Dear Cali Chica:

“I notice how I often berate my own self… assign guilt and blame… berate and ‘punish’ myself”- your mother did all these things to you and her mental rep in your brain, her  voice, keeps doing the same.

When you came home from medical school, crying, didn’t your mother say that you were born crying and you are still crying? No empathy for you, instead, she blamed you for bothering her with your tears.

But this was her message way before medical school, wasn’t it- didn’t she take possession of Empathy, declaring it her own, none for you?

If you remember feeling no empathy for yourself and you do remember feeling empathy for your mother at any one time, then empathy, on the balance, was hers, not yours.

Am I correct: did she own empathy and made it clear to you that none of it belongs to you?

anita