Dear Cali Chica:

There is something new in our exchange today, something significantly new, that missing piece of the puzzle, a missing piece that I was somewhat aware of for a long time but didn’t understand it well. A piece that is very relevant to my personal life experience, but I will focus at this point on your life experience.

I will start with a quote from your most recent post: “my mother’s entire world was about friends. She desperately sought out making  friends, and made it so that we would. That her daughters would go  out there and conquer friendships. One of her own little peanut sized brain was that her daughters, me was so well liked, and had such a great social circle. It made her feel like she had one herself, and it is something that she was unable to do”.

Your mother trained you to form and maintain friendships and you indeed took on the job and Super Friend was established. Problem is that your mother didn’t train you to be friendly, but instead, she trained you to be suspicious of people and have a hostile attitude toward people.

This right above is the missing part of the puzzle, in my understanding this morning. I will explain: you wrote many times over many pages of your previous thread, Self Trust, about your mother’s suspicion and hostile attitude toward people, telling you how people mistreated her and still do, suggesting that other mothers take advantage of her by the very fact that their children play with you in your own home. That those other mothers get away with this kind of selfishness.

In June this year, on this thread, you wrote about your parents: “they always tell me everything, like oh your aunt did this and they did that. can you believe it. and then they say- oh if your cousin asks you this or that don’t say anything”-

They, your mother being the “peanut sized brain” leader of the two, trained you to view people as enemies and then she sent you to form and maintain friendships with enemies.

I have no doubt that forming and maintaining friendships was “something she was unable to do” because of her viewing people as the enemy.

Problem is hostile attitude toward people makes your job of forming and maintaining friendships very difficult as well. It is not like Cali Chica is calm and unguarded around people, having a fun loving attitude, feeling friendly. Instead, she is often tense and guarded and she is watching.

Not to say that you don’t have moments and at times hours of spontaneous fun with people, with friends (particularly when you desperately needed a fun break, such as when you got together with S during medical school). You do. But almost everyone has moments of this and that and everyone takes breaks from a hostile attitude.

Here are only a few pieces of evidence regarding your hostile attitude toward all people, an attitude that was ingrained in you:

– regarding S and her $350 a night hotel rooms to be paid by the guests of her wedding: “She didn’t have shame and guilt sending that ridiculous email.. It just shows how people continue to do what suits them and makes their lives easier and have no concern how that looks or affects others… another reminder of how people can be kind and good friends, but still selfish in the sense of getting their needs met in any way without regards to shame and guilt… I think it’s ridiculous that people just do whatever they want… getting away with it”.

Of course S’s suggestion that guests will pay that price to attend her wedding is selfish and inconsiderate. Maybe she is not aware that it is, but it is selfish nonetheless. Problem is that you have been prepared to watch for any evidence of others’ selfishness and getting away with it, on guard, and when you find the evidence, the anger, part of that ROAR gets activated. Sooner or later every person will exhibit some selfish behavior and so, maintaining friendships becomes very difficult.

More, in your post yesterday, you wrote about your “general annoyance at people who ‘don’t always think about others… I would feel ashamed to ask this of others. but most people don’t worry about such- they focus on what works for themselves. This is a common theme in life”-

– common theme indeed, delivered to you undiluted, straight from your mother.

“This is a common theme in life- and it doesn’t make me dislike her, or be angry at her- it is just a human characteristic many people have”-

– you’ve been trying to be okay with this “human characteristic”, trying to adjust to it, to not be angry- but you are angry and it is a big part of your ROAR.

When people display selfishness or any amount of inconsideration, those displays get magnified in your brain, magnified by the pre-existing hostile attitude and being on guard, and a somewhat selfish person becomes a monster, a narcissist, or a horrible person, words you used.

Normally people are just bad, according to the attitude. But they can be very bad too. So bad- or very bad, two options.

“My mother has shaped the way I diminish what I truly need”- well, one thing you need is to not form and maintain friendships with Enemies. You wrote about being assertive in your recent post- a very important skill and it worked well with the woman at work.

“It’s like walking around the world with a 25 pound dumbbell on your neck, and smiling”- the hostile attitude, the ROAR, is a big part  of that dumbbell: to walk around smiling-while-hostile.

You wrote: “this is just baseline in life”- baseline in your life is anxiety and anger. And it is so understandably, nothing that you chose.

“My mother planted the shame and guilt tree deep didn’t she? Everything guilt and shame. Don’t answer a text- guilt. Don’t attend an event- guilt… always quick to make time, and ensure that no one feels that I don’t have time for them.. always make time for others- and never be too busy.. Major guilt”-

– a baseline of anxiety, anger, shame and guilt.

Now, who does that, who ingrains in a child such a baseline. Who ingrains it in two children? A friend or an enemy?

Who ever in your life has done you worse than your mother, who is a greater enemy than her?

-and yet, The Enemy in your life pointed to everyone else as the enemy, including you, you too were her enemy, as in when according to her you sided with .. the enemy, your husband’s parents.

True, lost of bad people in the world, plus even more people who are often selfish and inconsiderate of others, littering public parks and so forth. But who is the greatest enemy by far in your life, The Enemy who pointed to others as the enemy?

– when you see a person littering a park, however distasteful it  is, say to yourself: oh, this is nothing compared to what my mother did to me. A used plastic cup thrown on the grass can be picked up and placed in the trash container in less than a minute. But the ingrained pathways making up the baseline of anxiety, anger, shame and guilt, oh these take so much longer to discard, and there is not enough years in a lifetime to discard of all of it.

Super Cali Chica, social butterfly, super friend- you referred to yourself June I think it was, as a “jack of all trades”. Cali Chica is often not really friendly. Super friend is a trade, a job. She is good at it, good at any job ever given to her. But relaxing into a friendship or a relationship (with husband) is very difficult when the ROAR is ingrained in that baseline.

anita