Dear faber castell:

“(my heart).. it seems it’s always in pain or something… I feel so clueless… It’s confusing… I want to learn, to be better, to give and receive“, yesterday.

I want to offer you something useful regarding why it seems like your heart is always in pain and why you feel confused and clueless. I want to encourage you to learn and get better (in my reply today, and in future replies, if you choose to continue to communicate with me). For this purpose, I will study your recent posts of June 23, 2022, and your past posts beginning on November 18, 2013, not at great length, just enough.

In your most recent post, you expressed the following regarding your anger: “I no longer feel like I have that much of an out of proportion temper… I know I can have a strong temper but it mostly comes when I’m already being abused… I spent too long just defending myself… (from) abuse coming towards me… it’s been ages since explosiveness has happened… I guess it had much to do with the abusive relationships I was in at the time, although I know some people will say I’m pretty sensitive” –

– I see two issues in this quote of (1) defending vs offending & misperceptions: there are plenty of people who believe- or so they claim- that they are defending themselves while in reality, they are offending someone else. For example: my mother claimed that I intended to offend her (not true) and therefore she was defending herself by screaming at me, beating me, etc. She misperceived- or lied- that I had an intention that I did not have. I am not saying that this is your case. I am suggesting possibilities, (2) co-abuse: in the case of abuse in adult romantic relationships, it is rare that one party is The Perpetrator and the other is The Victim. Often each party is both the perpetrator and the victim.

In your recent post, you shared this regarding your experience with your family: “the pattern of emotional abuse in my family is very complicated and sneaky. Now, after many years, I’ve realized they’re pathological narcissists…  I realize now that there was a pattern of family emotional abuse I was suffering“.

I will now read through your previous threads looking for relevant information to the above:

On Sept 4, 2014, you shared about something that happened the day before, something that turned out to be a negatively powerful experience in your life: “he tried to get closer and hugged me… we went to take…  a shower together. It was the most intimate moment, he kissed me and hugged me and we stayed for hours under the water just hugging until he started touching me… When we got out of the shower he.. (said) ‘it was a mistake because I still wanted to break up with you’. I said wow, I think this is the most horrible thing that you’ve done to me so far”

Fast forward five years to Oct 7, 2019, you shared: “I have a really hard time when my friends tell me stuff like: ‘Well, if you’re not feeling okay with the guy then leave…’ cause… it’s not that simple”, “I feel uneasy almost all of the time so I have to rationalize myself a lot… I rarely understand where the discomfort is coming from, I believe  there are two types of  uncomfortable:… your own feelings of insecurity (and) toxic people who can harm you”.

Fast forward, in Jan 19, 2021, I think it was the first time that you shared anything about your family since Nov 2013,  and interestingly, you shared it in parenthesis: “My friends celebrated my birthday…  they gave me a surprise party (it was special because my mom passed away January last year, and my birthday was going to be the first without her so everyone wanted to make it special)”

Fast forward a year and a half to your current thread, on June 23, 2022 (original post), you shared more about your family, this time  not in parentheses: “My mom passed away two years ago. She was my friend, my family, and all that I had left in terms of family relationships. My dad passed away when I was 14, I am now 35… I had to care for my mother, and I did it gladly, and sadly. I felt a kind of love I hadn’t felt in a long time, wanting her to be okay… I felt love but a the same time, for sure, I had to probably just protect myself in some ways, it was too much, it was 6 months of pure agony and pain. 2 months at an ICU, the love of my life was my momma… I shared a lot of this sadness with my mother and she was many, many times my shoulder to cry on, always trying to leave that safe home… I know I am still grieving, and I no longer know what pain belongs where” –

– following hours of study, this is my understanding today. My understanding as it is now can change and improve with more information from you. * Reading the following may be distressing to you, so read- if you will- at your pace when calm and take breaks:

I know that you always loved your momma very, very much and that you still do. I think that for a while though, you understandably felt emotionally distant from her. I think that your home life growing up was significantly lacking and that your mother wasn’t able to give you enough of what you needed. It seems to me that the unease and discomfort that you mentioned in Oct 2019 is what you experienced as a child growing up, and that this unease-discomfort emotional experience extended into your adulthood.

I don’t know if your father abused you before he died when you were 14. If he did, maybe your mother knew about it and did not protect you. Maybe your mother abused you in some ways and maybe she “just” didn’t protect you from abuse by siblings or by other family members whom you later referred to as pathological narcissists.

I am quite confident that regardless of the source of the abuse, you (like myself and like so many millions of children) suffered abuse as a child. But at the time when you were a child, you didn’t realize that there was abuse, or you weren’t sure, and it is only recently that you realize that there was abuse after all: “I realize now that there was a pattern of family emotional abuse I was suffering“, June 23, 2022.

I think that the abuse you suffered was not simple and direct, but as you stated, it was “complicated and sneaky“, and therefore.. confusing, difficult to be sure about. I think that you’ve been confused for the longest time and that you are still confused on the issue of the abuse you suffered as a child. This confusion (like the unease-discomfort), extended to your adult life in the context of romantic relationships: you’ve been confused in your relationships in regard to when you were abused and when.. it only felt that way.

You wrote about the time you took care of your sick mother, before she died (you were in your early 30s then): “I felt a kind of love I hadn’t felt in a long time… I felt love but a the same time, for sure, I had to probably just protect myself in some ways” –

– you felt a kind of love for her that you hadn’t felt in a long time, meaning you lost that feeling of love for her (although you still loved her) for some time before she got sick, feeling emotionally distant from her. And feeling love for her again, you had to protect yourself from that feeling… because she failed you in the past, failed to protect you or failed to give you what you needed from her… (?)

I think that the reason that what happened in Sept 3, 2014 with your then boyfriend was so powerful is that it caused you an acute confusion in regard to what is abuse and what is love: when in the shower with him, you felt and experienced definite Love. After the shower, the love was instantly and acutely gone. You were shocked and confused: was what happened in the shower Love or Abuse (“Is this abuse?” is in the title of your Sept 4, 2014 thread).

A month and 17 days later, in a thread you titled “How do you mourn an abusive relationship?”, you figured that the relationship was indeed abusive and that “in the end he did something very similar to sexual abuse”. I am guessing that it took a lot of thinking and maybe researching so to overcome the confusion and arrive to this definite conclusion.

But there is still plenty of confusion in your mind and life. Clearly, you need to gain more clarity about what you experienced as a child and onward, so to no longer have this.. cloud of confusion follow you around. I don’t think that you mentioned having had any kind of psychotherapy or counseling?

anita