Dear joanna:

I will quote from your recent posts and respond:

“we rarely talk or spend time. But sometimes we do and then I notice how much she makes me nervous”- the sight of her, the sound of her, these trigger the many memories of her in your past. This triggering happens automatically. A single sound can trigger an experience of a lifetime. That triggering may not involve words, that is spelled out thought, only a feeling-experience, such as depression or anxiety.

“She used to talk to me: don’t be nervous… please calm down… so he (you) grows up thinking falling down is disastrous”- her yelling was the cause, you falling down was the consequence. She basically instructed you to not let the consequence of her action take place. It is like someone punching you on the face and instruct you: do not get a bruise! No bruising, please!

“She used to make me more nervous that I would actually be in this situation”- reads to me that her anxiety over the consequence of her actions (such as yelling), further increased your anxiety. What would have helped you would have been if she told you that it was indeed her yelling, her aggression that caused your anxiety, that she would stop those aggressive actions, comforted you, and then, over time, keep her word, until you trust her to do so, until you feel safe.

“I noticed she still makes me nervous but I now resist. It’s very satisfying and freeing”- you mean that although she is anxious, you don’t “catch” her anxiousness automatically, like before, that you are experiencing “(your) own emotions,”, not hers?

You wrote: “I want to set free from her”, meaning to be in her company and not be affected? If so, is this a new experience for you, and you are hoping that you will get better at it?

“I feel sorry for her… She’s my mother. Should I not care because she didn’t value me?”- you care because she is your mother. It doesn’t matter who the mother is, makes no difference. The child cares because she has this role: The Mother.

I will state the following in the first person, and you decide if it is true to you too: I should not interact with a person who doesn’t value me (unless I am held hostage by that person and want to survive the situation).

Regarding your most recent post, you wrote: “I try to not feel it (anger toward your mother, I understand)… sometimes this anger comes. I do not know why… I get angry… empty, useless”- when you try to not feel angry at her, and you succeed, the anger does not go away, it looks for a different object to attach itself to. If the person who has done you wrong is not available as that object (in your efforts to forgive your mother you made her unavailable to that anger), it gets attached to children who have done you no wrong.

And this is the hallmark of abuse, a child being abused by a parent, forgives the parent and abuses her own children. See, the motivation is already in you, to hurt innocent children.

You wrote: “I never yell or get angry at them (children), I just feel it”- I am glad you don’t act on the anger you feel for them. And that if you become a mother you will not act on such anger. Better still resolve that anger beforehand.

anita