Dear Cali Chica:

“I adopted what my mother was telling me: jump at the throat of this person, don’t take the whole context into the picture, don’t look at both sides of the story, and jump  out with a weapon because everyone is out to get us. I was taught this”-

– so girl cali chica thought she and mother were a team, “everyone is out to get us“- cali chica and mother against the world.

Interesting how you described wanting to be a team-in-anger with husband: “Look what happened to me! Aren’t you angry, aren’t we angry! Let (us) roar together!!!!”

Anger was a bonding moment with your mother, a team-in-anger: “I remember my mother being so happy when someone would get as upset as her about a topic, it was so validating to her”- nothing you wanted more than to make her happy, so of course you joined her in anger.

“So, I am at work, and I think a bad thing about person X, I find myself getting angry.. my shoulders tense up, my heart might start beating faster.. clenching my jaw.. I start thinking about how person X is annoying.. why does everyone act like this.. other people get away with it.. everything is unfair and bad.. wound up tight and uneasy. Feeling bad… I thought about how (X) is so different than me.. we are almost two people who speak entirely different languages“.

My input today: learning not to automatically and impulsively react to intense anger (“jumping to a compulsive action”) and creating that “mental space” you mentioned is work done in many anger managements workshops, classes, group therapy and so forth. This does not require insight into the past, it is the learning and practice of skills. This is not what I will be attending to here, on this post.

Your anger: when your mother got angry at others, you got angry with her, a team. She looked and sounded happy when you joined her in anger, so you were encouraged to do just that, get angry with her. And you definitely did not want to be one of those other people she got angry at! Never will cali chica be one of those people unaware of pain and suffering and unfairness, those happy go lucky people who have it easy in life, daring to attend to their own needs and get away with it!

Loyal to mother, loyal to the team, cali chica will be  like her mother and unlike all those other people, she will suffer like her mother and never be like all those other people.

And even though from time to time, your mother turned against you, and you became one of those people she was angry at, you didn’t figure something like this: but wait, I am not like those other people, why is she angry at me?? Instead you kept your loyalty to her and continued to be unlike those other people. Loyal to her mother, loyal to a non-existing team. Even after a long time of no contact, doesn’t matter. She is still that warrior, looking for those other people who are so unlike her mother-and-herself, ready to fight them (heart beating fast, muscles contract, get tense, ready for attack).

But the emperor wears no clothes- the other people are not unaware of pain and suffering. Other people are not happy go lucky. Other people are also suffering, many unselfish, giving and giving to others. And your mother, when she showed off her five-star-lifestyle to family in India, she was selfish, showing off, wanting them to envy her, wanting them to suffer envy. And she got away with it!

Oh, it is your mother who got away with a whole lot.

Those other people, they are not the enemy. Some are- those in prisons or should be in prison, but overall, the people at the workplace, on the street, they are not happy-go-lucky, selfish, getting-away-with-it people. You see them through your mother’s eyes. They are not that way, they are not aliens to the suffering mother-you team.

There is no team!

The others are not an alien species and they are not the enemy.

anita