentioning it.. because clearly, she didn’t want to commit suicide – it was just a manipulation tactic.”-

This has never been as clear to me as it is now, as I read the above. She used my and my sister’s love for her, our need for her to be alive against us.. weaponizing our love and need for her, causing us great harm. I am trying to imagine me doing this: let’s say I have a child who looks up to me with need/love and trust, and what do I do?

I threaten the child: “I will kill myself” (unless you.. feel this way, or do this or that..). And I do it repeatedly. That would be very cruel, it makes anxious right now.

I really thought that she meant it because she was so miserable. Seems like I always tended to interpret her behavior as honest, and then I struggled with loving and hating her, still confused, and now I see CRUELTY, and it feels new to see it this way, to see her this way. I think I’m on the way to neither love her nor hate her.

“But as children and youth, we don’t know that. We believe our parents – and we’re afraid to lose them. So of course it works. It’s a very cruel manipulation tactic, and a very potent one, because it stops us in our tracks and we give into anything the person wants, because we’re afraid they might harm themselves 🙁”-

my goodness, you said the word right above, CRUEL, “a very cruel manipulation tactic”. (In this post, like in others in the past, I read part of it and reply before I read the next part.. so the word cruel, I brought it up, and then I read you bringing it up).

My sister did indeed give into everything her mother wanted. She told me once that she felt like a puppet on strings, the mother moving the strings. She too suffered a whole lot, she still does.

“Narcissistic behavior right there – it’s always someone else’s fault, never their own…”- A.L.W.A.Y.S, no exception to the rule.

“Unfortunately, yes. Her playing the victim was a manipulation tactic, because she never really wanted to get better. Covert narcissistic people complain not because they want solutions to their problems, but because they want attention, they want people to worry about them, spend their time and energy on them.”-

I paid so much attention to her that she became Everything (my center/ Planet), and I was Nothing (a lost satellite orbiting her). I guess this is what enmeshment is about..?

“They also guilt-trip people for being happy while the “poor them” are “suffering so greatly”. They guilt trip you for laughing – you’re not allowed to laugh because it offends the narcissist… etc. etc.”-

She guilt tripped me so much and so heavily that I clearly remember thinking (maybe I journaled it back then) as a teenager: “If I can live ONE DAY without feeling guilty, my life will be worth living!”

And decades later I say: although I have challenges in life, the fact that I am no longer drowning in guilt in regard to her does indeed make my life worth living!

“I think it’s a combination of my personal experience and other people’s experiences… I think that’s why I may appear so ‘accurate’, when in fact I’m just listing the common features of this kind of parents, unfortunately.”-

You are humble. You have a unique talent explaining things. I think you’d be amazing explaining things on your own YouTube channel

“Yeah, that’s a heavy realization (that we can’t really do anything to please them), but for me, it was a freeing one as well. How is it for you at the moment?”-

At this moment I realize that all that love for her that I expressed in my threads.. I didn’t understand it then. Now I think it was an emotional reaching out to her still.. still hoping for her to be pleased with me.

“Oh yes, a lot of narcissistic behavior is anger-inducing! And it’s a real skill to communicate in a detached way (if we choose to communicate with them). That’s why I’ve been mentioning emotional detachment so much – that’s one of the key preconditions for healing from narcissistic abuse. But it’s a process, and it’s okay to feel angry first, because that kind of behavior is certainly abusive… and we have the right to feel angry.”-

I think that as I stop still reaching out to her emotionally (feeling that love, that longing for her), like I wrote earlier in this message (and before I read your words right above), I will also stop hating/ being angry at her.

When you visit your mother.. you don’t get retraumatized a bit..? (I wondered about this for awhile, could be just projection).

“I can imagine it was extremely hard for you, both physically and emotionally, specially during those sensitive teenage years 🙁 If it’s any consolation, I’m glad that your tics have lessened over time, which is I assume the result of healing and processing some of those emotions?”-

Not being around her helped a great deal. The intensity may have lessened also because changing hormones (worst during adolescence). But they’re still intense enough to lessen my quality of life every hour, every day

“Right.. your body was expressing what you didn’t dare to: your protest, your NO. And you’re rightly asking how come your mother never stopped to ask you what’s wrong. But unfortunately, it only goes to show how narcissistic parents are insensitive to their children’s needs, how self-absorbed they are: it was more important for her to meet her ‘need’ of criticizing you than to inquire about your well-being, when you were clearly and visibly in distress… 😕”-

Haha! You used the perplexed face emoji 😊

But yes, it’s.. the image of the lost, small satellite (me) circling the big planet (her) comes back to mind. Growing up (in) I was nowhere to be seen. In what she reflected back to me, there was no me. All that was- was she.

“Dear Anita, have to go now, but hope to reply to your 2nd post a bit later..”- thank you so much Tee. I think so highly of you, and again, eternally grateful.

🙏, ❤️ and 🤞 🤞 🤞, Anita

Dear Tee:

Yes, I understand better now. Thank you for your understanding and for being gentle and patient with me.

After sending you the last message I felt not right about being excited or enthusiastic in that message, imagining how that excitement might not land well for someone in your situation. it’s that distance between Intent (to help you, to give you just a small fraction of the time, attention and effort you generously gave hundreds of members in the forums) and Effect (how such “help” may exacerbate your anxiety, how the intent lands).

I think that I was not attuned to you and I regret it.

Here’s something I came across this morning, a quote: “You body is like a lighthouse — strong, rooted, and built to withstand storms. Sometimes the sea rises without warning. Waves crash. Fog rolls in. But the lighthouse doesn’t panic. It doesn’t abandon its post. It simply waits, steady and aware, until the storm passes.”

I hope and am very much looking forward to reading from you again and finding out what happens next for you, fingers crossed.

🤞 ❤️🤞 ❤️ 🤞, Anita

Hi Alessa:

Thank you! Good reading from you in my own thread (and everywhere else)!

🙏 ❤️ 💡, Anita

Thank you, Tee. Still no power, can’t shower or anything 😕

Yes, l remember, 2 problems. I focused on the knee problem because that’s where I struggle.

People in this area get injured a lot, slipping on ice, falling from the roof, wearing out the body doing construction work, logging and whatnot, so I come across lots of people with injuries.

A neighbor of mine slipped and fell on wet or icy deck and injured her hip and spine. Was in a lot of pain for a long time, all kinds of treatments, nothing helped for long until she had some kind of implant installed in her spine. She explained it to me, sounded high tech, sci-fi (I forgot the details, but can ask her)

She said- pain gone.

I am looking forward to you getting back to me.

I am also looking forward to some power 🔋

* I hope it’s okay that I shared about my neighbor..

Anita