Dear Farnaz:

“I hope our conversations also affect you positively. Obviously shame is still present but less intense“-yes, our conversations affect me positively and the shame within me is a little less because of you: thank you!

“was he mad at you because of your mother or was telling you, your mother is crazy because how she treated him?“- the latter is what got through to me at the time, that was my interpretation. I had someone witness her behavior and call it what it is (when he said what he said, I now remember, he circled his finger at the side of his forehead to indicate Crazy). So, yes, he called her Crazy- not to her face though.

“What I understand from what you shared is maybe you weren’t aware of your mom’s mistreatment that time“- I was hurt and very disturbed by her behaviors, but no one ever said anything about it except three times, and the incident I described her was one of those 3 times. Unfortunately, nothing came out of it: no follow up conversation. (The other 2 times were (1) my father saying to me one  time: “your mother is crazy!“, and a friend of hers saying to her “This (something my mother did) is not good for her (me)”

“She wasn’t shy about showing her colors to him and the situation was embarrassing for you, obviously. I am sorry“- thank you. My mother’s true color was the color of hate, hate that was repressed, suppressed at times, and revealed in all its grandeur at other times.

“TRUE, that’s the worst kind of mind f***, that’s brutal and some people may never trust themselves again, and that’s the purpose of this behavior, my parents especially my dad did this and other nasty things like gaslighting, withholding information, divide and conquer and etc.“- my mother used logical fallacies in her arguments, meaning, arguments that can easily be proven to be illogical. One of these is to invalidate the opponent’s argument by pointing to an irrelevant personal trait of the opponent, while not addressing the substance  of the argument. My mother did a lot of that: pointing to and shaming the opponent for personal traits (physical looks like height, facial features, posture, the way a person walks, dresses, etc.) instead of addressing the substance of the argument.

Also, my mother placed me in at least one chronic double bind dilemma: she complained a LOT about how difficult her life was (and it was!) and that selfishly, I was not helping her by cleaning the apartment, but when I cleaned, she complained- a LOT- about how inadequately I cleaned, telling me that I have “two left hands” and that I made her life even more difficult because she had to clean after me: I was damned if I did clean, damned if I didn’t. I am sure that there were other illogical fallacies and double-binds, and what you refer to as mind-games, probably gaslighting.., but I was spaced out so much of the time and I remember so little.

“I’m curious about how you realized your mother is hurting you on purpose? Would you like to share it?“- I already did: she smiled ever so slightly when she witnessed that I was hurt by something shameful that she said to me.

“me personally, I realized my dad had a personality disorder, most likely narcissism, not long ago, maybe 7 or 8 years (ago)… after returning back months later, I was prepared, and my dad sensed it, he was upset because he couldn’t play mind games with me like before… it’s true that knowledge is power“- congratulations for educating yourself and making it difficult or impossible for him to successfully inflict his mind games on you. Indeed, Knowledge is Power … when you apply it.

anita