Dear Carrie:

You are very welcome.

“I have only ever considered possibly letting them back in if I became mentally strong enough to be immune to the toxic behavior”- from a very personal experience, there is no immunity of a daughter to her mother’s toxic behavior, not when that toxic/ abusive behavior occurred repeatedly, or on an ongoing basis, for years, during the time the daughter was a child, growing up.

My mother was toxic/ abusive, and her toxicity resided in my brain long after I ended all contact with her, over seven years ago. Before I ended contact- the sight of her face, the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand  distressed me so much, much of the time. After I ended contact with her, the memories of her face, of her voice were enough to distress me so/ to re-ignite that toxicity, so to speak. It takes a long healing process to remove that toxicity from one’s brain.

The healing process started for me in my first quality psychotherapy experience in 2011.

I want to reply further to your recent post but I need to be more focused to do so. I will therefore be back to you later, in a few hours. You are welcome to post more, anytime before I return. You and I can communicate here over time, be it weeks or months, if you want to- so there is no rush.

anita