Dear Jessica:

In your second post you wrote that you believe it is possible for you “to create a healthy relationship dynamic” with your mother, that you are determined to do what it takes to “stop resenting her and love her with.. compassion and openness”. Keeping in my mind your faith and determination, I re-read your original post, hoping to offer you something that may be helpful.

This is the key sentence, to me, that is essential in your aim at a healthy relationship with your mother: she “didn’t understand or really even ‘hear’ me most of the time”. I believe that it is essential that she hears you now.

You express yourself very well, in these two posts. Clearly you have a lot of knowledge and insight into mental health and psychotherapy, knowing about neuroplasticity, radical acceptance, and much more. I suppose ever since you took charge in the context of you-your mother-and sister, being the precautious child that you were, you relied heavily on your intellect and you developed an impressive ability to understand.

Thing is, you still need this one thing from your mother: you need her to hear you, to hear not the knowledge and understanding that you gathered over the years, but your raw emotions, such as your anger at her for poisoning your childhood  (“You aren’t going to poison her childhood the way you poisoned mine”).

I understand that you will need to present your raw emotions to her not in the form of the emotional outbursts she used to display when you were a child, but you do need to express your raw emotions somewhat, somehow, in a way that is honest and strong. Because your emotions regarding your mother are indeed very strong.

Following you expressing to her your emotions, in a series of get togethers, she would need to hear you empathetically and respectfully, responding in such a way that communicates to you clearly that in her mind, it is no longer all about her, but that you matter too, that your experience matters to her, that she is willing and able to experience the distress of hearing your hurt and anger over her past behavior, because you matter, because she wants you to feel better, because she indeed loves you.

What do you think?

anita