Re-submitting (the excess print happens when I copy and paste from my email to tiny buddha):

Dear Joanna:

“Do you sometimes use past tense when talking about difficulties related to your mother’s abuse?“- yes. I often start with the past tense, but as I get more emotional, I slip into the present tense.

“Most people are not like your (and my) mother. Not judgmental, not accusing of bad intentions“-

– Notice (in the following) how deep my mother’s criticism and judgment is embedded in my brain: when I read your question (above, in the very beginning of my post), I had a distressing thought: that you (Joanna) were criticizing me for using the present tense when talking about my mother, saying something like: oh, you (anita) are not that smart or advanced, are you, if you are still using the present tense; who are you to give other people advice.. when you are still sick…!

Please do not be alarmed by this, Joanna. This is my mother’s voice (the italicized), not yours. I can hear her (the italicized) and as I typed her words, I had so much more criticism to type: I could go on and on for a long time, criticizing myself angrily (my face expressed anger as I typed). I felt identified with the voice, it was… my voice: one she implanted in my brain but now, it is my angry, critical voice.

I remember my mother criticizing me for maybe an hour at a time, maybe longer, standing there in front of me and a barrage of critical, angry words came out of her mouth like pressured water out of a broken water faucet, flooding me with insults and words of humiliation. I don’t remember all the insults, only a few. But I remember that there were lots of them, lots of insulting sentences and descriptions. She intended to insult, humiliate and shame me and she did a good job at it. She was a hard worker, diligent, went the extra mile.

Yesterday, at the time I stopped typing in your thread (not submitted but copied and pasted elsewhere), I felt that maybe you (Joanna) really did criticize me for not being mentally healthy enough to be here, on these forums, addressing other people’s mental health. I truly didn’t know if that’s what you thought: I didn’t feel as distressed  as I used to feel when projecting my mother’s voice into other people, but I felt somewhat distressed. Fast forward to this morning, I don’t feel distressed at the thought that you might be thinking this.

As an answer to my critical voice in regard to my own mental health and addressing other members’ mental health in these forums, I say: these are self-help forums: we help ourselves and we help each other. It is easier to address other people’s issues than it is to address our own, but addressing our own issues (as I am doing in this post) is what healing and self-help is about. It takes humility and courage, and trust that the person I am communicating with (Joanna) is a good person.

And now, to the rest of your yesterday’s post (I didn’t read most of it yet, and will read and respond part by part):

“I too, struggle with words and I understand you very well. I sometimes delete words when I think they are too much.. not appropriate. Re-living conversations thinking what I should have (not) said. Not a good habit, I guess“- I thought you did (I noticed in your writing), this is what prompted me to bring up the topic to begin with. I thought that we have this issue in common, and maybe we can help each other to weaken this habit.

“Please do not worry about this. Nothing bad will happen if you do not respond to something, or use wrong words. I appreciate your posts very much and I am not critical of them“- thank you. The worry is there because something bad did happen when I did not respond to something she expected me to respond to, and when I used words that she told me were wrong. She did not appreciate me and  she was very critical of me.

“Most people are not like your (and my) mother. Not judgmental, not accusing of bad intentions. I say this to myself too and I think it’s good to remember“- I said it to myself many times, I even expressed this in other threads. It is true.

“We are very much alike and also have similar realizations“- yes, we do!

I wrote to you: “I remember thinking not too long ago: if my mother was always bad, consistently bad (cruel, hateful, etc.)- my life would have been so much easier…“, your response: “That is exactly what I was thinking. Seemed to me I realized much later than I should that my mother is in fact abusing me. I resent myself for it“- resent yourself for being fooled for too long, for not being smart enough to realize the truth earlier on?

“I had those thoughts in early childhood, yes, that I hate her and she is evil, but once my parents got divorced and she started talking about my dad’s drinking, how it was ‘impossible to live with that men’ I was so gaslighted, more and more each day, because I started spending more time with her – living with her only“-he became the bad guy, and she became, in this context, the good guy?

“One time my dad came to visit me and she started yelling at him, he was just sitting here and listening. I started crying and she told him ‘see what you did to a child??!‘ and he didn’t know what to say, he was silent. I knew I was crying because she was yelling but I didn’t tell her that, I .. knew I had to play her game: that I cry because (of him).. But I knew that wasn’t true. What she did to my mind is terrifying to me!”-

-she confused for you (as my mother confused for me), the issue of Cause and Effect. “Cause and effect is the relationship between two things when one thing makes something else happen. For example, if we eat too much food and do not exercise, we gain weight. Eating food without exercising is the ’cause’, weight gain is the ‘effect’… Looking for the reason why things happen (cause/effect) is a basic human drive…. essential in learning the basic ways the world works” (online).

One of the very few memories I have of what my mother told me was that one time when she hit my face with her open hand, right, left, right left… she then stopped, looked at her tired hands and arms and accusatorily said to me: Look what you did to me: you hurt my arms! – in Reality, the Cause was her choice (however impulsive) to hit me, and the Effect was that her arms and hands hurt. But in her Mind, she made a short cut, removing from the situation her choice to hit me.

“I sometimes wonder am I similar to some of my ancestors, grandparents?“- not more than you are similar to me.. I believe.

“Who am I, what would be my talents etc. if it wasn’t for the abuse shaping most of my personality“- depending on what kind of abuse you would have been born into. Your abusive home, my own.. are two abusive homes in many millions all over the world.

anita