Dear Robi:

You are very welcome. Thank you for taking the time from the middle of your English class to send me this note. You’ve often expressed appreciation for my time and efforts, sending a positive sentiment my way: it shows me that you are an empathetic person.

anita

Dear Meatball:

On May 4 (Saturday), you wrote: “Thursday again while at work she texted saying that she ‘‘is all in and wants to do the work’… She’s been texting / calling the entire weekend and wants to make things work. I just don’t know what to do.”-

– since then, you decided on what to do, and that was (1) to take her word, that she is all in, and wants to do the work, that she wants to make things work, which she texted you May 2, twenty days ago, and throughout the following weekend, less than 3 weeks ago, (2) to let her and her daughter stay in your house rent/ expense free and (3) to attend couple therapy with her, and have her attend individual therapy, all financed by you, if I understand correctly.

This is very generous of you and it is a very loving thing to do. She needs to appreciate your love and efforts at least as much as I do (a person who never met you in-person), and this means that she needs to keep her word to you, and keep doing the work required.

May 22: “(The therapist)  basically told her that ‘IF’ she’s willing to do the work it will take years of therapy to help her. I’m cautiously optimistic!“- I support your optimism and caution, and I ask you to take good care of yourself first, on a regular basis, every day, because your mental health matters no less than hers, and if you don’t take care of your own mental health, you  will not be able to help her on the long-term.

I am adding quotes from a few online sources that are very interesting to me, a complex trauma survivor myself. Reading, copying and pasting the following is helpful to me, and I figure it may help you as well. It may help you with a better understanding of what she needs in a relationship with a therapist, and what she needs in a relationship with you (“Safety first…  a physically and emotionally secure environment… Trustworthiness and transparency… honesty, reliability, and clear communication… providing choices… to restore their sense of control…  patience, understanding, practical support, and encouragement… listening, validating their feelings, and reassuring them“, see below):

Very well health/ what is trauma: “Trauma can either be physical or emotional. Physical trauma is a serious bodily injury. Emotional trauma is the emotional response to a disturbing event or situation. ..* Acute emotional trauma is the emotional response that happens during and shortly after a single distressing event. * Chronic emotional trauma is a long-term emotional response a person experiences from prolonged or repeated distressing events that span months or years. Additionally, complex emotional trauma is the emotional response associated with multiple different distressing events that may or may not be intertwined

Sandstone care/ types of trauma: “Type 1 trauma refers to an unexpected, single-incident trauma. Also referred to as ‘Big T’ or acute trauma, it is commonly related to Post-traumatic stress disorder. Examples of Type 1 traumatic events can include: * Violent or sexual assault * Life-threatening illness or serious injury * The traumatic loss of a loved one or someone close to you… Type 2 trauma, also known as complex trauma, refers to trauma that may involve childhood experiences or traumatic experiences during early development. Repetitive trauma is also a type 2 trauma where trauma is repeated. Complex trauma often becomes part of a relationship in which a person becomes stuck. This occurs in situations such as child abuse from caregivers. Common examples of type 2 traumatic events can include: * Childhood abuse * Domestic violence… * Bullying…

Psychology today/ trauma processing, when and when not: “Research has found that telling the trauma story is ineffective in bringing relief from symptom of trauma and sometimes can be harmful (retraumatizing)… A heavy focus on telling the traumatic story reflects outdated notions of what trauma does to people and how to treat it. Traumatic memories are not stored in a way that they can be deeply accessed by verbal interactions based on cognitive or logical processes. Trauma is stored somatically, that is, in the body…  Traumatic memories reside as frozen experiences within…

“If we begin therapy by focusing on the trauma story itself, the risk is high that we will add to the injury and pain. Early work should focus instead on restoring a sense of safety, on helping the survivor to discover and draw on their resources, and on self-regulation. Only after a client has been able to achieve a reduction in the alertness that typically follows trauma and a strengthened awareness of resources for coping with stress should we consider strategies that directly deal with the trauma story. Such preparation reduces the odds that reviewing the trauma will cause emotional flooding and retraumatization”.

Positive psychology/ trauma informed therapy: “Trauma-informed care… is based on a number of crucial principles that are essential for successful therapy:… 1. Safety first The primary focus is creating a physically and emotionally secure environment, including maintaining confidentiality and establishing clear boundaries to help survivors regain control and trust. 2. Trustworthiness and transparency Essential in trauma therapy, trust is built through honesty, reliability, and clear communication, forming the bedrock of the therapeutic relationship. 3. Empowerment and choice Addressing the powerlessness often felt by trauma survivors, autonomy involves providing choices, involving them in treatment decisions, and recognizing their strengths to restore their sense of control”.

Hopeful heart counseling/ stages of trauma recovery explained by a therapist: Helping a loved one through trauma recovery involves patience, understanding, practical support, and encouragement to seek professional help when needed. Providing basic needs such as food, shelter, and transport, as well as assisting with finances and childcare, can offer invaluable support during this challenging time. Being emotionally there for your loved one is also crucial; listening, validating their feelings, and reassuring them can significantly impact their healing process. Encouraging them to seek professional help when necessary and offering your unwavering support can make a world of difference in their recovery journey… How can I support a loved one through trauma recovery? Provide practical and emotional support, and encourage professional help when necessary – these are the best ways to support a loved one through trauma recovery”.

anita

Dear Arie1276:

I am very pleased to read from you again! We first communicated in your first thread on Feb 16, 2022. That was..  less than 2 months before you met your current husband for the first time (April 1, 2022).  After not posting for about 2.5 months, you submitted a post for me on March 21, 2023 and on  June 4, 2023, telling me that you are doing well, that you were married for 10 months at that point, and that you went on a nice vacation with your husband 2 weeks before, that it was like a 2nd honeymoon.

I wasn’t able to reply to your 3/21 and 6/4 posts because I deleted my account sometime in Feb 2023. Soon after I returned to the forums, under a different account, I submitted a post for you in your previous thread, on Sept 15, 2023 (“Dear Arie1276: I hope that you are still doing well, over three months since your last post above. I don’t know if you are still following the activity on your thread, so if you are reading this and would like to talk further, please let me know”).

Again, good to read from you again!

And now to this thread and your original post:

“The following morning, I received a nasty text from her. She proceeded to tell me I was a slut and a boyfriend stealer…“- yes, I remember, you shared about this before, and I remember that it greatly distressed you.

“We did end up reconciling and started hanging out again.   Then I was gonna play match maker and set up a date with a male friend and Amy.  Well my male friend confessed he liked me and wanted to date me.  I said no.  I told Amy this“- oh, oh. I wish you didn’t tell her that, it’d only cement her jealousy!

“and again she accused me and told me she didn’t trust me and I steal everyone…  She would also not speak to me or any of my family members during family gatherings. Instead she would cling to her bf like someone is going to steal him from her.  Which is sad! Real friends don’t act this way“- I would completely give up on the idea of being friends with her, and no longer hang out with her outside family gatherings to which you are both invited as family. And I would keep a polite, light and minimal exchange with her during the family gatherings; nothing more, nothing less.

anita

Dear Robi:

As I read, yet again, and more thoroughly this morning, through your first 2 threads and parts of your third, my challenge was  to copy and paste as little as possible from all your massive writings, so to not be distracted, so to create a clear, focused picture in my mind.  And indeed, following 5 hours of reading and studying, I see something major that I didn’t see before. First the quotes, then my comments:

“I still feel uncomfortable around them and I still don’t feel connection.. I was very attached to them as child (very young  barely remember something)… About one thing I am sure. They never gave me privacy or the feeling of freedom…  I never had my own space… I felt controlled… Being a big part of my childhood trapped in their workplace (June 8-10, 2018).

“If I stay here I will always be helped by my parents and I will always feel controlled… I would describe both of them as being anxious and disconnected. My father never makes eye contact with me… my parents never had fun, never really had a social life.. inactive” (Dec 7, 2018).

“I finally made it back to Spain.  For the last week while still home, I felt really anxious and unsure about coming here. I was starting to even consider possibilities like becoming a police officer in my home town… But I left anyway on the 5th of February. My mom took me to the airport, I flew and I was here again. I was very tired from the long trip and I felt extremely anxious and unsure… I arrived few hours ago and I was already thinking about going back. Everything looked so intimidating… I am too anxious to be here. I wanted to call them and tell them I am going to come home” (Feb 8, 2019).

“Up until the age of 29 I was basically fully and later partially supported by my parents. I have to admit, although comfortable, there was a lot of frustration in me because of that. I wanted my independence… During the period when I was fully independent, every time we talked on the phone they would offer to help me financially If I needed it. They would even insist… It’s Christmas!.. We went to spend a couple of weeks with my parents… I wanted to ask my parents for their financial support in order for me to become a Personal Trainer… At first, my mother was thrilled – ‘oh, finally! you’re doing something! we were worried about you. why didn’t you tell us earlier? I give you the money right now if you want!’.  That felt good! It felt like a welcoming hug… She cornered me and started a fight – told me I didn’t care about them and I only cared about myself… she said to me – ‘You’re living in 3 days. From that point, you’re on your own’ She didn’t talk to us for the next days…  I called my mother 10 days after we left… I ended up listening to a 40 minutes monologue – her telling me how bad many things I’ve done as a kid and that I deserved to be hit. And she was joking when she told me I’d be placed into foster care” (Feb 18-19, 2024).

“Very often I’ve heard from them (actually my mother mostly) things like: ‘please don’t forget us’, ‘keep calling us’ , ‘don’t leave us’… Me being financially supported by them does keep us connected– so I see indeed a good reason there to keep the status quo… As for my mother, your description is perfect. ‘crazy – not sensible or reasonable. She seems bitter, angry, chronically stressed, perhaps, unaware/ having no insight into herself or into others.. unpredictable, impulsive’… Her traumas are showing in her body, but she doesn’t hear it. I am very often worried, and I find it hard to live my own life knowing she needs so much help” (Feb 20, 2024).

“I don’t miss being controlled and observed by my parents all the time though. But does it have to be like that?… I think I can set my boundaries better now. I’d like to be able to go back to what I believe is partly my house, to the country I grew up in, without being afraid of becoming a trapped kid again. I don’t want to be avoiding going there – that place should be a place where I can feel at home and I don’t want to run away from it” (May 16, 2024).

“In the last 4 years, I’ve spent about 2 to 3 months a year living there… I often felt uncomfortable around my parents… we don’t really have that much to talk about… in the last years I was working online so I’ve had my own source of income – although they didn’t really let me pay for many things and always insisted on paying for everything –  treating me like a guest…  Having their words of disappointment and discouragement is quite literally the last thing I need right now” (May 18, 2024).

“I was working from home, very often in the garden and in my free time I was doing my workouts and spend a lot of time in the nature. I was be mostly on my own when I was there.  They live in a much bigger house now, where I finally have my own room and a separate entrance –  so in that respect I do get a lot more privacy. The worst part was the fact that we don’t really talk much when I’m there.. There isn’t that much to talk about.. so they watch a lot of tv and just go on with their day. I do my thing… I do believe there are ways for us to heal and accept each other more. They have no one else but me… I see they are suffering on a daily basis..  my mother is stuck on her phone almost non stop scrolling social media – she’s heavily addicted. She cannot listen to more than 10 seconds of any of my stories without getting distracted and tuning out. At the end of my conversation there will usually be no reaction from her.. she just has no idea what I’ve said to her…. Her body shows her all the pain she hasn’t worked on…  Both of them feel miserable most of the time. I clearly see that and I feel sorry for them.. I really do. They often say they love me very much and I’m the most important to them. (I know.. I don’t much competition do I ?)…I still think we can be a family…I think they would feel disappointed if I left Spain. While I lived in Poland they encouraged me to move back to Spain” (May 19, 2024).

My comments/ the picture I see: at the edge of the picture, I see that financial independence on your part will not change the ways your parents behave toward you. They will not treat you like an adult when you are financially independent from them.

At the center of the picture, I see that what stands between you and further adulting is, not your financial independence, but your excessive emotional attachment to your parents. This part is a surprise to me. Your early-on and many shares about how disconnected it’s been in your home growing up and still, how uncomfortable you feel around them, how you don’t like them, or hate them, etc., I didn’t think that you were emotionally attached to them (not since you were in kindergarten, that is, as you shared).

But I was wrong. Notice what you shared above, on Feb 8, 2019, it clearly shows intense attachment to your parents, excessive, for an adult. Notice how their offer of money during Christmas of last year felt like a “welcoming hug”. And most recently, on May 19, 2024, your strong attachment to them is evident, still wanting to be a family after all these years of disconnectedness.

And the strangest thing that I see today, strangest because it didn’t occur to me before, is that your parents are way less attached to you than you are to them: both have been miserable while you lived there with them, your father doesn’t create eye contact with you, was never  involved in your life, neither was your mother, neither listens or talks with you about matters that interest you; your mother having threatened to send you away to foster care, and during Christmas of last year, she told you that in 3 days after the visit with her, you’d be on your own. And notice how encouraging they have been for you to live away from them,  in Spain. Most recently you were afraid to tell them that you are leaving Spain and heading.. their way, afraid that it will disappoint them.

I think that your parents are and have been just too.. stressed to be attached to you, too stressed to invest in a relationship with you. Just like she expressed to you last Christmas, paraphrased: it’s been too stressful, too difficult for her to be a mother.

If you consider what I wrote here, if you find it to be true, it may weaken your attachment to them, motivate you to not try to connect with them (that’s likely to increase their stress), and make you able, emotionally to make a life for yourself, your own life, your own way! It doesn’t mean that you need to cut contact with them.. just not live with them, and limit the length of visits.

anita

Dear Robi:

“They live in a much bigger house now, where I finally have my own room and a separate entrance –  so in that respect I do get a lot more privacy… they watch a lot of tv and just go on with their day. I do my things“- I am glad they live in a much bigger house and that when you’re there, you have your own room and a separate entrance!

“I don’t hate them… they themselves haven’t had healthy childhood experiences… Communist Romania wasn’t what you’d call the land of opportunity“- my empathy is with them and with you.

“They have no one else but me. Their parents died years ago, there are no more uncles, aunts, cousins who are in close contact with them. They also don’t have any friends. They only have each other… and me“- I am guessing that there are people with the same background as your parents, same age, same location, same Communist Romania history who do have close contact with uncles, aunts, cousins and friends?

Why don’t they?

And why don’t they have close contact with their own son (“The worst part was the fact that we don’t really talk much when I’m there.. There isn’t that much to talk about.. so they watch a lot of tv and just go on with their day. I do my things“)?

I am not blaming them, as in suggesting that they are bad people. I think instead, that they are incapable people, incapable of close contact: true to your mother, more than your father perhaps.

“I do believe there are ways for us to heal and accept each other more“- the extreme lack of close contact between you and your parents for 3 decades, is not promising in regard to creating close contact/ healing between the three of you. But I can’t say it is impossible, I can’t predict the future. Miracles (rarely) happen.

“I see they are suffering on a daily basis..  my mother is stuck on her phone almost non stop scrolling social media – she’s heavily addicted. She cannot listen to more than 10 seconds of any of my stories without getting distracted and tuning out. At the end of my conversation there will usually be no reaction from her.. she just has no idea what I’ve said to her…  My father… likes to scroll his phone too.. quite a lot… Both of them feel miserable most of the time. I clearly see that and I feel sorry for them.. I really do“- there is no close contact between the two of them either. I too feel sorry for them.

“I don’t want to completely cut them off – I still think we can be a family.. as much as we can and know so far“- yes, you can continue to be a family of no close contact, just like it’s been so far. From your description of your mother, it reads like she is truly incapable of close contact with another human being. I remember now that I suggested this to you some time ago, now edited: that your mother offering you money has been her way to express love that she is generally unable to feel or express.

“I believe trying to understand and showing genuine interest in where they came from and what their experiences have been –  this as well is a sign of adulting… Shouldn’t this as well be a sign of adulting?“- I wonder how many, if any, of the uncles, aunts, cousins and others who expressed genuine interest in your parents, were met with your mother’s/ parents’ inability to reciprocate.. and unreciprocated, their interest evaporated.

Think of your past efforts to show genuine interest in your parents. What were their reactions? If they reacted in ways that were harmful to you (made you feel acutely alone, perhaps), then adulting would be to no longer show genuine interest in them (even if you still feel it).

“Going to Romania makes more sense financially, since I would spend a lot less money there“- I understand this point.

“These days I keep questioning if leaving Alicante is actually the right thing to do or not.. I’m so tired, stressed and foggy lately and I don’t seem to know how to choose anymore… I haven’t ‘adulted’ as much as I’d like and it doesn’t feel great. I think I’m doing the best I can, the best I’ve learned so far… The more I learn – the more I see how little I understand. That’s ridiculous“- this is indeed the nature of true learning: the more you learn, the more there is to learn. It is when a person believes they know all that there is to know, that they are.. not learning anymore.

Your indecisiveness, your doubts, it’s a habit of your mind, that’s where your brain habitually goes when you make this or that decision, or soon after, and this is what’s happening now. When you feel foggy, your brain being fried under the influence of doubt, so to speak, repeat to yourself: I made the right decision. And shake the doubts off from your brain, hush them. When the doubts return, repeat.

anita

Dear Kshitij:

You are welcome. I am glad you felt it comforting to type down your recent post. For as long as it is comforting, please type down your thoughts, anytime and at any length!

“I feel emotionally exhausted by having either intrusive or enraged thoughts“- the rage in the thoughts is especially exhausting because the intense anger (rage) prepares the body for physical action (the heart works harder, for one, in preparation to fight), and when there is no action, the preparation lasts so long, heart working hard for so long, that the person gets exhausted.

(I am adding the boldface feature selectively to the quotes): “I had felt this intense grief when I was facing the issue with scholarship and it has remained within me, refusing to fade away. Never in my life I had felt such an intense pain, such an intense grief (not even during the time I was in the worst of my health…)… Hurt because the entire situation was uncalled for, it was because a bureaucrat found it satisfying for their  whimsical reasons to keep my application pending…. that officer deliberately withheld my file”-

– Reads like you believe that it was not a mistake on the part of the particular bureaucrat/ officer, but a deliberate attempt to hurt you, and that the officer found it satisfying to hurt you. What do you base this belief on?

In the above paragraph, you mentioned these emotions: intense grief, intense pain, and hurt, but you didn’t mention anger. Unexpressed, unresolved anger is powerful emotion, it adds intensity to other difficult emotions and make them last.

“I felt a darkness around me… I lost all hopes… whenever I get into a spiral of intrusive thoughts, I imagine myself depressed, I imagine myself isolated, drowned in misery and weeping on my condition“- I am getting in touch with my own lifetime, unexpressed anger, Kshitij, this is why in this post, I am focusing on your unexpressed anger. I am thinking that if you find a non-harmful way to express your anger directly, the anger will not intensify other difficult emotions as well as depression, and make them last for a long time. Maybe you can type down your anger in your next post..? (I intend to express my anger in my next post in my own thread, doing for myself what I am suggesting that you do).

“Now about my problem with father. I think that my relation with him did not make me think that I can never succeed because I could not succeed in having a good relation with him; I gave up on that long ago. I think his problematic behavior ended up showing in my self esteem, in my self worth (remember I mentioned externalization of self worth?)… During the scholarship issue or even before it happened, I think I attached my self worth with this opportunity... my self worth took a great hit and that contributed to my problems as well as my anxiety that went out of my control. I think that is one area where my father’s past behavior definitely impacted me because it had already damaged my self-esteem as a child”-

– What I understand from this paragraph is that currently, and for some time, you no longer hope that your father approves of you: you no longer see your father as a source of self-esteem. You see academic and professional success as a source of self-esteem. Now I understand better why the scholarship application issue was so devastating to you. The officer who mishandled your application, was just about to remove your hoped-for source of self-esteem, which is what your father already did via his sermons.

anita