Dear Zoe:

First I will copy and post from your previous posts:

Feb-March 2018: “I need to be less harsh with myself…I know I need to replace that harsh voice with self-love rather than self-criticism or hatred. I feel like that is a big journey for me and it’s one that I am really only now embarking upon…I have been spending a lot of time talking to my mother on the phone. Several of our conversations have gone on for 3 or 4 hours..after the call I felt empty and like my self-esteem had taken a blow..  the other day as I was once again on the phone with her, I got this strange sensation that I had sort of ‘disappeared’ into the conversation. That somehow no matter how much I delved into myself and discussed my thoughts and feelings, that it would never be enough. I also noticed that my mum had this way of sort of encouraging me to continue, by either flattering me about how amazing my insights were or posing new questions about the thread that I was currently on. I got this flash of insight that I kind of had lost my boundaries in those conversations and was kind of ‘fusing’ with her in those moments. It made me realise that I often sought this sensation with other people in my life and that when I did not receive that same level of undivided attention, admiration and invitations to continue with my ‘amazing insights’ that I might feel unsatisfied with the interaction…  I kind of decided at some point that there was a ‘good’ parent (my mum) and a ‘bad’ parent (my dad). This is because my dad was very critical and quick to anger and also tended to try to ‘defeat’ others in intellectual debates rather than listening and responding calmly to others opinions. I can’t really say that she stuck up for me that effectively, at least not in the past. I think she always felt quite intimidated by my dad too so wasn’t really able to defend us against his anger and criticism…

I would often engage in long discussions about other people in my family with my mum (about my dad, my sister or brother). So as well as kind of compulsively sharing every aspect of my life with my mum, without thinking whether it was really an appropriate thing to share, I would also discuss other family members problems with her. I stopped that pattern last year but I guess I hadn’t realised there might be anything fundamentally ‘wrong’ with my relationship with my mother… I have always loved my mum deeply but I guess on some level I might also feel a bit disappointed in her. She was never really able to make a clear decision to leave a toxic relationship even though it didn’t seem to be bringing her genuine companionship and support. I guess there is also a sense of betrayal that I still had to face up to my dad’s destructive behaviour so that she could keep her relationship at any cost. Maybe I felt that she ultimately chose her relationship over our (me and my siblings) wellbeing.

On the other hand, I think that her attempt to compensate for that with this kind of boundary-less love made me a kind of addict for that. Maybe it is not so much me disappearing into the conversation but the other person disappearing into the conversation, which would explain why I used to get quite a lot of angst when I was trying to convey my feelings about something to someone who would not respond in the same way as my mum would (and have actually been confronted about my tendency to ‘vent’ at work). Of course it is unrealistic to expect anyone to give you boundless attention with no pushback whatsoever, but maybe that is what I came to expect from others…in intimate relationships, I suspect that I may have been craving the sensation of being fused or enmeshed… both my parents were involved in unhealthy relationship dynamics and that neither of them had the strength to call quits on the relationship completely or on the other hand to speak openly and honestly to me and my siblings about what was really going on with them.

We witnessed the breakdown of their marriage and then were expected to watch them ‘get back together’ in a kind of ‘backdoor’ way (that is after several years of not living full time in the family home, my dad just kind of started living there again) but without actually being given any explanation about why they were getting back together and whether we as the kids had any opinion or say over how the new relationships were supposed to be negotiated. My dad came back and sort of wanted to ‘assert’ his right to being an authority figure in the home after having abdicated that for several years and we were supposed to just accept all of these things without question… because I still needed the love and support of my mother (rejecting that also would have been too painful) I deflected my anger away from her and focused it all on my dad. In my mind my dad was the ‘perpetrator’ and my mum was the ‘victim’. But at the end of the day she should have taken responsibility for her own part in the mess….Yes my mother has admitted that she did not really pay enough attention to me or my siblings during the years of turmoil. But I think at the end of the day those words still feel quite impotent because there are still unhealthy dynamics between my parents that have never been clearly dealt with. Also the fact that she can speak so openly with me about all these issues and yet they never reach the ears of my father is also an unhealthy dynamic in and of itself. I believe that means that I have been ‘triangulated’ into their relationship which is actually quite a disturbing thought and also extremely irresponsible of my mother. I think as a result of that triangulation I still carry around this notion of myself as the ‘family saviour’ but in fact I am just playing the game too and at the same time neglecting my own personal life in the process. I cannot somehow strengthen my mother’s inadequate will with my own, to give her the strength to live her own life and then to finally become the strong mother figure that I always wanted and who could give me a model of how to live my own life. That constant striving to make her something that she was not in the past and maybe can now never really compensate for is exhausting me and has also led to the hollowing out of my personal life. Hard to admit, but I think it can only lead me to more inner peace if I can accept it…

I often have a great deal of anxiety related to how I should interact with other people and the extent to which I allow others into my life. This anxiety can also cross the line into obsessive thinking. I have now realised that the major trigger for this kind of anxiety and obsessive thinking is when I need to negotiate the boundaries of a relationship, whether that be a friendship, work relationship or intimate relationship. And at the bottom of it is my fear that I will not be able to assert my own boundaries with people…

Oct 2018:.. my ex partner. Turns out he is engaged and is due to marry in several weeks. He was taking pre-wedding photos a couple of months after our breakup. Though throughout this entire time we have maintained daily communication and as I said he has also given me some indications that he misses me. He has never once mentioned a new partner let alone fiancé… It was a very hard break up but I almost felt that I could accept it, but to now know that while I was still nursing my wounds and sort of holding onto slim hopes, he has made a completely new life for himself. I feel kind of sad, bitter and disempowered. I’m not even very emotional, I just feel sort of dry and hollow on the inside…  I recently tried to discuss with my father my own interpretation of my teenage years when I felt that he was constantly angry at me and I had a sense that he wanted to destroy me. Although he apologised he later said to me ‘you have hated me for 20 years’, so basically turning the situation around and making himself the victim of my ‘hatred’ when I was actually the child in the relationship and was only responding to what I felt around me… neither my ex nor my father really attempted to ask me why I believed what I did they just straight away decided what they thought was right or wrong about my own understanding. I believe this is called ‘reinterpretation’, where someone reinterprets what your own version and understanding of something…

I got used to a situation in my own family where my psychological and emotional boundaries were routinely flouted and this has left me with a deep sense of mistrust towards others (especially men). I have never really been able to put my finger on why I am so hesitant in life but I think this may be it. It’s sort of a feeling of being fundamentally weak, vulnerable and disarmed in life. And this is why I have often clung to situations, like jobs, study or relationships, that have given me a feeling of solidity and boundaries because I think ultimately they were a substitute for having my own emotional and psychological boundaries…

I have this tendency to always pause before I respond or react to things. I think this is something I learnt growing up in a home with a parent who had a very volatile temper. I think this is a defensive strategy that I have learnt and it worked in my family home because I found the ways to sort of go ‘neutral’ or blank to avoid giving rise to further confrontation and emotional outbursts. Obviously, this strategy is probably not serving me well now as an adult because I know I tend to go into emotionally blank states and also don’t speak up when I don’t like things because I fear expressing strong emotions.. People can say fairly confrontational or even hurtful things to me and I will never react to them with my true feelings at the time. I always want to give myself a bit of ‘time’ to process their words and see how I feel about it. But I think that it also leads me to de facto accepting things that people say or at least not challenging them and I guess this is really just acquiescing to whatever their interpretation. I think later I realise I didn’t like something or I should have challenged it but it is kind of too late and instead of those being expressed at the time, the feelings I had transform into a quiet resentment. I guess I am the classic passive aggressive people pleaser.

So I am starting to see how not being able to express my real emotions in an appropriate way at the appropriate time allows other people to sort of project their own interpretations of my situations onto me..and it leaves me feeling quite disempowered and uncomfortable because all the emotions are sort of boiling under the surface…

during my teenage years I had an extremely negative image of my father. I saw him as an imposter into our family home (the relationship between my parents broke down when I was still a child but they were on and off living in the same place throughout my teen years – though they never thought to clarify what their actual relationship was and whether we were happy with their strange arrangement). I felt that he had sort of ‘given up’ his role as a father when he initially moved out but then the constant coming and going made me feel like he wanted to keep his fatherly authority but not actually be there in a caring, comforting way. There were also frequent verbal confrontations with him. There was also one incident of physical violence where he slapped my face after I said something to him when I was about 14 or 15. I was so shocked I almost can’t really remember if it happened or not.

So those years set in place a very deep resentment and anger towards him. But because he had a very volatile and terrifying anger, it was impossible to express the depth of those feelings directly to him. So I learnt to keep those feelings bottled up and maintain my calm exterior. And part of that was learning how to control my emotions when I sensed that a confrontation may occur. It also learnt how to manage the flow of conversations so that trigger issues could be avoided. I think some of the trigger issues related to when I wanted to talk freely about myself, my goals, ambitions, dreams etc. I often felt that he did not really want to talk about anyone else, that somehow he would find a way to wedge in his own dreams, ambitions etc into the conversation instead. It was like instead of a father, I had a very competitive older brother but who as a father figure had the tendency to wield his authority in an extremely domineering and destructive way. I think the overall effect was that I learnt to minimise myself, control and bottle my emotions and reduce my needs so as to not rock the boat in the family home.

In my adult life, I have often struggled to find my way in life. Somehow I have felt scared of going with a clear vision of my own life. Instead I have often ended up compromising situations. Attaching myself to institutions (educationally), organisations or relationships as a way to give me some stability and strength. I still fear being really on my own and directing my own life, though I am now really in that situation after the end of a second long term relationship.

So, I guess, long story short, I still have huge amounts of anger and resentment towards my father (and probably my mother because she never took a strong enough stand) but I have no idea how to get those emotions out and just move on. A couple of months ago I did discuss some of these things with him, but it sort of degenerated and ended with him saying ‘you have hated me for 20 years’ – which indicates to me that he is not really ready to hear or understand how his behaviour has really affected me and my siblings)…

maybe I have wanted to end my relationships as a proxy way of ending the relationship between my parents. Like I am kind of acting out what I wanted to see my mother do.. as a child in a dysfunctional family I had no choice about how things went, so as an adult I am always sort of striving to get out of relationships and avoid commitment because I was kind of stuck in a dysfunctional dynamic within my own family that I felt I had no control over and still feel like that. So is it possible that until I get some resolution of those old emotions I will not be able to truly move on and create my own healthy relationships and life?…

I kind of beat myself up and ask myself ‘why haven’t I ever just said what I really think?’ It makes me feel weak because I never found a way to express those feelings. But the problem is that this pattern of swallowing down negative emotions is such a big part of my personality and my way of being that it is hard to isolate it to just one relationship. I think it kind of permeates my whole life. Until very recently I wasn’t even able to identify those feelings as ultimately stemming from feelings of anger. It’s like anger was so impossible for me to feel that I couldn’t even identify that feeling, let alone the way it became subjugated into resentment when it went underground and unexpressed.

Somehow I learnt some extremely unhealthy coping patterns in my family home and I have never really been able to identify them until now. I think that underlying all of this subjugation of feelings is fear. I felt that expressing real feelings would lead to anger from my father and so I learnt to hide them and in fact I prided myself on my ability to maintain a calm exterior and not be ruffled by his emotional outbursts. But now I realise that I have paid an extremely high price for that coping strategy – I don’t know how to express myself fully and honestly and for sure that was a major part of my long-term relationship breaking down. I became a people pleaser through fear of expressing myself fully in my own family. It gets to the point where I don’t know what I feel or what I want.

So, I am in this position where I have identified the problem and I know where it comes from and how if affects my life, but I really don’t know how to move forward from this point.”

—- when I am back to the computer, I will study the above collection of quotes, plus your current thread and reply to you further.

anita