Dear Stargaze17:

I will soon be out for my walk and following, I will be gone for a few hours. I wanted to add something I copied from Wikipedia for you, about guilt: “Guilt is an affective state in which one experiences conflict at having done something that one believes one should not have done (or conversely, having not done something one believes one should have done). It gives rise to a feeling which does not go away easily… Alice Miller (a psychologist and author) claims that ‘many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt… no argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life’s earliest period, and from that they derive their intensity”-

-This quote makes me think of my lifetime guilt in regard to my mother and it makes me think of your guilt because the intensity of yours reminds me of mine. Not all disapproving, judgmental mothers express their disapproval in the very same ways: some express it by physically abusing the child, others express it by verbally abuse the child, yet others say nothing and do nothing… but express their disapproval and judgment in their facial expressions, in that condemning, accusing way they look at you, a way that is as powerful as words and actions.  Sometimes mothers are insincere: they say things that sound nice and loving but their facial expressions and behaviors don’t fit their words.

Alice Miller also wrote: “The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it“- I had to grieve (and still do a bit of it once in a while) the sad fact that my mother disapproved of me and didn’t like me. There is nothing I can do to change that  she just doesn’t like me, but I don’t have to follow her lead and dislike myself… !

anita