Dear joanna:

You wrote: “She never taught me to clean or be tidy, what she did was pointing out I don’t clean… She never tells me.. Do the dishes… No, what she did say was: Why didn’t you clean the dishes? Why you NEVER do this? Why are you so untidy?… it never motivated me.

Of course it didn’t motivate you. Let’s look at your mother’s motivation: it was not to motivate you to clean and be tidy. Her motivation, as I mentioned the other day, was to vent, or in other words, to express that repressed anger I mentioned in my earlier post to you this morning.

And so, she succeeded: she released some of that anger (something she will continue to need to do again and again). She did not succeed in motivating you not because she aimed at that and didn’t know the effective way to achieve it. It was not her aim, not her motivation.

You wrote: “in the long term you have to want this (to abuse), don’t you agree? Did this happen to you?”

Yes, the abuser does want to abuse, that is to hurt another person. The motivation behind anger is to hurt, to harm. That is so naturally, in the animal world: anger motivates to hurt and harm.

Yes, it happened to me. Regarding the cleaning: I got to say, same story here, identical to what you described in your recent post.

You asked: “how can she be over 60 years old and not aware of those things? Did your mother ever wanted to  improve relations with you or any other people…?”

I can’t read anyone’s mind, of course, including my mother’s. What I do know is the following: no one is more invested than a child to believe the best about her mother, to believe that she intends well, to believe that underneath she is loving, to believe that she is only misguided, doing the best with what she has and on and on. And I know that there is one very crucial element here and that is lack of value. My mother didn’t value me, I was not a person of value to her.

I was a thing with flaws, unsatisfactory. Not because in reality I was unsatisfactory, or more flawed than any other human, but nonetheless, to her I was that thing with flaws, unsatisfactory, guilty of those flaws, deserving punishment for those flaws.

anita