Dear Linarra:

“I’m glad you have people in your life who care about you and your thoughts, and that you are able to answer the concrete questions when they’re asked in a positive way“- I learned that it’s good enough if there is just one such person, who from time to time genuinely cares about my thoughts and feelings. Once in a while there are others. I think that a lot of the people, most of the time, do not selflessly and genuinely care about the thoughts and feelings of others: too many people are too busy and/ or too troubled to have the mental space to genuinely and attentively attend to others.

In previous posts,  you wrote: “I’m encountering some difficulties on my healing path.. I myself have difficulty identifying my needs/wants. Sometimes I have a hard time even feeling real… I do confide my pain to some friends, sometimes, but it doesn’t make me feel better… I struggle reaching to myself and my feelings so I will need to reconnect with my inner child somehow“-

– When you experienced the powerful emotional traumas of your childhood, the traumas that shaped you to such a large extent, you didn’t have the vocabulary you have today. You therefore did not have the thoughts you have today. Back then, the child-person that you were, was way more emotional than intellectual. The person you were then is not the same person as you are now.

The following quotes are taken from the quote right above:

“I do confide my pain to some friends, sometimes, but it doesn’t make me feel better“- you have shared about your pain to friends, and here, on your thread, using vocabulary and developed thoughts that did not exist back when you were a child. As an adult, you use information that you gathered in college perhaps, in books and online sources that you read after your childhood traumas already shaped you. When you share about your childhood using words, thoughts, ideas, analyses- all which did not exist when you were a child- it is not really the child you were that is confiding. No wonder confiding with others as an adult did not make you feel better.

“I struggle reaching to myself and my feelings so I will need to reconnect with my inner child somehow”- you have to speak her (your inner child’s) language if you want to reach her/ reconnect with her.

The “difficulty identifying my needs/wants” may be resolved by reconnecting with the child you were, using her thoughts, her vocabulary, to which her real, genuine emotions are attached, and once you do, you will not have as hard a time “even feeling real“.

Let’s look at what you shared in your most recent post to me: “It seems like your mother was a lot like mine. ‘Histrionic’ is also a term we use to qualify our mother’s behavior, among my siblings. Very wildly performative and dramatic, tragic and aggressive… And the audience involvement too, at times… So humiliating, especially when she’s onto you. Your (and your sanity too, to some extent) privacy only exists if you do not exist, or do not let her know about your existence“-

– Back when you were a child, the term histrionic was not available to you. The wording wildly performative and dramatic, tragic and aggressive was not even close to the wording going through your child brain. There were no intellectual, if any, conversations between you and your siblings about your mother. Back then the experience of humiliation was probably purely physical, no words.

Here is what I suggest, consider in your next post doing the following exercise: share about your childhood experience with your histrionic mother using very simple, child-like vocabulary, avoiding any wordings, ideas and analyses that you read about and thought about as an older teenager and adult. If you are not willing and/ or able to do this exercise- that’s fine with me. If you think that it might help you if I will do this exercise (regarding my own experience with my histrionic mother), on your thread- let me know. It will be difficult for me, and I have never done it before online, but I am willing to try.

anita