Dear Farnaz:

“I anticipate an attack from  people all the times… even when everything seems to be ok… I remember I was ten or eleven… I was telling my mom that when I was crossing the street the bus driver stopped the whole bus so I could go safely and I was so proud of it and my mom said it was because he realized that you are a stupid kid and he should be extra cautious with you…. she seemed fine that day“-

– (1) the result: anxiety is not limited to times when things seem not okay: it extends to times when things seem okay… no break from anxiety when the source of danger (“mother’s explosive nature“) is present. I took my breaks when she was not home, when I was alone,  daydreaming to music.

(2) you were proud of yourself, proud that the bus driver thought that your safety was important enough for him to stop the whole bus, just for you. Your mother’s response: to hurt that very pride you felt, to take the air out of that pride. (You were safe crossing the street that day but you were not safe telling your mother about it).

“I think (brother) is so afraid to admit (a wrong) because it’s like being wrong in everything in his life. I mean, when you question one thing, he feels I’m questioning his whole existence“- my mother was like that, this is why when I tried to communicate with her honestly (and no matter how gentle I was with my words so that she doesn’t get offended), if she detected that I was saying that she did anything wrong, her reaction was automatic:  attack! In her mind, I was attacking her, so she launched a counter attack.

I too felt that any criticism I received- from myself and from another- was a devastating criticism, as if all of me was criticized. It’s a reaction of a shame-based individual: any and every criticism is seen as evidence that the whole self, the whole being is criticized. (My reaction was to attack myself; I spent lots of time in self-torment).

“I’ve always thought my mom was a miserable person, there was always something wrong in her life, she hated herself as a woman, and she tortured my sister and I more than she did my brother… Now your mom telling you that she thought she was ugly is not strange at all , she didn’t like herself and she saw you as an extension to herself, so she didn’t like you either“-

– yes, they were both miserable and my mother too hated herself as a woman and she abused me and my sister. My 2011-13 therapist told me that he thinks my mother fit the borderline personality disorder diagnosis herself. Maybe your mother fit it too. About my mother seeing me as an extension of her (as if there is something that connects me to her), that doesn’t ring true to me because she expressed to me in so many ways that I was a STRANGER to her, no connection whatsoever. Or so I felt,

I am glad that the weather is sunny and very nice where you are at and that you get to jog today!

anita