Dear Girija:

1. “It is weird how when I think practically my mother does not have a life that would make me want to follow her lead- yet I feel more at home listening to her than listening to myself”-

– the part of you that observes her life and evaluates it as a life you don’t want to follow is a later part of you, an older child, maybe the teenager part of you able to think for herself.

– the part of you that feels more at home listening to her is the younger part of you, that bright eyed very young child whose mother is everything to her. This young child was not able to evaluate her mother and her mother’s life as desirable or not. That part was all open to her mother with no evaluation. There was no separation, in that young child brain, between herself and her mother, the two were one, one mental entity. Home was Mother, and Mother was Home.

2. “the words I dread the most are ‘be careful that you don’t regret this later’.. the moment other people warn me or suggest impending danger I always listen, never do I consider for a second why this person deserves a say in my life”-

– I live in a wooded area where there are a lot of deer and elk. When I am on my daily walk I often encounter deer or elk. The second they hear me walking, they stop eating and they all look at me and stay looking at me for a long time. They don’t automatically run away, they attentively look my way. If I walk away from them, they keep eating. If I walk toward them, then they walk or run away. It is natural for all animals to attend to possible danger. But the deer and the elk, before they walk or run away, they evaluate the possible danger: is it getting closer to them or moving away from them?

You should do the same- evaluate the possible danger before you run away (the running away can be in the form of losing all motivation to do what you decided to do).

– the reason why you run away before evaluating the danger is because as a young child and throughout your relationship with your mother, she scared you: we will live on the streets… we will all have to kill ourselves if your father lost his job… yes, she scared you big time.

There is a way for you to no longer run away, to no longer abandon your plans because of possible dangers. One way is to see that danger is at home with your mother. Evaluate this danger, how it harmed you so far to live with her, and figure if you should indeed run away from this very danger, your mother!

If you do run away from her and stay away, you will still have her voice in your brain. You will have to develop your own voice, increase its volume so that eventually you don’t hear much of her voice, but your own.

anita