anita I thought of a question for you. You said that you once also experienced unrelenting shame, and said it could become a thing of the past. I am curious how this process was for you… How did you overcome shame?

I will respond to your more recent posts later, but for now I just want to ask that question since it came to mind.

anita,

I would like to start by saying, I do not know if I ever saw you as cold and unempathetic. Perhaps I just default to thinking any possible sign of an issue must be something I did. Either way, I am glad it is okay and feels better now to both of us.

You have covered a lot in your post and talked much about my mother/childhood. I forgot how much I have posted on here. Quite clearly I have been stuck in the same patterns and ways thinking…

You said:

Fast forward a year and a month, April 2021: you live with your mother, living “with unrelenting shame”- it is no surprise.

I had an inkling that that this may come up,  but it is also true I have lived away from her for 4 years prior to now, and still experienced great amounts of shame, so I wonder how much her physical presence matters in that. I was told by my therapist (who I think you did not approve of for some reason, but I still have virtual meetings with) that moving home would bring up many old patterns. He described it as walking into a vortex, where much of the progress I made gets thrown out as soon as I walk in this house. I have had some moments where it feels like this. I also want to add that my older brother moved home about 6 months ago as well for financial reasons (I have only been here 2 months), and my dad works from home now. It is both better and worse to have them around. I do prefer it to being alone with my mom.

Clearly, you need to get far, far away from your mother and use your parents’ money to live away from them and to attend quality psychotherapy.

Both my therapist and my friend have said to get far, far away from her as well. I sometimes feel that way. But sometimes it seems fine. My friend tells me “It is like you know you are living with a rattlesnake under your bed, but tell me “oh it’s fine, it hasn’t rattled in a while””  ..and I think about that a lot.

You say to use my parents money to live away from them. This is tricky. That’s what I was doing, and they didn’t want to do it anymore because I was going nowhere in life. They will pay for me to live somewhere else if I am going to college… I don’t know. I feel lost.

anita,

To your question,

 And now what, now that I know it, and hopefully you know it, what is there for you to do?

I am not sure, even reading over the excerpts you  used from previous things I said, I doubt them, if they are true or not,  and wonder why I said them. Sometimes it seems I am very sure something was wrong, thinking something had to have been wrong… and then other times I just get confused and can’t think of anything concrete. The only thing I can think is that it’s unfortunate that I was the way I was growing up, and that it’s unfortunate that I am the way I am now still today. (Like even right now, I’m being rather difficult)

It is hard to know what to do next, I think I am still learning the possibilities of what can happen.

Oh by “terror of me”, I mean she likely feel terrorized by the situation of me being sick on a plane, out of her control. She was probably horrified and disgusted, and probably took personal offense in the situation… “Oh god, how come this happened to me” is probably what she was thinking.

I am realizing it is hard and confusing to remember interactions I had with my mom. I know we argued and I know her patterns of behavior generally… but specifics are hard. Let me think…

anita, I just typed out a whole response and accidentally deleted it all! I am writing this to let you know I have read what you said, and will try to retype what I originally wanted to say later.

Regarding your second post: I wonder if your intense fear of vomiting has to do  with you having been forced fed as a baby- maybe your mother forced food into your mouth and you gagged, feeling like vomiting. I don’t know if you have or can possibly get this kind of information.

I have wondered about this myself. I only know of one traumatic incident with vomiting when I was a baby and that was when I was strapped into a car seat on my first plane ride and I threw up all over myself and the car seat and was stuck in for the whole plane ride. It fits into my fear a little bit because my fear of vomit is proximity-based. I will only feel a little startled if someone throws up outside passing them by on the sidewalk or something. If I am in the same house or room with someone throwing up is when it is the worst I have experienced. My absolute worst fear is being trapped in an enclosed space with vomit.

About leftovers and my food issues… I have emetophobia (intense phobia of vomit) that makes me stress about anything that could possibly make me sick. My mom is a bit of a germaphobe, but does not have the same phobia as far as I know.

did you hear those parents complain about you, or did you hear your mother telling you that other parents complained about you?

Well, I know that sometimes I would act independently from my mother, like going to the neighbors house to ask to play and other kids would say “My parents say I am not allowed to play with you”, yet they were allowed to play with my brother. This was a big problem for me amongst neighborhood kids, and even at school after we moved neighborhoods. I distinctly remember my best friend’s mom in middle school calling me a “bad influence”.