Dear steph:

A child naturally reaches out to her mother. You probably reached out to her many times, tried to make her see you, notice you and love you back. When she didn’t respond and kept her absence and distance, she practically rejected your love for her.

I am thinking that the boyfriend you shared about, rejected your love for him as well, and in so doing triggered the experience of you being rejected, as a child (and still), by your mother.

I use the verb rejected, again, because a child reaches out to the distant, unloving parent. But she stayed away, day after day, month… year after year. To this very day: “She still isn’t very involved in my life despite my efforts to explain how I would like her to be more involved” You reached out to her recently, to get her to be involved in your life. This is a long time of reaching out to your mother again and again… and yet again and being rejected as many times.

You wrote about the guy: “He even said once that he wasn’t sure that he ‘wanted to love so much as to be loved,'”- similar to your mother: she was loved by you, but she didn’t so much love you.

“Towards the end of this relationship, I began to feel severe anxiety: I started having thoughts of unreality”- being rejected, abandoned by him, that triggered her rejecting you, abandoning you (“she abandoned us kids in a lot of ways”), and it triggered the anxiety involved in a child being rejected, abandoned.

Your thought/ feelings?

anita