Dear Anita,

If I summarize it, the woman who gave birth to me feel emotions (which is alright) but the way she displays them has a purposefully twisted aim: manipulation of the emotions of ‘her’ children, so she can have power over them and own them, making them stay despite the abuse and the pain. Which is wrong, and makes her wicked.

 “I feel hate for her, hate as in strong anger. I hate it that she succeeded in … habituating you to abuse.”

Legitimate hate. It is good to have someone who is able to remind me what is wrong when my habituation is blinding/numbing me. I pay more attention and care to other people’s emotions, especially those I care about. When you are angry, it makes me make an extra effort, because I care about how you feel and what leads you to feel that way. So I try to view things the way you see them, in order to understand what you see and understand your feelings better. And it makes me reevaluate, reminding me of the familiar feelings I have when I am not numb.

It is a strange way to proceed for me, but it works well enough. I guess it is a bit like when you mentioned how our conversation was helping you before. It is easier to feel for me when I know you went through similar things and were deeply hurt and angry. Because I feel the wrong at what happened to you, and because I trust your recognition ot that fact that what is happening to me is wrong even when I am too numb/habituated to really feel it… because of that, I am able to see it more clearly. And maybe feel it a bit more without falling into an urgent numbing…

“Expecting yourself to expand because of abuse is an unreasonable expectation because NATURE’S WAY is to withdraw, not to expand when .. abused by the weather= lack of rain for too long.”

Before, I would numb myself and not listen. Not allowing myself to acknowledge the pain because I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, if I deserved a better situation, and the shame was just not allowing me to consider my pain. I was too busy attacking myself to make myself stronger even if it made no sense. It is… helpful to not jumping on those bad habits anymore.

I am not healed, but at least I’m not working against my own healing anymore. Not as strongly at least, I am more able to recognize when I’m adding hurt to the hurt, and stop it.

“congratulations for regularly brushing your teeth and showering! Did I mention that I hate this woman, that woman who does not deserve the title Mother.. but Monster? Did you notice that the two words are similar: Mother/ Monster?”

It is nice, to not be alone in hating her… And I did notice the similarity between Mother and Monster as we changed the terms. Not that all mothers are monsters, but those who are monsters really have the perfect opportunities for big damages. There is really no defense for children, they are entirely relying on them and have no choice.

“: to attract a rich man so to get his money were PITIFUL, and further humiliating.. as I too felt “incapable.. even that I wouldn’t do”, couldn’t more like it, incapable of doing what my mother needed me to do, so it seemed to me”

By being capable of doing it, we would have given more power to the monsters… so being incapable wasn’t a bad thing.

“tiny bit stronger on tiny buddha (I like this play with words)”

It is cute and positive, it made me smile. Tiny buddha is really a breath of fresh air to me.

 “this reminds me of The Beautiful Story of the Chained Elephant “

Oh I remember this story, you mentioned it in a thread I read and I relate to it. Learned helplessness, training/conditioning… A very powerful way to remove the power of someone… A concept I’ve been taught again and again in my psychology classes and yet, strangely, knowing about it, seeing it… isn’t sufficient to fight back the phenomenon. It’s a bit ridiculous, but it is how powerful it can be sometimes… I guess, for all the years I have been taught to feel helpless, it may take me a lifetime to heal myself from the consequences of this… training.

Linarra