Dear Cali Chica:

“I didn’t choose anything. The role I played as an adult was formed as a child”. Yes. In that mental unit of you and your mother, you overextended yourself to her so to make up for her underextending to you. You tried to fix her (“Well I can’t fix her”) so that she will be able to take care of you, so that you will be able to finally rest under that blanket, in quietness.

“I am not a super friend… I am super obsessed with being involved”- what an accurate and honest statement.

You wrote: “I felt good release .. A small little feeling of letting that control go. I’m not sure if it will stick”- it is a beginning, a small pathway that was formed. Later other pathways will be activated and this particular one will seem gone. But it is there, and “practice makes perfect” means returning to this one pathway and building on it, connecting more pathways to it.

“parenting an inadequate mother”- this is the original over extending, the birth of the role. The role was born in your relationship with your mother and extended to your sister, and to others.

“Wow. Everything she taught me is wrong… Even a wrong clock is correct twice a day…fed us lies and we spoke those to ourselves and others… a liar”- powerful. We believe everything our mothers say, when we are children. When what they say is a lie, believing it is true and living according to that lie, as if it was true, caused distress and dysfunction. Believing what is true and living according to what is true brings calm and best functioning.

anita