Dear Carrie:

Good to read from you, no need to apologize for being away from your thread. Any time that you choose to be back here is fine with me. I mention the following because of your codependency, which you shared about, wanting you to feel more comfortable sharing here: this thread is yours, and it is about you. It is not about what I need and want, it is about what you need and want. I don’t need to share with you about my life. I don’t need you to make me happy. What I get from our communication is that you are helping me learn about people, by telling me your story. And thank you, I am having a relatively calm long, holiday weekend.

You shared that your daughter’s father is emotionally stable, has a successful career, is a loving father and you “have no doubts that she is happy and well cared for when she is with him.

You shared: “When I was not in a co-dependent relationship, I was searching for someone who would love me… I do not know who I am unless I am taking care of someone else. That is what has always given me purpose”- when you were a child, the only times you got any approval or affection from your mother, the only times the spotlight was on you, was when you did things for her, wasn’t it?

So you keep chasing that approval, that bit of affection, that bit of spotlight by doing things for other people.

“I do not know how to play with my daughter, or be a kid”- your mother did not approve of you playing and being a carefree kid. She approved of you doing things for her, putting her in the spotlight that she craved. So, you don’t know how to do and be what she did not approve of.

“I feel I suffer from some learned helplessness”- as a young child you freely communicated what you needed, as babies and young children do, from your need to be fed to your need to be held, to be positively attended to, to be seen and heard, but your needs went unmet for too long, so at one point on, you learned that there is no point in communicating what you need. From one point on, you stopped noticing what you needed.. (what would be the point).

“I get upset about something small and I feel myself start to shut down”- children shut down a whole lot so to survive, shutting down a lot of their own awareness of what they need and want, of what is happening, shutting down the intensity of hurt.. but anger is most difficult to shut down.

“I went through a period of extreme guilt and shame when I first went  no contact and now I just feel confused”- I went through extreme guilt and shame myself, and confusion when I stopped contact with my mother in 2013. At this point, I feel no more guilt, no more shame, and no more confusion (what a relief!). I am telling you this not for the purpose of turning the spotlight from you to me, but so to let you know that it  is possible to no longer experience guilt, shame and confusion, and to offer you- over time, if you are willing- all that I know about how to make it happen.

“There is so much of my childhood that I knew she was wrong, and what she was doing was wrong and yet she continued”- and you have let her know, in your own ways, that what she was doing was wrong-to-you, but she didn’t care to pay attention to what you communicated to her, continuing doing what she was doing as if you communicated nothing to her. That’s how learned helplessness comes to be.

“I hate that she will never acknowledge it ever, or that she will never allow me to have those conversations with her. It leaves a hole that I can’t fill”- for now. In the future, if you proceed with your healing process, you will no longer care about her acknowledging anything, it will no longer matter to you.

“I will always have questions because she is my mother”- one day she will be just a person in your memory.

I am pleased to read that you have almost earned your bachelors and that you intend to continue to a Masters degree.

“I do yoga, meditation, I exercise, journal and I do affirmations and I am in therapy. However, I still feel hopeless.. I struggle with depression”- it takes persisting in what I referred to as the healing process, and it takes improving that process as you proceed, evaluating what works, what doesn’t work and adjusting. It also takes paying close attention to the learned helplessness issue: the more you take small, tiny actions during the day to make your life better- the more confidence you build in your ability to help yourself and your life situation, you learn that you make a difference in what is happening in your life.

anita