Dear Nar:

You are welcome. I will again respond to your post part by part, responding to one part before reading the next. If there is a part that I will not be addressing, and you would like me to address it, please let me know what it is.

“one can develop all sorts of issues, in my case, OCD + anxiety”- OCD is not separate from anxiety, these are not two separate issues. Anxiety is what fuels obsessive thinking and compulsions.  OCD is one of many possible consequences/ results of overwhelming anxiety.

“did I tell her about this? no.. I don’t want to hurt her that much”- children are greatly motivated to not hurt their mothers- no matter how cruel the mother has been in many cases- because a child instinctively/ genetically believes that she will die without her mother. A child will not hurt or harm the person she believes that she can’t live without. When as adults, we still suffer from significant emotional injuries that happened in childhood, we still believe that we need our mothers for our survival, and therefore, we are still highly motivated to not hurt her.

“When I was a kid I needed her love and I hated her at the same time”- I am guessing that as a young child, feeling very dependent on your mother, you were not angry at her, or if you were, you did not express that anger. But as an older child, a preteen perhaps, or a teenager- you did not feel as dependent on her, and you rebelled against her, you fought back.

“But that has changed, I just wonder why I no longer hate or fear her”- I am guessing that you are not aware of feeling hate for her, or fear of her because you haven’t lived with her since you were 17, if I remember correctly. Plus, when you are focused on other people, like on the woman you met at the retreat, you get to experience the emotions you felt for your mother- in the context of these new people in your life. In other words, the anger, the hate, the fear.. and the love for your mother are still there, projected into other people.

“She suffered a lot.. unknowingly passed it down to her children”- I am sure that she didn’t have an evil plan to pass on her suffering to her children, and then she proceeded to execute that plan. But when she gave you prolonged silent treatments, she did so knowingly. She knew that her silent  treatments were hurting you and.. that’s why she did it.

“I in my turn hurt many other people as a result of this pain.. so where is the beginning or end of this endless circle of causing pain?”- the beginning is right now, this very moment. When you notice that you are practicing a behavior that is hurting an innocent person- stop practicing that behavior. When you notice that another person is hurting you, leave or assert yourself.

“With compassion, there is no room for hate anymore. It is just love and forgiveness” and with (1) holding others accountable for their behavior, as well as holding yourself accountable for your behavior, and (2) protecting yourself from others’ aggression, and asserting yourself when needed.

“I KNOW my sister… suffered much more than me.. multiple childhood traumas.. she is traumatising her own little helpless child”- I am so sorry to read this. One thing you can do to help your sister is to not minimise your mother’s misbehaviors when you talk to your sister. Instead, validate your sister’s childhood and ongoing experience. If you validate her childhood/  ongoing experience, she may treat her own child’s experience as valid.

“I also know one day I should find enough courage to have this talk with my mother and explain to her how she made me feel”- she already knows: she gave you those silent treatments because she wanted to hurt you, and having seen you hurt, she repeated the silent treatments every time she wanted to hurt you once again.

anita