Dear Sean:

I am glad that you are able to post here and let your voice be heard, receive some helpful feedback. You are also able to seek psychotherapy for yourself so see more of reality, make your thinking congruent with reality, and in so doing, you are able to engage in healing from this relationship.

Unfortunately for your son, he is not able to let his voice be heard. He is not able to post here on tiny Buddha. He is not able to see what is going on and to pursue psychotherapy. His voice is silent. And he is greatly suffering.

My mother’s behaviors when I was a child were similar to the behaviors you described on the part of your son’s mother. He doesn’t know what is going on because his brain is not formed yet and in his experience there are no separate entities: mother and self. The two are combined and so, he is in great trouble as I type this. When his mother is raging at him, even if she was more mildly angry at him, repeatedly, he can’t tell the difference: she is the one angry. It doesn’t mean I did anything wrong.

In his mind she is angry at him and that means he did something wrong. It means he is wrong. Bad, faulty. And he is scared. He doesn’t know that it is she who is out of control, her behavior being so scary; he believes he is out of control. He believes and will develop the strong belief that his own emotions are scary and can lead to the many disasters he is experiencing with her.

And your son is also dissociating, making-believe in his own mind that things aren’t that bad. He is motivated, his body and mind are motivated to see his childhood in the best way possible, to see his mother in the best light so to (trick himself into) believing he is safe. But reality does not accommodate denial and selective memories or dissociation and make believe/ convenient thinking: not his and not yours.

Your son is continuing to be in danger right now, being made sick as I am typing this. You insisted on bringing him into the world with this woman. You observed how she abused her daughter and you brought this child into the world. And did so intentionally (He was not an accident)-

You owe him, Sean, you owe him to do your very best to save him from the abuse he is suffering and the terrible consequences that will follow. A responsible parent in your circumstance would appeal to the courts to remove your son from her custody and place him in a safe custody as soon as possible. Use the borderline diagnosis she seems to fit so very well.

It is not going to save him, for you to have more time with him. His time with her needs to be eliminated. She is hurting him and badly.

anita