Dear Charlotte:

Your therapist advised you to think that your parents’ problems are not your problems, and to shift your focus from what happened between you and your parents, to what is taking place between you and your son, “it will be like me going through childhood again and caring for myself in a way”.

The problem is that you are angry at your parents. I see your anger as valid, but putting aside the validity for a moment, your anger is your problem because you are the one experiencing it.

I can feel your anger in this sentence, in your yesterday post: “they obviously thought that giving me ‘stuff’ should make me keep my mouth shut and do whatever they want me to do“. You shared earlier: “If I ever cried.. they would mock me with something like ‘oh boo-hoo you”, etc.

– there’s a lot of anger in you ever since you were a child, having been mocked and mistreated by your parents. When you visit your parents as an adult, knowing that they never adequately addressed the wrong they inflicted on you,  issues never resolved-  you push your anger down, you smile at them, I imagine, making small talk.

Little girl Charlotte is not gone, she is very much a part of you, and she is very angry at her parents. You can’t take angry little girl Charlotte to visit her parents, and make her smile, make her be nice to the people she is so angry at, and expect her to be okay.

You can’t take her anger away by focusing on your son because first, her anger is between her and her parents, and it can therefore be resolved only in the context of her and her parents, not in the context of her/ you and your son. Second, this anger is hurting your ability to focus on your son.

anita