Forum Replies Created
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anitaParticipantDear Alessa- I want to reply in the morning, but for now, this Sat night, I am filled with appreciation and gratitude to you ❤️❤️❤️
anita
anitaParticipantDear Peter:
Your words paint such a deep and thoughtful picture of connection and existence. The way you describe love as something beyond time and emotion is really interesting. It makes me wonder—do you ever think about love in a more personal way, beyond the big cosmic view?
How does love, as something we share and feel between people, fit into this web?
I recently realized that my attachment style is Disorganized (I shared more about it in my own thread less than an hour ago, and before you submitted your most recent post). I deeply want love in a personal way, but I also fear it because, from an early age, my brain linked closeness with pain. This led to a push-pull pattern throughout much of my adult life. While I’ve made progress, I still struggle with suspicion and distrust—even toward people who have proven themselves worthy of trust.
I appreciate the way your reflections challenge me to think about love beyond the personal level. Thank you for sharing them—I always find them meaningful. Wishing you well on your journey of reflection and connection.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Alessa:
I understand how mental health struggles can make communication challenging, and I truly appreciate that you take the time to respond when you feel ready. Your depth of understanding and empathy yesterday meant so much to me. More than anything, I want to express my gratitude—for your kindness, your wisdom, and your ability to put thoughts into words so beautifully. I feel seen, and that is a gift in itself. ❤️
I want to reflect further on your words from yesterday:
* “She even didn’t like any people. She didn’t trust anyone. So in her mind it would be all children are bad. All people are bad… People who hate themselves often cannot bring themselves to truly care about others. She was very sick”-
My mother was indeed very sick. She suffered from a combo of (undiagnosed and untreated) Paranoid, Borderline and Histrionic Personality Disorders.
I’ve never really explored my attachment style before, but this morning, I realized that mine is disorganized. In reading about attachment, I discovered a strong connection between growing up with a parent who has Paranoid, Borderline, or Histrionic Personality Disorder and developing Disorganized Attachment in childhood—an attachment pattern that often carries into adulthood.
Disorganized attachment forms when a child seeks love and comfort from a parent but also fears them. The parent may be warm and loving at times but unpredictable, distant, or even frightening at others. This creates deep confusion, causing the child to associate closeness with pain. Love becomes intertwined with the fear of inevitable hurt.
As the child grows, this ingrained fear shapes relationships, leading to struggles with trust, emotional stability, and intimacy. The longing for connection remains, but so does the deep-seated worry that closeness will bring harm. This internal conflict often manifests in cycles of attachment, suspicion, and withdrawal.
It’s like reaching for connection but then pulling away out of fear, even when there’s no real reason.
* “She was like an animal, beaten, broken lashing out at everyone who comes near her.”- the lashing out was part of her Borderline Personality Disorder. It was truly scary. Beaten, broken herself, she proceeded to beat and break me.
* “I feel like your Mother would have had difficulties raising any child. It wasn’t you personally who was being labelled… it wasn’t your fault. You were just there on the receiving end of it all.”-
For most of my life, I believed I was to blame for her behavior—that I was the cause of it. She told me this many times. She was unable to look within herself or take accountability for any behavior that was harmful, or even potentially harmful, to others. So, when she raged at me, she always positioned herself as Right and Good—and me as Wrong and Bad.
Alessa, your insight and kindness have helped me more than I can put into words. Please know that you don’t have to feel any pressure to continue guiding me on this topic; you’ve already given me so much, and I truly appreciate it.
If you ever feel comfortable sharing more about your own struggles, I’d be honored to listen—to whatever extent feels right for you. Maybe, in some small way, I can offer you even a fraction of the empathy and understanding you’ve so generously shown me.
anita
anitaParticipantAlessa to anita, May 23, 10:18 pm: “It wasn’t you personally who was being labelled. She even didn’t like any people. She didn’t trust anyone. So in her mind it would be all children are bad. All people are bad. What chance did you have being raised like that?
“You were just a child that she was responsible for. In her mind, the old fashioned mindset she kept you alive. That is the extent of her responsibility. Job done, child raised. There are higher standards of care these days and the pain the traditional methods cause is being acknowledged.
“People who hate themselves often cannot bring themselves to truly care about others. She was very sick and it wasn’t your fault. You were just there on the receiving end of it all. A terrifying experience for a child… It is a hard experience growing up being punished for simply existing.
“Your mother can’t relabel, but you can. You can acknowledge your inherent goodness and acknowledge that she was wrong about you. It wasn’t your fault that she couldn’t take care of you properly. Those were her mistakes and hers alone.
It is okay to still love her. It is your truth. She was extremely troubled and wrong. She kept you alive and it wasn’t enough. The pain she caused ignoring rest of your needs, ignoring your emotions. Ignoring you. Hurting you… You deserved so much more. To be loved, cherished, protected and seen. ❤️”-
– no one understood me better than you understand, Alessa I am crying, can hardly see the scr3een.
anita
anitaParticipantContinued: all I can be is me. Not something someone thinks I should be, or should have been.
Being me is someone who loves her mother even though she will never know.
So, case closed- she will never know.
But I know.
And so it is.
I am typing these words in a public forum that seems like it is not visited by many. Maybe one person in this whole world. Maybe two.
Not being heard, listened to is what I know only too well.
And yet, I understand.
I just noticed that Alessa sent me a message, only FOUR MINUTES AGO. Tears in my eyes, reading your words, reading your heart, Alessa!!!
You UNDERSTAND. I am forever grateful that you are with me in this moment.
May add more after submitting this.
anita
anitaParticipant* I am here, in my thread, to continue healing, little by little. Journaling—especially stream-of-consciousness writing—works for me. That doesn’t mean I believe you, dear reader, should approach healing in the same way I do.
If what I share here troubles or bothers you, please feel free to skip reading it.
Whatever comes to mind this Friday night:
In the Core of me, it has always been my Ima (my mother).
I suppose I never quite separated- individuated from her in due time, so she is still- and forevermore in the core of me.
All of my teenage and adult life I tried to get rid of her, to remove her from that space in the core of me.
But too late- she had already cemented herself in The Core of Me-
– something that couldn’t be reversed.
I have to live with this reality of what was done and cannot be undone.
The window of opportunity to separate- individuate had closed long ago.
So here I am: no point in.. trying to get rid of her, to remove her from my core where she cemented herself with countless histrionic, shaming, guilt-ing sessions of “poor me, evil you (evil-anita)” sessions.
I can’t get rid of her, too late.
So, all I can do- being true to myself- is to love her, from afar.
She is in the core of me, and there is NOTHING I can do to change this fact, this happening that was cemented long ago.
My love for her, a burning love is still ongoing-
This is who I am, and I can’t be anyone, anything else.
It’s a psychological thing.
It’s like I am carrying within me another person who didn’t give me the opportunity to be left alone.. to be Enough to stand alone without her.
Sincerely, I don’t expect anyone to understand what I am saying.
More so, I expect people to criticize me.
Will continue in a few moments-
anita
anitaParticipantAbout me caring about you so deeply- this is the legacy of my whole life- caring about you so very deeply, Ima. Yolanda Ben-Shabat- Shlesinger, her name. Yolanda Ben- Shabat- May your memory be a blessing.
This caring is in the core of me. A caring- dissociated, and then- reconnected.
An Undying Love.
Yes, I Love You. I love you.
Yes, I love you, oh.. oh.. Love, love you (listening to the Moody Blues)
My mother, Ima- no one means more to me than you do.
And yet, you don’t know.
I don’t know how to get over this, how to.. Let Go.
I think I’ve been writing these things, hoping someone reading will connect me to her, connect me to the core of me: someone to hear me, someone to understand me.
Who are these people who understand me? Alessa, I think.
Yana (Jana) is gone. I miss her. I will probably never hear from her again. I am sad.
I will miss you, Jana.
anita
anitaParticipantJust a note before I begin journaling—
I am here, in my thread, to continue healing, little by little. Journaling—especially stream-of-consciousness writing—works for me. That doesn’t mean I believe you, dear reader, should approach healing in the same way I do.
If what I share here troubles or bothers you, please feel free to skip reading it.
(I think I will start each of my posts on this thread with the above).
It’s time to fully validate myself. Time to reconnect with what was once dissociated.
Lately, there are things that bring me fear. As Alessa mentioned in another thread, I choose not to share certain personal details—out of respect for the people in my real life.
Fear has shaped much of my life. My earliest fears were twofold—fear that my mother would kill herself and fear that she would kill me. Since, psychologically, I had not yet separated from her in early childhood, those fears felt indistinguishable—one and the same.
That fear consumed me—first as a child, then as a teenager, and still as an adult. It held me captive, stalling my growth in countless ways—cognitively, emotionally, and practically.
In the last ten years, I have experienced so much healing that I am no longer the person I once was. I am not the depressed, desperate, spaced-out version of myself that I used to be. This is why I believe so deeply in healing—because the way I experience life now, especially in the last few years, is profoundly different from how I did before.
Yet, amazingly, there is still so much more healing to be done. The thing is, I know there can never be a happily-ever-after ending to healing—it is a continuous journey. Healing never truly ends, and I find meaning in the never-ending process of learning, growing, and becoming.
Being Trapped in Yesterday is a result of self-invalidation. The more I validate myself, the freer I am.
And now, Self-Validating, reconnecting Stream of Consciousness (inner-child speaking):
All I wanted, ever since my mother labeled me BAD- was to be GOOD.
I tried and tried and waited and waited for more than half a century (and that’s a long, long time) for my mother- this one person- to relabel me GOOD.
She never did the relabeling.
I feel a vast emptiness in my heart right now.
And I heard recently that she, at 85 or so, is very, very old indeed. She can never stand straight, she is permanently stooped over, and is stubborn and dizzy and deteriorating cognitively.
So, you see, she will never relabel me anything. She is dying.
My mother, the most important person in the world, is dying.
And she will never know that I loved her and she will never love me any more than she ever did, which was a very, very limited, conditional and abusive-kind of love.
Coming to think-feel about it, I lost her many, many years ago, when she was still young and standing straight.
It’s just so very difficult to let her go, even after having had no contact with her for so many years.
There is a part of me that, just now, wanted to reach out to her and make things right, the two of us- mother and daughter, now.
I am not feeling angry at her. How could I feel angry at an old, stooped over woman.
Mommy, Ima- so may years, decades- it is hard to say goodbye, goodbye to my hope that you will to here for me, on my side.
My Attachment for you lasted for so very long.
You meant so much to me.
It’s a big chunk of my heart that has been yours, for so long.
And you never knew. Couldn’t see it.
I love you, Ima. I wish you knew. I wish you were able to know or care about me caring about you so very deeply.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Alessa:
Thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement. It truly means a lot to me as I navigate this journey. Your belief in me gives me strength. ❤️
I’m really glad to hear that this work has helped you in such a profound way. That’s reassuring and inspiring.
Also, I wanted to say—I missed seeing you in the forums since your last post. Your presence and insights are valuable, and I hope you’re doing well.
Sending you warmth and gratitude.
anita
anitaParticipantYou are welcome, Peter. Thank you 🙏😊💙
anita
anitaParticipantDear Peter:
I just wanted to add—there’s no pressure in what I said above, no expectation that you need to respond in a certain way or even agree with me. I know words of acceptance can feel unfamiliar, and I don’t assume they will land smoothly.
I meant only to share my truth, as simply as I could. And whether that feels right to you, strange, or somewhere in between—I respect that.
Whatever path you take, I hope it brings you ease.
anita
anitaParticipantDear Peter:
As someone who has struggled with self-doubt for so long, I deeply appreciate moments of absolute confidence—moments when I know something to be 100% true. This is one of those rare moments:
If I have the privilege to communicate with you further—here, or even in real life, if that ever happens—I will never, ever try to change you in any way, shape, or form. Not even the slightest bit, not even disguised as a recommendation for improvement. Nothing.
“By change, I mean a shift in core personality traits or deeply held beliefs about myself. Transcendence as transformation – becoming something other than me.”-
Just yesterday, I wrote in my thread: “I like you, Peter, just the way you are!”
Not that my words have the power to make you like yourself. I am humble.
“The therapy of re-processing issues from the perspective of my younger self has been useful, revealing new information, thoughts, feelings, even a kind of healing. But not change, at least not in… the way I once hoped.”-
Therapy helped you understand yourself better, but it didn’t make you like yourself, did it?
“Hinduism & Advaita Vedanta Core Idea: The true self (Atman) is already perfect… Buddhism… No Need to Change: You don’t need to fix yourself… ‘You are perfect just as you are.’ Kabbalah… No Need to Change: The essence is already divine… Christian Mysticism Core Idea: The divine image (Imago Dei) is within every person… Taoism… No Need to Change… No-thing to change, no-thing to fix.”-
And then, there’s Anita’s-ism: “I like you, Peter, just the way you are! I think you are the bee’s knees 🐝✨ No one like you!” (May 21).
Poem: As You Are
I do not ask the wind to change, nor the river to take a different course.
I do not ask the stars to burn any brighter or darker than they are.And so, I do not ask you to shift, to mold yourself into something new.
You are not a puzzle to rearrange, not a question needing an answer.I will listen, I will be here— not to shape you, but to see you, as you are.
That is my promise. I am able to keep this promise.
anita
anitaParticipantI read further that healing from trauma involves not just processing the painful experiences themselves, but also addressing dissociation. Trauma is the original wound. It’s the event(s) that caused emotional pain, fear, and distress.
Dissociation is the survival response. It helps a person cope by disconnecting from overwhelming feelings and memories. While it serves a protective role, it also keeps parts of a person’s experience locked away, making full healing difficult.
If dissociation remains unaddressed, it can keep you emotionally disconnected from your own truth—making it hard to validate your feelings, trust your experiences, or fully integrate your past into your present self.
Healing means reconnecting:
* Learning to feel safely instead of pushing emotions down.
* Bringing awareness to dissociation so you can recognize it when it happens.
* Trusting that your emotions and memories deserve space and acknowledgment.
* Rebuilding a sense of wholeness, where your past, present, and emotions all feel connected rather than fragmented.
— I never realized that healing from dissociation is part of healing. I don’t remember this ever crossing my mind. It’s not only the trauma that needs to be healed, it’s the response to the trauma (dissociation) that needs to be healed as well.
Back to reading: dissociation is meant to be a temporary response to trauma—an instinctive defense mechanism designed to help someone survive overwhelming emotional distress. However, in some cases, dissociation doesn’t fade after the trauma is over. Instead, it becomes a persistent or even chronic pattern.
Temporary Dissociation occurs during or immediately after trauma (e.g., abuse, violence, extreme fear). The brain disconnects from the painful experience to reduce suffering, creating emotional numbness or a sense of unreality. This can present as feeling “zoned out,” detached from emotions, or having gaps in memory surrounding traumatic events.
Once safety is restored, dissociation gradually fades, allowing emotions and awareness to reintegrate.
Ongoing or Chronic occurs when trauma is ongoing (e.g., childhood abuse, chronic neglect). The person never had a chance to process or resolve the trauma in a safe way. Their environment reinforced dissociation—for example, they were encouraged to “not think about it” or suppress emotions. They didn’t develop other coping strategies, making dissociation their default way of handling stress or discomfort. In this case, dissociation can persist for years, even decades, leading to Chronic detachment from emotions, relationships, or reality, Feeling numb, disconnected, or unreal often or all the time, Difficulty trusting memories or experiences, leading to self-invalidation, and Emotional “flashbacks” where past trauma feels present, but without clear memories.
anita
anitaParticipantHow are you, Arie?
anita
May 22, 2025 at 6:19 am in reply to: OCD & relationships & uncertainty intolerance & neediness #446208anitaParticipantHow are you, iloverain?
anita
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 