Dear afeels:

I decided to answer the questions that I asked you in my last post to  you by extracting the relevant information from your two threads. I will quote your words but not in the chronological order of your posting; I will take away some of your punctuation marks and add my own,  yet all the words that follow the quotation mark next are your words:

“I had a very rough childhood, abusive, neglectful. I grew up in an environment so chaotic. I grew up in fear. As a kid I didn’t explore much or play.

The only memories of her that I have when a young child was that she was angry, or blank. She still is short tempered. As a child I was beaten harshly when I was caught kissing two children. I was so  young, 5 years old.

I chose to  not explore my sexuality and relationships outside of family when I was 17 because of my loyalty to my mother. Loyalty to my mother as in making my family and their stability priority, otherwise chaos would insume (misspelling of ensue).

When I moved to  University I still was fixing things, i.e., debts or my sister’s issues. I was very much attached to my family role as surrogate mother. I was doing well until my final year of University whereby my sister threatened suicide and I couldn’t take the pressure anymore and cracked. She was wholly reliant on me. When my sister ran away from home my mum did very little to reach out to her.

I want to move away from my mum but I feel too much guilt if I stopped contact.

Somewhere deep down she loves me. There has to be a certain point as an adult whereby you accept your parent as never  being able to give you the love they should have given you.”.

And now my input:  it is easy to see what you need  to do next, what change in your mind and life needs to take place so that healing takes place, so that you can have a healthy love relationship with a future partner, and so that your confusion and anxiety decrease and clarity and calm increase in your mind and heart:

– Clearly, you need to abandon your family role that you took  on as a child and maintained  onward (fixing problems, parenting your sister, reducing chaos), that you should abandon your loyalty to your mother and choose your own well-being as your number one priority, that you should move  out and no longer live with your mother (or  with your sister), and that you should do what you were not able to do as a child: explore and play.

Only it is easier said than done, of course. There are feelings  of (unjustified) guilt involved and the anxiety involved in giving up on a role/ identity that you had for about two decades, one that gave you a sense of identity, value and safety.

This is what should be done in effective psychotherapy- lower and manage that unjustified guilt and the anxiety involved so that you can live a better life, an actualized life.

anita