Dear afeels:

“Regarding the anger- it comes up mostly in my intimate relationships with men that I date”-

– it is your emotional childhood experience of your first and most intimate relationship,  the one with your mother, that gets activated in the context of your adult intimate relationships with men.

“The trigger seems to  be where I feel most vulnerable.. somehow feel threatened that I care more for the person than they do me”-

– as a child, you were most vulnerable to your mother. You cared more for her than she cared for you.

“For example.. A.. was really the first man I felt safe to be so open and excited towards and it came so naturally”-

– as a child you felt at first safe with your mother, and you felt naturally “so  open and excited towards” her.

“There was a time where we were laying together and I was kissing him.. very tender towards him. However, it then occurred to me suddenly that A never seemed this way with me”-

– you were tender toward your mother, but she was not “this way” with you, tender, that is. Instead of tender, she was “angry, or blank” with you, “the only memories” you have of her, is of her looking angry or blank (Jan 2019). There is no tender in angry-or-blank.

“I suddenly experienced extreme rage”- this is what you felt when you were tender toward your mother and she responded angry-or-blank. Again and again you reached out to her with tenderness and each time she responded with anger or.. nothing, blankness. That hurt you deeply and next to the hurt, there was intense anger, rage at her.

But you don’t feel rage toward your mother because you feel too guilty about it. So the anger toward her has been repressed and it erupts to the surface of your awareness in the context of an intimate relationship with a man.

“I knew it was out of proportion..  realised how extreme the reaction was”- when we are young children we experience emotions in a very raw, intense way. Fast forward, the same raw, intense emotion erupts into your awareness in a different context, not appropriate to the current context.

“I of course didn’t express this rage”- good choice.

Jan this year you wrote about your mother: “I don’t even suggest she was a loving mother growing up”-

– she was not a loving mother while you were a child.

“But I know that somewhere deep down she loves me. It might be a small part due to all her traumas”-

– deep-down-love cannot be seen or heard or felt because it is stuck deep down and remains there.

The fact that she suffered traumas doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t have access to her deep down love. Love has to be expressed to the loved one in order for it to be experienced by the supposed loved one. You can’t experience rain unless you get wet, you can’t experience the sun unless you feel  its warmth on your skin, and you can’t experience love when all you get is angry-or-blank.

I am looking forward to read your thoughts and feelings about my post to you this Saturday morning.

anita