Good morning Anita,

I have let the words that we spoke about sink in for the last week. As you know, there are ebbs and flows. The last few days have been particularly more centered and positive, I have woken up with more of a feeling of understanding of why I am feeling certain ways. Versus confusion and frustration as above. I am now starting to get what a long lifetime journey this will be and of course that will only seep in overtime.

I did read some of my sisters post about treating others abusively or negatively when you are hurting in your own self or struggling within.  My sister is right in that I did not treat my current husband very positively many times over the last four years. I can’t say that the timing is like clockwork in that as soon as my parents met him everything was negative and before they were involved everything was perfect. Because as you alluded to, my mother‘s voice is in my head and ruling my life so with or without their physical presence I have been affected, tortured, and have had self suffering. Even when I didn’t know.    Looking back I see many patterns of me having internal distress and projecting onto him. It could be something such as feeling that everyone else is happy and why am I feeling not so happy and so targeting it out at the first person in front of me which was him. Then there are many examples of things that are more specific, my parents telling me that there are many men out there that have certain qualities and those are great qualities, and then looking at the person in front of me and convincing myself that since he may not have one or two or some of these qualities that he is not as good. In reality, my first example is the more harmful one because it came out of nowhere for both him and me. It was as though there were these ebbs and flows of terrible emotions in me and I would lash out for no rhyme or reason. Things could be great for a month or so and then I would be sinking into a terrible feeling and then just act like a monster.Back then I had no understanding at all of everything that we have spoken about. I truly was applying to any abuse that my parents did, I thought that just like any parents there was going to be good and bad. I really had no idea how much self suffering was brought on by the mother voice

The thing is, when I look back at some of those things now I am astonished.  However, it doesn’t truly hit me. I am not sure how to explain it but I almost want to feel that i superficially  think wow how could I treat someone so bad like this in the past I feel like I should be so sad and upset with myself over this. I want to feel like this but instead of that there is empty space almost like a numbness.  Not because I don’t feel like what I did or all of the above is not true or valid it’s just that I can’t actually feel any remorse or sadness or kind of anything over it.

There was a time a few months ago that my husband had mentioned this, and said that it he found it strange. He said that if he was in the same shoes he would be so beyond himself for doing this to someone that it would really show. And with me it doesn’t show. This was after a lot of the terrible things that had happened so we were talking about this not into fighting way but more in a discovery -why doesn’t it show for me -what is going on in me that I can’t actually feel the above mentioned.

This feeling is also there when I think of certain things that my mother has done over the last year, the time period in which you know a lot about over the wedding planning year. In fact I was reading an old text message this week that was truly and utterly abusive–copy and paste it here you would say that this hits all the marks of emotional abuse, narcissism, etc. it doesn’t matter the terms.   When I read it once again I felt pretty astonished that this was real life, but similarly instead of feeling the sadness, tears, or even any sort of anger from at it was almost like nothing.

I have an intuitive sense that I am feeling this nothing sort of thing because a lot of this is still repressed. I don’t think I am actively repressing it out of embarrassment or ego, it is almost like it is stuck and fossilized deep In me under dust and rocks / it will take time to uncover. I also have this feeling that once I start truly feeling the feelings that would be associated with this, such as wow I can’t believe I could treat someone so terrible how could I do this I never want to do that again I feel so awful and terriblE.  Or with example of thinking about some of the truly terrible an atrocious things my parents have done/truly feel The strong emotion of whatever it may be/sad, mad, angry, anything  , I think that once I start actually feeling these things I will be able to release so much of the inner Repression. This is an intuitive feeling. I know I can’t force it I know it’s not one of those things where if I read an old angry letter long enough I’ll start crying and then release all of the emotions associated with it. I understand that this is just the beginning of my journey and for so long I truly did believe everything that they said, and I truly did feel that I was doing nothing wrong such as when I would act toxically towards my now husband because I felt like these were warranted thing since I was struggling so much inside.

I know that the ability to even write this out is starting to brush the surface because it is me starting to realize that a lot of the way I acted was wrong, and above all the root of that behavior. What is most important to me above all and everything is now finally after all these years understanding the route. Talking with people like yourself and realizing that almost everything goes back to that mother voice even if it at the time feels like it is just me feeling something.    . What are your thoughts on the above? Of course there is no guidebook and step-by-step on how to slowly start releasing all the above and seeing clearly and actually feeling things instead of feeling a sort of lapse.