Dear sossi:

“When I was younger, my older sister..  would lash out and get angry, so I took on the ‘older’ role.. I developed a lack of awareness of myself, a detachedness”- your sister and you were your mother’s co-victims. Your sister was so very angry because she was a victim. When you took the opposite role to your sister’s by being the Not Angry One, you had to detach yourself from your anger. A person cannot detach from just one emotion, the detachment applies to all emotions. Emotional detachment is not complete or perfect, so you did feel emotions- only in a muffled, foggy kind of way.

“I’m tired of always being strong, of ignoring comments made to me.. I’m tired of being kind to disrespectful people”- to be truly strong you have to undo your detachment, bit by bit, and return your anger and other emotions back to your awareness, feeling them clearly, no longer in a muffled, foggy way.

“If I recognise being a victim, then I want to know a solution. At 44 I need answers”-

My answers for you: (1) Abandon the “I just accepted what was” part of your role, no longer “sitting on the fence on everything, being so amenable and nice”. Bit by bit (there is no way to rush the process because you are 44) attach your awareness to your anger and assert yourself with the people in your life. Assert yourself first in small gentle ways, every day for a week, and post to me a record of each assertion.

(2) There are different exercises in books, such as in Reclaiming the Inner Child and Homecoming by John Bradshaw, that are aimed at reclaiming emotional awareness and coming home to one’s emotions, using the terms in the title of his books.

anita