Dear Nar:

You are welcome. I am amazed by how empathetic, gracious and kind (and intelligent) you are- thank you.

The questions you asked yourself regarding the woman at the retreat and the answers I am volunteering to you: “why did I feel like she used me?“- because she really did use you to “offload her mental and emotional issues”, to make herself feel better by making you feel worse.

“Who is being the victim now?“- in the context of you and this woman, she was the victimizer and you were the victim. In the context of this woman and her mother, her mother was the victimizer and she (her daughter) was the victim.

“Why am I sensitive to being used?”- everyone, or almost everyone is sensitive to being used. Some people have accepted lives where they are being used, and they are sort of numb to it, or they let it slide, like oil on Teflon (people with what I call the Teflon Affect), but these people are not healthy and they do suffer because they are aware that they are being taken advantage of.

“Why did I have to feel used?“- because you were used and if you didn’t feel used, you would not have the awareness and the opportunity to avoid being used in the future. Emotions have purposes: hunger leads you to eat, fear leads you to run away.. feeling used leads you to avoid being used in the future.

*It is possible to feel hunger when not needing food, to feel fear when not in real danger and to feel used when not, therefore we sometimes need to re-evaluate situations before choosing how to react to them (this is done in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).

“Most people most of the times are evil and selfish, including myself”- as far as considering yourself “evil and selfish”, I see it here, a memory from when you were 10: “She (your grandmother who lost her legs and was blind as a consequence of diabetes) would ask me to make her tea or help her out, but I didn’t care to help. She was begging me sometimes to help and I was this cruel kid who often didn’t care to help. So this is the source of my sorrow and guilt.. I never forgave myself for how I treated her.

You shared about your mother: “what she did and still does- she gives us ‘silent treatment’ and withdrawal.. She would get upset about something and stop talking to us. That’s been her way of punishment”, and you concluded with: “life is often about being able to understand how it happened and forgive those who hurt us.. It is within us to heal. We can break away from our pasts.. only when we fully understand and process what happened”.

For better understanding of what happened, I ask:

(1) You shared regarding your lack of compassion for your mother: “Up to .. 26 years old, I didn’t have much compassion for her at all”- what did you feel for your mother for the first 25 years of your life?

(2) Earlier you shared about your mother: “she constantly sacrificed herself, her well being and her health for us”-

Is or has your mother become physically ill because of what she did for her children, and if so, what is the nature of her illness, and how was it caused?

When and how did you become aware of her illness?

How else did she sacrifice herself for her children and how did you become aware of her sacrifices?

anita