Dear Zoe:

Regarding your sister, in your post yesterday, you wrote: “that leaves you in the position of a passive bystander watching this train wreck happen in front of your eyes”- pretty much like your childhood, a bystander watching this train wreck of a family in front of your eyes.

“So what’s left is a superficial relationship which is not based on a genuine exchange and also one where she feels she can trample all over my boundaries”- you wrote that about your sister only yesterday, but it is true to your relationships with your other family members, including your mother and your father, “superficial.. not based on a genuine exchange”.

It is this superficial relationship you wrote about two years ago regarding phone calls of 3-4 hours with your mother: “after the call I felt empty.. I had sot of ‘disappeared’ into the conversation”, empty, superficial. Even though she was “sort of encouraging me to continue, by either flattering me about how amazing my insights were…”- but she never took your insights in, did she. The flattery was.. superficial. If she really believed that your insights were amazing, why didn’t she incorporate one of your amazing insights into her life???

It was flattery, (“flattering me..”), not genuine appreciation of you.

Your mother’s “level of undivided attention, admiration and invitations to continue with my ‘amazing insights'” were not genuine. This is why you placed quotation marks around amazing insights– you don’t believe that she is genuine with that flattery.

“with other people in my life.. when I did not receive that same level of undivided attention, admiration… “- you are confusing insincere flattery and pretense with genuine appreciation and authenticity. You will need to distinguish between the two. The appearance of appreciation and undivided attention you received from your mother is only an appearance, a pretense.

Other people may be really listening to you, really paying attention, but because they don’t look like, or sound like, because they don’t appear like your mother, you think (incorrectly) that they are not paying attention to you.

“I kind of decided at some point that there was a ‘good’ parent (my mum) and a ‘bad’ parent (my dad).. In my mind my dad was the ‘perpetrator’ and my mum was the ‘victim'”- children think in black and white/ all or nothing ways, but reality is that both your parents were.. well, bad parents to you and to your siblings. Notice again, that you use quotation marks as a part of you knows better.

The pattern in your family is that your mother, you and your sister talk about other people to you, but they don’t talk to those people directly, a very common pattern in families and society: “I would often engage in long discussions about other people in my family with my mum (about my dad, my sister or brother)”, regarding your mother: “she can speak so openly with me about all these issues and yet they never reach the ears of my father”, and your sister: “there will be a big blow up with my father.. I will get a series of messages on Messenger detailing.. blow by blow account of the recent conflict with my father”.

Two days ago, you wrote regarding your sister:  “I’m kind of sick of being the ‘crisis girl”, called on to supplicate her but she never asks my opinion about how she could improve the situation or how she may have contributed to  it”-

– you lived your childhood in crisis, therefore “crisis girl” is an appropriate term to describe you in the context of your family. You watched their crises, heard their crises, shared your crises.. but never a solution. Flattery- yes, pretense, plenty, but no solutions, never are your amazing insights appreciated enough to be used by your mother, never is your life experience appreciated to be asked for by your sister.

Better exist this family dynamic. Take your amazing insights and incorporate them in your own life, stop cheapening them by sharing them with your mother. Take your life experience and make a better and better life for yourself.

There is plenty more in the quotes I collected in the post above, but those for another time (if you let me know that you are interested in my further input). There is plenty in what I wrote here in this post.

I hope you are keeping yourself and others as safe as possible, and may we survive well these very difficult times, globally.

anita