Dear TeaK,

I am sorry to hear you had a difficult relationship with your mother too. I really agree with you that it is much more important to be there for your children emotionally rather than financially and materially.

It is sad that the person who says loves us more than anything can also hurt us so very deeply with their words, actions or non-actions, criticism. It is not just shame, guilt, sorrow, feeling unworthy at times, but also serious attachment issues I had to deal with.

I do judge and self-critise myself a lot and probably because my mother criticised me so much. And it is so true how you say how our mother’s critical voice becomes our inner critic. My mother’s didn’t tell me i am good for nothing, but criticised many decisions I made and is extremely controlling, wanting everything to be her way. I think on some level she understands that she shouldn’t have been so critical with us, but unfortunately she never said sorry neither to me nor my sister.

Now whenever she tries to bring up something she doesn’t like, I try to tell her as calmly and respectfully as i can, it is not her place to decide. For example, I lived with my partner for 5 years and there was a period she was constantly on my back that soon I will no longer be able to have children and i should hurry up with getting pregnant. …Classic! I mean this made me so confused! From one side, I was rebelling against “what she thinks is best for me”and at the expense of this rebellion and confusion, I completely ignored my own actual needs and feelings of actually wanting to be a mother without my mother’s instructions. It created quite a bit of inner  as well as outer conflict (in my relationship with my partner). And I kept thinking why was i so confused that I actually want to be a mother? And it is because my mom told me i should do it and i was confused because I thought she is just planting ideas into my head….  and ofcourse as usual I rebelled.

You mentioned you had love-hate relationship with your  mother. What is like your relationship with her now?

I agree it is important to understand the pain. I know I am hurt, but I don’t know why fully. I think its more complicated and multi-facaded than just my mother’s strictness or silent treatments. Although being the most important person of my environment she played a role here, I don’t blame her or anyone who hurt me.

I felt pain and hurt from my past relationships and failed friendships more than from my mother, more pain from the suffering and injustice in the world than my mom’s silent treatments…maybe I was  “trained” in a certain way in my childhood to respond to these situations, and I acquired these reactions in my childhood.  But replacing one negative reaction with another, more positive or modified reaction is not the solution here. For example, if I am reacting now with anxiety and obsessive thinking over something “bad” that happened, I don’t think replacing it with a positive emotion, say, “I am the most worthy person in the world and nothing is my fault” is the solution here. maybe sometimes i am not indeed not worthy…it is being able to see without judgement in either direction is what i truly seek… so i do want to go till the end of it and figure it all out.

I don’t see myself as a victim, I know I am responsible for most of the things that happened to me in life after certain age and its my responsibility to figure it out.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Nar.

Hello Anita,

Very interesting allegory. I like how you name it Mother and Fear too. I have to say though, as contradictory as it might sound, I always felt protected by my mother when i was very little. But I think I started understanding what happened in my case in relation to your examples. My mother has this saying about upbringing – ” up to 3 years old, treat your child as a king, up to 16 as your slave and then as your friend”. I think this might be what she did to us too. I felt very protected and secure whenever I was with her from one side (physically protected, protected from all the bad things and people in the world), but us humans also have a strong psychological need of attachment and dependancy which I didn’t always feel from her. I started fearing her excessively from 10years old maybe, because she was presenting herself as a figure of authority who we should respect and listen to. And it is against this authority i developed anger and rebellion. Later when she tried to be more friendly, I wasn’t going to accept that. Do I understand correctly you think the origin of all our human fears are related to our mothers? Fear just take many forms obviously, but what i want to know is the origin of it. Or look at it as a whole.

Hello Anita,

Thank you for your kind words, but i am no angel. I can only hope to be more empathetic and less angry than i am.

It is very interesting what you shared about our sensitivity to being used. And that our emotions have a purpose and I guess self-preservation instinct is there for a reason. It is easier to deal with hunger than with feeling used. My problem with it was that in the past due to my past traumas with my ex and best friend, I became overprotective of myself and didn’t want to be too open to new people. Or rather care too much for other people. This is the wall I was referring to previously. I guess it is important to learn to open up at the right time to the right people. Be aware of what happened, learn from it but without getting paranoid and carrying it over to future relationships.

About self-protection, I had this feeling in relation to the girl I tried to befriend -“if you are drowning, I want to help and i can offer you my hand, but I won’t let you pull me in with you”.

I think there is also a relation between my OCD issues and how I process difficult emotions or my relationship issues. I was recommended to start CBT but it is only due in 3 months and for now i was told to keep a diary of my intrusive thoughts. The violent image I talked about appears very rarely actually. I haven’t had it in 2 months. I think it is the various forms of OCD which has been a very strong part of me since i was a kid. When it comes to relationships, it appears in the form of thinking patterns, things i said repeating themselves over and over in my head, or emotions repeating.

Sometimes i think maybe it is better that these thoughts or emotions are repeating as I am able to see something i didn’t before. Maybe it is better to be tortured by it than forgetting all about it and moving to the next “mischief”. The reason why i am bringing this up is because this problem with the girl bothered me for a month now and finally a few days ago I was able to let go of it and make peace with how I felt. I stopped talking to her a month ago but the problem still bothered me. After weeks, days and hours of difficult thoughts, emotions, doubts, it dropped away. Thank you for helping me to understand myself in relation to this issue as well. I am truly grateful!

Could this anxiety from thinking patterns/ problems processing difficult emotions be part of OCD too?

About my mother, this is really interesting area to explore. As I know our relationship with our mothers or the lack of it is probably what shapes us most to be who we are today.

To answer your questions

“(1) You shared regarding your lack of compassion for your mother: “Up to .. 26 years old, I didn’t have much compassion for her at all”- what did you feel for your mother for the first 25 years of your life?”

-My mother was always quite a strict and austere mother. It was like she was a “bad cop” and my dad “good cop”. She thought it was important to be strict with us because of cultural reasons. She was scared she had 2 girls who might go “astray”, unfortunately my culture and especially when i was growing was a bit chauvinistic, and young girls had a lot of judgement. So she was strict, but she also criticised and controlled us a lot. Up to i was a teen i had feelings of strong attachment and fear towards her. After 15, i just rebelled against the control. I wanted to pluck my eyebrows, wear whatever i want and put on make up. she tried to explain why i shouldn’t, i wasn’t interested in that. so she forbade, it didn’t work either. i just started hating her. Then i begged her to send me abroad to study and at 17 I was sent to the UK to study. it was extremely challenging in the beginning, but she was there to help. help me move to a new place for example. From 17-25 I didn’t trust my mom too much to tell her about my personal life, i didn’t hate her any more, just didn’t trust she would understand me. From 26 I started telling her limited information. When I got married, she really disapproved of my marriage but still supported me. So when my marriage fell apart due to my ex being a psycho, I realised my mom may not always have the right things to say, but she has certain wisdom about people that i should sometimes care to listen to at least.

“(2) Earlier you shared about your mother: “she constantly sacrificed herself, her well being and her health for us”-

Is or has your mother become physically ill because of what she did for her children, and if so, what is the nature of her illness, and how was it caused?

When and how did you become aware of her illness?

How else did she sacrifice herself for her children and how did you become aware of her sacrifices?”

About this, i can just say that she is a true workaholic and she totally overworkes herself to the detriment of her own health and her family’s wellbeing. She criticised us a lot too because she is addicted to work or addicted to cleanliness. She is still very controlling up to this day even though we are adults, she still tries to control and blame us when she really overworks and burns herself completely out.

But she did do a lot. For example, when my sister gave birth she couldnt look after her new born child due to bad thrombosis. my mother looked after my niece at nights and went to give lectures at the university she worked at in the mornings. she saw it as her “duty”. to be honest, i was surprised how she never brought it up. She blames us for much smaller things, like not cleaning after ourselves, or washing dishes, or “listening to her when she knows better”. but she never said how for 6months she genuinely suffered looking after a new born child who was her granddaughter.  I guess this is why I feel the compassion that i do. Deep down i know how caring she is, despite all shortcomings.

then it was very courageous of her to be able to convince my father to let me go at the age of 17 to a very foreign country and live all alone. i can’t believe she could let me go for the sake of my future. Considering how “strict” my culture was, how many ways i could have failed my family, she trusted that i wouldn’t and only at 17. I was such a kid who hasn’t spent 1 day alone without my family and never been outside my country. Also, my parents were not rich. they actually indeed let go of their own little wishes for our studies and comfort. for example instead of buying a new car or new flat, they saved for our future. I know most parents help, but my partner whose parents were very helpful as well says my parents help was too much. It was almost limitless. they have this mentality “all for children”. I noticed this when I grew up and could see how my peers’ parents were not as helping as mine. Basically, my sister and i have a comfortable life today at the expense of their discomfort. and in a way, we do owe a lot to them.

Seeing all this, makes me feel very lucky and I know they deeply care for me despite all shortcomings. But it doesn’t mean those shortcomings didn’t affect me. This is why i am able to look at it very compassionately and lovingly though. So i am not sweeping under the rug the fact that my mom was controlling, criticising, strict, because of her silent treatments i have attachment issues. i am not.  that up to this day my sister doesn’t trust her to tell her about anything personal. but i also know she is a true mother (not good or bad but true) who is capable of deep care and love that i probably will never have from anyone else and can just hope to be able to offer one day to my own child or someone else without too many shortcomings.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Nar.

Hello Anita,

Hope you had a good weekend! Thank you once again for taking the time to reply back to me, understand my thinking through my writing and also thank you for sharing such personal details about yourself. I know it might not be so easy.

I do not find anything written here difficult to read or process at all. It rarely scares me to look deep into my mind and dive into my own or others’ psyche, as well past or conditioning.

I read the article you were referring to, it is very interesting, thanks for sharing. What you shared about the girl I tried to befriend is very true and I recognised the fact that she has a “victim” complex about 2 months ago. I also re-acknowledged it again about 2 weeks ago. Why did i continue my involvement with her? Well, firstly, I was arrogant enough to think I wouldn’t fall into her trap. Secondly, I thought I could handle her.

From all this affair, what I didn’t want to accept is that she manipulated me into feeling sorry for her, feeling guilty for what i said or did. Didn’t want to accept the fact that she used me to offload her mental and emotional issues. It made me feel very bad and disturbed that I was  spending time with my family who I haven’t seen for half a year during the holiday season and she was sending me  these difficult messages to read about herself. She didn’t seem to want to understand that it is not ok to load someone like this especially when they tell you they are spending some quality time with their family members.

Other thoughts that ran through my head in relation to this- “why did  I feel like she used me? Who is being a victim now ? Why am I sensitive to being used? Why did I have to feel used? ”

I thought about why I didn’t want to accept this fact. The fact that I felt used, and the answer is that it is my issue, not hers. I am certain she is doing what she did to me to most people, the fact that she is not deliberately manipulating people, doesn’t mean she is not causing harm, but does make it easier to feel compassionate towards her… And this is not me saying people are all good deep down, and believing into the goodness of everyone’s hearts- God NO. Most people most times are evil and selfish, including myself.

The fact is she did manipulate me knowingly or unknowingly doesn’t matter, but why did I have to feel used and manipulated? Why am I so sensitive to it? Why am I so impacted? This is whats interesting and once I fully understand why i will be able to close my involvement with people who have victim complexes. Obviously, as you might have guessed by now, she is not the only person who did this me. I was in a very difficult marriage with a true psychopath who manipulated and used me left, right center without feeling any compassion or regret whatsoever. Luckily, I was able to recover from all the mental harm he caused and forgave him.

On a different note, I am almost certain I have guilt complex myself. I am a kind of person who feels a lot of sorrow and guilt. And this may be one of the reasons why i easily fall into the trap of people with martyr complex. I thought about why would someone feel so much sorrow and guilt? And I think there is a connection between Anger, Sorrow and Guilt. Anger is often a reaction to something which we didn’t understand fully, or losing control over something. Sorrow and Guilt are almost inseparable for me. And it must be the way i am somehow programmed/conditioned. The way I learnt how to react to what happened in life.

So I thought “when was the first time I felt a lot of sorrow and guilt in my life?”- It was when my grandmother passed away and i was a 10yr old kid who didn’t understand what happened. She was living with us suffering greatly from diabetes, was blind and lost both her legs. I stayed alone with her at home during the day, she would ask me to make her tea or help her out, but I didn’t care to help. She was begging me sometimes to help and I was this cruel kid who often didn’t care to help. So this is the source of my sorrow and guilt. When my grandmother passed away, I locked myself up in a bathroom and cried a lot feeling a lot of sorrow and guilt. I think I never forgave myself for how I treated her. And I know I was just a kid, but I could never forgive myself. So it almost feels like these same feelings of sorrow and guilt for what I did followed me throughout my life in almost all of my relationships….

On the Mother topic-

I am sorry you were so scared of your mother. And that she was verbally and physically violent. It is insane how much our mothers shape us  to be in the ways that we are. Both my sister and I were scared of my mom too. She was harsh, but she doesn’t have a martyr complex. Her issues are different. She never made us feel like she sacrificed something for our sake, or was verbally violent at all.

In fact the opposite. She is a very successful woman career-wise and in all her other aspects of life and never told us we owe her anything. My parents gave too much to us and really overprotected and spoiled us in a way. Why do I know? Because I left when i was 17 and my sister remained with my parents.  She is a 30 years old mother now, and up to this day she doesn’t fully comprehend how much our parents have helped us in life financially and morally. I think it ruined us as well but in different ways, we are both too spoiled and don’t want to work too hard for things in life. Overprotection is really unhealthy . It is all about finding that right balance I think. Kids must feel protected, but never overprotected.

I think I understood where my unhealthy attachment issues are coming from though and it is related to my mother. I already mentioned she was strict with us too never verbally, she was physical only very few times-i wouldn’t call it abuse. but what she did and still does -she gives us “silent treatment” and withdrawal. Which is just as bad I think. She would get upset about something and stop talking to us. Thats been her way of punishment. And you are right, kids especially those who are very sensitive like me and my sister were, don’t process such behaviour well. I know it made me feel detached and i was looking for any way to feel “loved” again by my mother. So here comes the connection to feeling sorrow and guilt again. Also the connection to maybe why i can be clingy or easily feel deprived of love and attention… seek right attachment, but end up with unhealthy attachments.

My deep compassion for my mother wasn’t always there. Up to I was 26 years old, i didn’t have much compassion for her at all. It came much later when i was able to see why she was so strict with us, and yes sometimes she did us wrong with her strictness or withdrawal, but she also did much more goodness that harm.

Our parents/ childhood/certain events later on in life do shape us to be a certain way, but life is often about being able to understand how it all happened and forgive those who hurt us. We can break away from our pasts, and we can only stop living in the prison of our childhood or adulthood or even in the prison of any event, only when we fully understand and process what happened. Until there is no full understanding, there can be no compassion or love.

I hope you were able to forgive your mother who hurt you.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Nar.

Hello Anita,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this post and look into my previous comments to have a better understanding of what I say and write. I truly appreciate it.

What you wrote is very interesting. I never thought the reason why i was so interested in her was because i wanted to see myself through her…it makes so much sense now.

To be honest, the moment we met, she told me she was abused as a child. I never questioned how, and first thought maybe it was sexual abuse. And thats one of the reasons why I was feeling very guilty for not wanting to talk to her much during the retreat-because i could see she was deeply disturbed and needs professional help.  Later forced myself to for 2 reasons-to learn to be more open and find out about the nature of this abuse.  From my deductions later I realised her mom was depressed and i think she used to hit her as a kid until she turned 15.

What is really interesting about what you wrote Anita, and what made me really think as i already had a feeling about this- you are right, I am disturbed and have conflicts within me too but much less than her and through her I had a glimpse into my childhood trauma. The truth is my mom hit me a couple of times too when I was 13-14. I was an extremely rebellious child, I was damaging my health, was unmanageable at times, but I KNOW what she did was wrong. She shouldn’t have dealt with it that way. My mom was also a strict mother. This whole thing had an impact on my sister too, she was really scared of my mom. Of-course I know what my mother did was utterly wrong, and this is not me justifying her behaviour- but I am also intelligent enough to know and feel that at the same time she loves her children more than ANYTHING and ANYONE in the world. She gave everything to us, she constantly sacrificed herself, her wellbeing and her health for us. She was violent at times, yes, but her 30 and 40 year old self lived through extremely difficult times emotionally, financially and she had a very difficult life unfortunately. So even though I was a sensitive child and was affected by how she handled my teen self,  I forgave her long long ago because I know nobody will ever love me as much as my mother does.

Now back to the girl and her mother trauma which is much deeper than mine, I realised through knowing her so closely what is behind all her current and imagined problems in life- she never felt loved by her mother. So she goes around causing more trouble and disturbance to others and says everything is love. She imagines this guy is the only person who loved her and clings to him for the life of hers, she even said if she owes being non binary to her trauma-she is thankful. I think even her whole gender confusion started because her mom was never motherly or has much feminine qualities.

The difference between us is that I had much milder version of childhood trauma and I knew and still know very well my mom loved and protected me. She never had that-this is what caused my heart bleed for her, because I understand this is the worst kind of pain in life, when you know your own mother didn’t want you or love you. The conflict within me is that she often made me angry too as her behaviour is full of really obvious and subtle contradictions that I don’t dare to talk about.

Another disturbing thing about her and the fact that she cant differentiate between pain or silly things and how she processes difficulties- she feels attacked by things, becomes a “victim”, really suffers, then she says she lets go and is thankful-and everything is love. She did this to me and others multiple times. so i saw this pattern of disturbing behaviour. For example, during our retreat she was the only person who drove to a wrong location because she never bothered to check in with organisers (as she explained later-this is because she trusts everyone), she arrived really tired and exhausted. We were sharing a room which was super overheated at night, and I opened the window at night. She woke up in the morning crying and suffering. i asked her if she was ok, even though we were supposed to keep silence. She didn’t say anything to me, continued crying. Fast forward to the end of our retreat she messages me- “you really helped her and I am thankful for that.” I thought this was because i listened to her for hours talk. Turns out I helped her by “making it difficult for her” and making the room cold at night. thanks to this she suffered as she was so tired because of this next day as she couldn’t sleep. but was able to let go and she is thankful. Surely, this is not normal. Instead of seeing the truth of what happened-that she drove to the wrong location, didn’t bother getting right information, didn’t talk to me or close the window herself, she chose to “suffer”, be a victim and then “let go” and be “thankful”. Oh and everything is love.

I have seen this kind of patterns a lot in her and my reactions were always anger and then disappointment in her and myself. We stopped talking naturally thankfully.  I just could no longer be her silent audience and when she asked me why I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing my partner or be in open relationship, i told her why I dont think this is ok for me. Also, in our group chat, she messaged, she feels disconnected from group conversations, which were actually quite interesting to most- questions of free will, life, music, sports, carpets, art, etc. The truth is she was only interested in discussing trans topics and documentaries, not much else.

But I have a feeling she will contact me again in the future, and i want to have a way to be able not to engage too much with her. I don’t believe in just blocking or ignoring people. She definitely has no guilt of doing it to others, but I am not that kind of person. So hopefully I will be able to deal with it if she contacts me again.

Back to me and why this whole affair touched me on so many different levels. Relationships are best ways to learn about ourselves, they are true mirrors where we see ourselves. Through this relationship, i think i was able to glimpse into my own issues. You mentioned in the other posts, you had an OCD as a kid too and you are over it. How did you get over it?

The problem is my therapy will start in 3 months time ( it is free and i am on the waiting list). And there are so many things and traumas that could have led to my OCD issues in my childhood. I was born in the Soviet Union and until i was about 12 were quite difficult and violent times for my country/people and obviously my family. There were people dying, kids disappearing, my people were through a genocide. At school, when I was a kid there were teaching us of violence and wars committed to us as part of our history. I saw graphic and violent images that no kid should see. Then as a kid, i had a lot of accidents (dislocated my shoulder, bit on a glass, fell down the stairs, etc.) My parents loved and protected me beyond possible. But they were affected by these difficult times themselves, there were days when we had no money for bread, for example. I never acknowledged this but so many things that shaped me happened at my childhood. My huge fortune and gratitude was that I know I was deeply loved and wanted as a child. This is what helped me get through it.

But I still would like to know whats that fear. I noticed i cant watch violent news, horror movies or deeply psychological thrillers. I am really sensitive to it. For example, the other day i read in the news how Uyghur people in China are behind subjected to horrific crimes and how one survivor was talking about what they do to women in concentration camps. I read this article and I couldn’t sleep properly that night. It disturbed me so much. Intrusive images I have are violent in nature. Maybe it is somehow connected to my sensitivity to violence.

My OCD takes many forms and it has been part of me since i was a kid. Hair picking, hand washing, sanitising, negative thinking patterns and now rarely and sometimes violent images. It is manageable, but i would like to face it. i am ready for it now.

How did you overcome your OCD?

Thank you so much for all your help, Anita!