Dear Neera:

I understand that you may not be reading this, nonetheless I am submitting another post because it helps me understand life better when I re-read what an OP shares, looking for some new understanding. If you are reading, I figure it may or may not help you, but it will not hurt you, so here it goes:

1) About Love: “I have a loving family…  I genuinely believe I have the most caring family… I drew a boundary with my mom and her abusive tone with me, which also involved swear words and yelling. After asking her repeatedly to talk with me more calmly, and to NOT name call, it does not work“- Love and Abuse cannot co-exist, it is one or the other. Sometimes there are no grey areas, and this is one of these times. What by themselves may be loving acts (ex., preparing your favorite meal for your enjoyment), when combined with abuse, these otherwise loving acts lose their loving content. All these acts leave you (the recipient of these acts) with- following a temporarily pleasant feeling perhaps-  is confusion and maybe guilt for supposedly being angry with whom appears to be, by this or that act.. a loving person, a loving mother.

2) The Proof is in the Pudding: “My mind is constantly running and assuming the worst. I feel stuck. I feel helpless. I want to escape my mind and silence my thoughts but it’s as if my body is frozen, I do not have control“- these are not the results of being loved: a loved person does not want to escape her mind; a loved person feels in reasonable control of her thoughts and feelings.

3) Anger in-motion: “The fights are now much less between the two of them but now it has gravitated towards my mom and I have major disagreements and arguments“- a way to think of the word emotion, is energy-in motion (e-motion). Anger is very much energy in motion, it has to move: if your mother’s anger is blocked from reaching your father, it will move toward you, and unblocked, it will reach you.

4) More about Anger in-motion: “A lot of the arguments use to be around me sometimes comparing how she raised my younger sister in contrast to me. For example, they allow her more freedom as growing up since she has always been the rebellious one. She (mother) never gets as angry at her (younger sister)”- perhaps your younger sister’s rebellion blocked your mother’s anger (your mother’s anger turned away by your sister’s anger) and toward you, the sister who, at least for a long time, looked up to her mother as an idol (“Growing up, my mom was my idol”).

5) About the Grudge: “It seems anything I say that remotely is different from what she wants causes a HUGE argument, and gives me terrible anxiety, followed by silent treatment from her… I really do not know what I do that causes severe reactions–the words she says are so hurtful… these bursts of aggression happen over the slightest reason…  she has some strange grudge against me“- your mother felt unloved since she was a child, and it may be that because you loved your mother so much (“I love them so much… I tried to be the partner for her that she needed, trying to be perfect”) , your very love for her triggers her anger. It is like giving a starving person a healthy amount of food: it doesn’t feel like enough, and the starving person gets angry: This is Not Enough! Give me More!!! 

6) About What she Wants: “I would tell my mother from a very young age to become more independent. To seek professional guidance/support. To leave my dad because it was mentally affecting the entire family. I would provide resources“- in her mind and heart, she is still a dependent, angry, petulant child who is not ready to grow up and become independent and free: not before she gets to have the childhood she needed but did not get.

anita