Getting close to another midnight…

“Feels incredibly awkward.”- it felt A.W.K.W.A.R.D when I stepped out of my mother’s emotional lane and into my own emotional lane.

Like.. wait, this is strange, new, uncomfortable. (I was so sickly adjusted to her lane).

“And yes, my husband truly did see my dad as a father figure”- I feel so sad for him.. and for the child- you because you saw your father as “a dad”. That word, “dad”, like “mom”, suggesting someone safe, dependable.

Back 2 U in the morning.

Hi again, Nea:

You wrote last night: “I can love my dad, acknowledge the things he has done for me, love and support my husband, and still recognize that their relationship is ultimately theirs.”-

I think that’s excellent insight: their relationship is ultimately theirs. Not for you to supervise, monitor or fix.

I have no doubt that you love your father ever since you were a little girl.

“I can love my dad; acknowledge the things he has done for me”- and acknowledge the things he has done against you.

You wrote today: “I don’t have to force everyone back into the version of ‘normal’ that makes me feel temporarily safe”- Wow, Nea, I love this insight!

That temporary- safety, what was it like for you?

From my earlier post, about “adult differentiation”: “It means you don’t merge with (his) emotions. You stay in your own emotional lane”.

I didn’t live in my own lane. I lived in hers and it was sincerely terrible to live in her volatile, explosive lane. My healing- changing is not about fixing her lane but stepping away from it and into my own lane.

Anita

Hi Nea 🙂

Thank you for the virtual flowers you sent me yesterday 🙏

“Perhaps we had all become a little too interwined”-

You mentioned your husband losing his parents at a young age, so, I guess he looked up to your father as a father figure, not just your father but maybe his own?

If so, imagine his hurt and disappointment.

I wonder if your father looked at your husband as a possible son?

And your husband disappointed him, just as everyone does, sooner or later?

* It was always the case with my mother- everyone disappointed her.. sooner than later.

When a person carries too much shame inside… ( have to get off the phone, will be back momentarily)

Hello Shinnen, good to read from you again.

How to let go of something you don’t want.. like intrusive, OCD-like thoughts, as an example?

Or let’s say, envy of others, or anger?

Is that what you mean?

🤔 Anita

Hi Nea:

I’ll reply further later but for now I wanted to copy these two definitions for later use:

Childhood rescuer role- This is when a child feels responsible for keeping the family calm, safe, or emotionally stable. The child tries to prevent fights, soothe adults, fix problems, or hold everything together because it feels dangerous not to. It’s a survival strategy. The child believes, “If I don’t fix this, something bad will happen.”

Adult differentiation- This is the adult ability to see yourself as separate from your parents, separate from their emotions. It means you don’t merge with their emotions. You stay in your own emotional lane. This is the core of adult differentiation — the ability to let others have their feelings without losing your center. You can protect your own family, your own boundaries, and your own emotional space. It’s the shift from “I must fix everything” to “I can let others handle their own feelings.”

Good very late morning, Nea:

You closed your post with “my anxiety keeps telling me that if I don’t intervene, the family will never feel normal again.”-

My thoughts (protecting my experience): Oh, that precious “‘normal'”. That long- awaited for peace, so desperately needed.

Of course, any “normal” is not really normal, It’s just a lull before the next storm, but a child needs to believe she’s safe, at least at times, so to take a break from her.. normal state of hyper-viggilence.

I think that part of it is the child’s desperate need to believe that she has some power in the situation, that she can intervene and bring peace to the volatile home environment, a wishful thinking that makes the situation feel a bit more bearable, a little less out of control.

Your thoughts, Nea?

🤔 Anita

Hi Dear Nea:

Truly, so good to read from you this Sat night!

I just came to some first-time realizations in regard to my mother (including a new term to me, “shame reactivity” that applies to her, and I think to your father as well), and in my mind- before knowing you posted a little while ago, and not knowing if you will again, I thanked you- in my mind- because it is my communication with you (!) that made it possible.

You wrote: “And to add even loving my dad or seeing the value in him has been a challenge itself.”-

Talking about love, let me share with you a little bit of what I wrote tonight, a study I recorded before you posted last:

“For most people, a small mistake or a moment of disharmony feels like: ‘Oops.’, ‘I didn’t handle that well.’, ‘Let me fix it.’ For someone with shame reactivity, even tiny imperfections feel like a threat to their identity, proof they are defective. So, instead of tolerating the moment, they react as if they are being attacked, humiliated, or destroyed. That’s why my mother’s reactions were so extreme…

“When someone has a fragile sense of self, feeling even a tiny bit imperfect or criticized creates an unbearable internal shock — shame feels like annihilation to them. Their nervous system cannot tolerate that feeling, so instead of experiencing ‘I feel wrong,’ they flip it outward and make another person feel wrong. It’s an unconscious survival strategy: if you are the defective one, then they don’t have to feel defective. If you are small, they don’t have to feel small. If you are the problem, they don’t have to face their own shame…

“She didn’t try to hurt me in the intentional, sadistic sense. But she did hurt me, deeply and repeatedly, because her way of surviving her own shame required making me small, wrong, powerless, ashamed, dependent.. making me disappear as a separate person.

“She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to not feel hurt herself. And the only way she knew how to do that was to put the hurt into me…

“I can’t hate her, because I can see she was drowning. I can’t love her, because she never met me as a person.

“I don’t hate her. I don’t love her. I just… see her.

“Her shame was so overwhelming that she reacted like a person in danger. She wasn’t choosing to hurt me — she was choosing to escape annihilation. Once I see that, hate dissolves. Yet, I can’t love her- because love requires reciprocity, recognition, safety, and two people existing…

“Now I see she wasn’t a monster, she wasn’t a mother, she was a drowning person who grabbed the nearest body — my own — to stay afloat…

“Where this leaves me- not loving, not hating. Just seeing. That is the beginning of freedom.”

I would like to B back 2 U in the morning 🙂

Anita

Continued:

“Even if I explained to her why I did it she said, ‘that doesn’t change how I felt’- so after the fact, she is not open to the why. Her sole focus is on her emotion. But if she was open to the why, her emotion might change.

“Also, an hour ago while working I thought how I hurt the ‘little child inside her’ and I started crying again”- do you remember feeling before her that you’ve hurt the “little child” inside an adult person?

“A month ago, I was listening to a song, and a random image came to my mind, us kissing while listening this song in our marriage, I think I told u that before but still, it plays in my head..”-

Regarding the idea of marriage, if she contacted you (a wild idea), and said something like ‘I love you, you are the one, let’s get married!’, will your answer still be, ‘let’s live together and see if we are compatible and take it from there’?

🤔 Anita