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Dear Ilyana,
I am sorry you’re feeling worse and unable to attend to your everyday tasks. At the same time, you’re noticing that important people in your life are there for you: your husband and your sister, and they’re doing everything in their power to make you feel better.
That’s very different from the experience you had as a child, when you were left alone with your pain and fears, and didn’t get any emotional support from your mother. You thought your father had abandoned you and that it was your fault and that you were unlovable. Your mother was consumed by her own hatred and anger at your father, so you were surrounded by only dark feelings, by her hatred, anger, bitterness, disappointment. There was nothing positive that she gave you, instead she sucked you in into her own vortex of negativity. No wonder you grew up severely hurt and depressed.
But now, it’s good you’re noticing that not everyone is like your mother, that people genuinely care about you, and that there’s love and understanding for you. That itself can be healing and I hope it helps you bridge that pool of depression that you’ve found yourself in. Whether you decide to go to a residential treatment program, or work it out locally, with your therapists, try to focus on the fact that things are different now and that there’s help, that your loved ones are sincerely trying to help you because they care about you. Try to find comfort in that…
Let us know what you’ve decided about treatment options and how you’re doing… Take care <3
Dear Dandan,
perhaps there was a misunderstanding. It’s clear that you love your mother very much and believe she was loving and caring towards you and your siblings. Perhaps she intended to, but as you said, she had many issues, like inferiority complex, and feeling sad a lot of of the times, and this affects a child a lot.
My mother e.g. believed she was a martyr, and she criticized me a lot and was strict with me. But she did everything for me, she took care of me physically very well, got up at 4am in the morning to cook lunch for me before she went to work, etc. She was a martyr mother, provided for all of my material needs, but not my emotional needs. And that caused a lot of psychological problems for me as I grew up.
What I am trying to say that our parents might have good intentions and might care for us physically, but due to their own limitations, they fail to meet our emotional needs, which are as important as our physical needs. So e.g. if your mother had low self-esteem, she would allow her children and her husband to yell at her:
Every single day in the morning before leaving to school, they used to shout at mom for every single thing like if they don’t like the breakfast, if the uniform was not ironed well and for various reasons.
She has faced a lot of abuse from my sisters as well as dad.
Perhaps that weakened her further, and she was suffering a lot, always being a little sad and depressed. She believed she cannot help herself, or even that she deserves it (you said she had inferiority complex, being born in a village, having no college education). So if your dad and sisters were abusive to her, perhaps you were the only one who understood her and had pity for her. You didn’t treat her like that, you only shouted at her a few times. You were kind to her most of the times and tried to console her and make her happy. She could talk to you, perhaps complain about your father and sisters, and you would listen. Was that what was going on?
It doesn’t make your mother a bad person, it’s just that she didn’t have the capacity to take care of herself, or stand up for herself. She was weak and had low self-esteem, and as a result, she didn’t have the capacity to give you proper emotional care either. I can say with certainty that when a parent has emotional/psychological deficiencies, it always reflects on the children.
My mother was also encouraging me to study well and go abroad to places like Germany, but at the same time she was critical of me and didn’t have trust in me. Your mother seems like she didn’t criticize you, but she was emotionally dependent on you, and it was a burden for you, whether you’re aware of it or not. A child cannot give emotional support to a parent. Rather, a child needs emotional support from the parent. If the roles are reversed, a child cannot grow up to be a healthy, independent individual with needs and wants of their own. They will always remain attached to the parent, trying to make them happy, and making their happiness depend on their parent’s happiness.
So I believe you should be looking at your role as emotional care-taker to your mother, not in the sense of emotional incest, but simply as you seeing your mother suffer and be sad, and trying to make her happy and comfort her, when she couldn’t do that on her own.
Dear Dandan,
First, I am glad that both you and your family all recovered from covid!! I’ve been following the news and am hoping that things will get better soon in your country…
Thanks for explaining some more about your mother and your situation at home and while growing up. It appears you were and still are your mother’s favorite:
She likes me more than my siblings. She always takes extra care of me. Even now. Treats me special, prepares juice , extra snack food for me. If I am not normal , she will be disturbed too.
My mom still loves me a lot. My sister says that my mom is liked obsessed with me. My mom wants me to be happy every single second. But i don’t know I couldn’t handle too much love.
One reason you could be her favorite is that you’re a boy, which is in many families in India more appreciated than having a girl. I don’t know if it’s true for your family. But beyond that, I think there’s another reason why your mom likes you the best:
She likes talking. She has complained a lot that dad doesn’t talk at all. she hasn’t had anyone to talk and share at all. But I have listened to her a lot.
Two days back when tehre was some fight, my mom was dull, she seeks me all the time. She wants me to be around her. She tells that my presence gives her some strength.
Your mother had two major problems, I believe. One is that she’s sad and depressed by nature, so she‘s a person with low energy and quite needy. She needs others to lift her up, and she also needs movies and other events to lift her from her lethargy.
Emotionally, she’s a needy person, with a propensity to easily slip into depression. Even if she took good care of you and your sisters physically, and walked twice per day to your school to give you lunch and snacks, it doesn’t mean she was able to give you the same amount of emotional care and nurturance. In fact, it appears she needed you, her son, to provide that emotional care for her.
She felt lonely in her marriage and didn’t have an emotional companion in your father, which means she didn’t have emotional support from him. He worked a lot, trying to ensure the best future for you, and he also wasn’t someone who talks a lot. I assume he wasn’t really emotionally responsive, didn’t understand her emotional needs. As someone needy and fragile as her, your mother needed someone to nurture her emotionally, and that someone was you. She talked a lot with you. Perhaps she sometimes complained that your father was so silent and unresponsive?
In any case, it appears the roles were reversed: instead of her taking care of you emotionally, you took care of her. You tried to make her happy but it was difficult because her unhappiness was much deeper and you could never make her happy. But of course, a child wouldn’t know that.
In the 11th grade, when you transferred to that strict, Spartan like boarding school, you did pretty well in the first couple of months, you even consoled your school mates when they felt homesick. But when you went home for holidays, I guess you saw how your mother was sad and depressed, and how bad she felt without your emotional support – and you couldn’t bear that. You faked stomach problems so you could come home never to return to that school again. I believe you didn’t do it because you were weak and needy (or at least that wasn’t the main reason), but because your mother was weak and needy. She needed you, and you couldn’t bear that she’d be without you.
This goes on to this day – she seeks you to console her when she has a fight with your sister. She seeks you to put cream on her legs, even though she could do it on her own. But she likes your caring and your proximity too – as she says, you give her strength. More precisely, you give her emotional support, like you always did.
She was so fragile amd needy of that emotion I felt. I did apply and massage. I do that many times. But that day as she was needy of that emotion, I felt so heavy inside, it was too much to me. Felt like crying, I don’t know how to explain that. When someone shows too much of emotions , emotional need are is so fragile around me, it makes me very weak and I feel like crying.
Yes, you feel heavy, because it’s a heavy burden for a small, needy child to take care of his needy mother. You could never give her what she needed, and at the same time you never received what you needed from her. It makes you feel desperate. You are dependent on each other, you’re still attached to her like with an umbilical cord. And that’s why you couldn’t accept that job in Germany – because your mother needs you. You can’t leave her, because she’s needy. She’s even more needy than you are. It feels hopeless for you.
So you’d need to learn to emotionally detach herself from her, and find happiness and fulfillment regardless of her inability to be happy and fulfilled. You’d need to detach that umbilical cord…
After you detach the umbilical cord, you’d need to focus on fulfilling your own unmet emotional needs. Only then could you have a chance of having a healthy romantic relationship. So there are steps, it’s a journey, but it’s doable and it’s worth it! Because as you start untangling those knots, things will be become clearer and you won’t feel at such an impasse like now.
Dear Melanie,
I am sorry you’re feeling so devastated. When I read this:
I feel dead inside. Every single moment is heartbreaking. I feel totally discarded… would he ever take me back? Was I that bad? I want to make everything right.
it sounds like something you’d say to your mother. When she left you alone in the car in the night so she could go drink, you felt totally discarded and heart-broken (and horrified). The child always blames themselves for being mistreated by the parents, so you’d ask her: “Was I that bad? I want to make everything right.” You took the blame for being mistreated, you felt there was something wrong with you.
Your immense pain now is the same as when you were a child, abandoned by your unpredictable mother. You felt helpless and scared because you never knew what she would do next.
Does this resonate with you? Where was your father? Was he in the picture?
Dear Dandan,
Thank you for sharing your life story with us. It hasn’t been easy for you. You grew up with a depressed mother, who would only stop being depressed when going out, to trips, restaurants or movies. This means she couldn’t be joyful with you, nor could you be a reason for her to be happy.
When she was inside the house, doing the chores, taking care of you, she was probably always a little sad and depressed. That can be quite devastating for a child. The only time she would light up a little was when she watched TV. You watched a lot of TV with her, and there would be all those romance movies. It’d make your mother happy, it made her feel alive. You felt good for a moment while watching romance movies with her.
Fast forward to your 5th and 6th grade, where you started having crushes on girls. It’s normal at that age, but for you it was almost like a game. When you described your crushes when you were older, you said “I liked getting crushes and approaching and flirting with gilrs though I wasn’t serious.” I think having a crush and being engaged in all that drama reminded you of the times when you watched romantic movies with your mother. It made you feel alive – the same it made you feel alive when you were a child. In short, it gave you a high. So I guess it was probably a little addictive.
In the 7th and 8th grade you developed a passion for dancing and even won in dance competitions. You say you loved a feeling of being like a celebrity, and teachers and others appreciating your performance. How did your mother react to your dancing successes – was she enthusiastic or not too much?
Later, in the 11th grade, you developed a passion for bodybuilding and were quite fit and had the best physique ever. But you didn’t continue at the university. You now regret that you haven’t pursued further those passions from your youth, and that you wasted many years on failed relationships, having crushes, and smoking and drinking.
Dear Dandan, I believe your life so far has been a pursuit of passion – something that will lift you from the depression that your mother gave over to you, since she was depressed too. And also, it was an attempt to bond with a woman who will finally be enthusiastic about you, unlike your mother was. Romance and crushes served that double purpose: 1) of giving you excitement and a “high”, and 2) giving you hope of finding a girl who’ll finally be head over heels about you.
In addition to that is the problem of self-esteem. Because you couldn’t make your mother happy, you concluded you weren’t good and worthy enough. You had a taste of “worth” when you won those dance competitions and were somewhat of a celebrity. But it wasn’t enough to help your self-esteem because the wound was much deeper. You feel unworthy and unlovable, because your mother gave you that message, albeit unintentionally.
Perhaps your flirting with the idea of becoming an actor is even an attempt to become someone your mother would finally appreciate – because it seems she’s quite enchanted by actors.
So till now, you’ve been living with the false belief that you’re unlovable and unworthy, and it’s been like a self-fulfilling prophecy because you’ve made some mistakes. But this can change, your wound can be healed…
Dear Felix,
What i can remember is that my mother use to get mad at me a lot for not being able to eat as it causes her a lot of stress and she’s worried of my future
This means you didn’t feel compassion and understanding from your mother, but instead she was angry at you and condemned you for not being able to eat properly. She didn’t realize that a trauma caused it, and blamed you for behaving in a way that causes her stress and worry. So she blamed you for causing her stress and worry – and that’s a pretty big burden for a child to carry.
And since you couldn’t help yourself – the fear of swallowing was bigger – you felt helpless and also you felt it’s unfair because it’s not your fault. Later you had those same thoughts about your height – you feel it’s unfair that you’re short because it’s not your fault. It seems like you forgot the original trauma, which originally caused your misery, and blamed it all on your height.
Your mother could have sought the help of a child psychologist to help you with your trauma, but instead she just kept blaming you. Later, at the age of 7, you learned how to help yourself by drinking water with your food, but the discomfort and the fear of swallowing is still there.
I believe this trauma could be worked with, you’re not helpless and it doesn’t need to stay like that forever. But the first thing you’d need to do is to have compassion for that 3-year old boy who was forcefully fed, and probably felt he was choking and then threw up. You’d need to have compassion for that same boy who was later accused by his mother for behaving stupidly and causing her stress and worry. Try to understand that it wasn’t your fault, you were simply a little child who got really scared that you’d choke to death, and this fear and trauma was never properly treated. That’s why it’s been haunting you till this day…
Due to this trauma, you’re not eating properly and have a small, thin body. This makes you additionally ashamed of yourself, because it exacerbates your short height. You don’t want to workout either, I guess because it all seems pointless, so you’re staying in a vicious cycle of pitying yourself and blaming God for putting this misery upon you. And it makes things even worse when you hear some rather insensitive people say things like “you should eat a lot to have bigger body”. They don’t understand that you can’t eat more, because you have a problem with swallowing…
In those moments you hurt a lot, because it all seems so unfair, and no one understands how hard it is for you. But please know that I understand, and also, there are people out there – therapists and counselors – who’d understand too. Also, try to understand it yourself and have compassion for yourself. It’s not your fault that it happened and it’s not your fault that you cannot solve it on your own. But there is help and you aren’t doomed.
How do you feel about what I’ve just written? Does it seem true to you?
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. 