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Reply To: I need to write this pain away- ex hang ups

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Anonymous
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Dear sossi:

I re-read a lot of what you shared on this thread since April, wanting to understand better. In the following I will include quotes from you (when italicized- it is my addition).

What I learned today is that your mother has been indeed extremely self-centered: her focus has been on herself, on what she felt and what she needed, going about meeting her emotional needs at the expense of her own daughters, her husband and others. When others had something she wanted, jealous/ envious- she went about taking it for herself.

You grew up spending most of your time with your mother (“My dad travelled a lot so effectively we were raised without him around much. My sister was also out most of the time”). Your mother was focused on herself, and your father- when he was home- was focused on your mother (“My father is obsessive with her, totally focused on her”, still).

Your sister reacted to your mother’s extreme self-centeredness/ selfishness by arguing and avoiding her (“My sister gets angry and irritable very quickly… always argued with our mom… avoiding the family and sulky when she was at home”). You reacted opposite to your sister (“I am not like her”): your sister argued- you did not, she was angry- you joked, she rejected her home life and avoided it- you accepted your home life and stayed in (“I have always been a ‘smoother’, at home I was the clown.. I was the joker of the family and diffused situations with jokes and humor… I was introverted, shy, creative and sometimes funny. Humor was my way of diffusing situations.. I just accepted what was”).

“When someone hurts me, I don’t react, but pretend I didnt hear or that I don’t care. But I do. I don’t like people being disrespectful but they often are.. I just want to get through the day”- this was your strategy as a child and still, at 44: “I’m tired of sitting on the fence on everything, being so amenable and nice, letting others take advantage and being so unhappy about it all”, June 7, 2021.

Someone is always enviously eyeing whatever I have and taking it away…it’s a repeat pattern… I think from an early age I learned that, if I had gained something, others were jealous and that always made me feel bad” -that someone was/is your mother; the others = your mother.

“My mother was depressive and certainly in my teens I remember spending hours sorting out her problems with her… she had a lack of understanding, empathy and seemingly would turn any event back to focus on her own life and problems. You could start talking about something that was bothering you.. and find yourself once again, going over her childhood issues”- self-centered, focused on herself, overly concerned with her emotions and needs, and not concerned with her daughter’s.

“when I had a boyfriend over and I was making something in the kitchen my mom would tease me and the boyfriend (as it happened with more than one boyfriend) would join in… This would be seen as a sort of bonding experience for them at my expense”- your mother needed your boyfriends’ attention, so she took it away from you and at your expense.

“I have doubts sometimes about my mother’s honest intentions and behaviours. Can it be a strange jealousy of her own daughters? This competitiveness and need to control that reveals itself in fights where she suddenly asserts, ‘this is MY home, MY car, MY etc.'”- yes, she has  been jealous of her own daughter, and she is not honest with you (and with others).

“only a few years ago, I achieved something amazing, my first home and renovation.. my mother never wanted to come and see it. When she did finally, she seemed sulky and attributed the success to her suggestions. I have done two renovations and she had the same reaction”- too self-centered and selfish to be happy for her daughter’s success. Instead she was jealous and envious.

“when I am feeling successful and confident and beautiful, when it feels like it is radiating out of me.. I feel that is dangerous, because bad things happen, I attract unhappy comments, unhappy people who feel it’s unfair somehow“- when as a child, a teenager and onward, you felt good and it showed- your mother noticed, wanted what you had and took it away from you. It is your mother who has been the unhappy person who felt it’s unfair that you felt successful, confident and beautiful (“I have still got a mother who is pretty unsatisfied with what she has”).

“When walking on the street sometimes people will start laughing as I approach them… Strangers do make fun of me.. Yesterday a woman stepped out of her apartment building on the phone and started laughing loudly saying ‘oh! you should see the scene out here today!.. I was the only person there ..The women here are very jealous”- you are projecting your mother’s jealousy, her teasing of you and making fun of you==> to people, strangers, a woman stepping out of her apartment.

“Why am I attracted to witty and entertaining people only to find them mocking me and making fun that turns into hurtful cruelty?”- you were born to a witty and entertaining woman who mocked you and made fun of you and was cruel to you. Next, you see her in other people, often assuming that they mock you and make fun of you when really, they don’t

“when my parents met my ex’s parents.. They were sitting around a table and talking and she suddenly, like a young girl, got up and sat on my dad’s knee and she talked to them and laughed girlishly. As I was there, I thought it was highly bizarre behaviour”-that’s your mother as a middle aged/ older woman getting the attention she craves.

You wrote yesterday: “Jealousy as a core belief. Yes probably I got it from my mother, who had reasoned that people were jealous when I felt self conscious of people staring at me on the street.. She concluded it was because I was attractive”- likely, your mother was jealous of you for being attractive and projected her own jealously into strangers on the street.

You wrote yesterday about your mother: “I think I mentioned I thought she fit a narcissist profile…  I also came to see some awful jealous behaviour in her regarding what little successes I had… she also has a need to be more knowledgeable than me on subjects I have more experience in… my father.. never contradicts, he is subservient and feeds her need to bully”-

– Wikipedia on the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: “Requiring excessive admiration, A sense of entitlement.. Being interpersonally exploitative (taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends), Lacking empathy: unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others, Often being envious of others. .. the person with NPD can be a self-absorbed control freak who passes blame by psychological projection and is intolerant of contradictory views and opinions; is apathetic towards the emotional, mental, and psychological needs of other people; and is indifferent to the negative effects of their behaviors”- it all fits.

“I’m tired of sitting on the fence on everything, being so amenable and nice, letting others take advantage and being so unhappy about it all”- time to change this lifelong strategy.

anita