Dear Milda:

You are very welcome and thank you for being as nice and as kind as you are! I want you to keep feeling comfortable, heard and understood by me, and so, at any time that I misunderstand something you are trying to communicate to me, please let me know what it is.

* To let you know, I usually reply to posts by reading, copying and pasting a part of a post, then I respond to that part before I read the next part. Then, I read, copy etc., the next part before reading the next, etc. This helps me to develop my thoughts along the way.

“This situation caused my natural reaction of helping my family, and I want to know how do you think I should have responded to that. I was text messaging with my mother. Started with random topics and (as always) at one point when I asked mother what are the plans for weekend, she replied: well, father is again not talking to me, built a silence wall, so I will be doing my own things, and he his. After reading this message, I physically felt a stress reaction: my heart was racing, head spinning, felt nervous, scared and had an immediate thoughts of “I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, I HAVE TO SOLVE IT, HOW CAN I COMFORT MY MOTHER, HOW TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR HER, WHY IS FATHER NOT TALKING, I HAVE TO MAKE THEIR RELATIONSHIP RIGHT, I HAVE TO KNOW THE DETAILS, MAYBE KNOWING THE DETAILS WILL HELP ME SOLVE IT”. It was a true reaction of stress, tension, fear.”-

– I am quoting all this because it is so very meaningful. On the 24th when you shared about your childhood, you wrote: “I had a need inside to always solve their problems, so that maybe then I can live in a happy, stable and calm family“- you needed and wanted a calm family because as a child, you were too often, very scared, as is indicated by your scared  reaction earlier today. In all capital letters are the thoughts you had as a child, resurfacing.

Notice what triggered this fear reaction: your mother saying, “well, father is again not talking to me, built a silence wall, so I will be doing my own things, and he his“. In your adult life circumstances, there is no danger in what she said, no danger to you, no danger to her (she survived that silence wall for many years). But in the child’s mind, in a child’s world, that silence wall was danger because you didn’t know what will happen next, and what you feared will happen next was something as final and catastrophic as death.

The child that you were is still very much a part of you (true to me as well). The known term for this child is Inner Child. For the inner child (who was traumatized as a child) there is no Past vs Present: there is only Present. She is still living at home with her parents and she still gets scared for the same reasons she was scared back then.

“But I paused. I didn’t write anything, I just put my phone away. Tried to challenge those thoughts and said to myself that I do not have to comfort her, solve her and father’s relationship problems, cheer her etc. But then I started facing new thoughts, which were: ‘How dare you not helping her, comforting her, she is lonely, go do something, say something, you are not taking care of your mother, which is your duty. Doesn’t matter that you do not think that it is your responsibility to do that, JUST DO IT AND DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HELP HER AND MAKE HER HAPPY!!’. Those thoughts were the ones that made me really sad and stressed out. I didn’t know what to do”-

– Evident here is Role Reversal which started in your childhood: the child-daughter feeling that it is her duty to take care (to parent) her adult mother. The daughter took on that role because… no one else did. Someone had to be the adult, solve problems, create and maintain peace/ safety in the home! Of course, it is mission impossible for a child to be an adult, but the child tries her best.

Part of her, of the child, becomes a pre-mature adult/ parent to her parents. Being still a child herself, living in a home that feels unsafe, she doesn’t have the emotional (or other) resources to parent her parents, but she is driven to do it anyway.

“I wrote to my mom: ‘Oh ok, get it‘. That’s it. No comforting thoughts, no questions, solutions, nothing. After writing that I felt very bad, as the worst daughter ever”-… as the worst.. parent (to your mother).

“And I feel till this moment that I made a wrong decision, that I had to help her, that she is poor and sad, with no one around to help her, I am the only one that can do it. A huge guilt inside of me. I would appreciate a lot your insights on this situation, maybe this could help me reshape the way I think and see situation.”-

– the child-parent (you) is feeling guilty for not helping her “daughter” (your mother). Talking about role reversal.

If your mother really was a child and you really were her mother, you would have had the opportunity to make her a happy child because she would be in her Formative Years when under your care, her brain developing/ being in the process of being formed- with your input, your care in it.

As a child, you unknowingly took on an impossible task: to change a sad brain that is already formed into a happy brain. Mission impossible. But someone had to make the home safe and no adult took on the task, so you did. And you did the best a child can do to accomplish mission impossible.

As you can see by reading your mother’s words, you failed all these years to.. silence that very loud silence wall in her home. You failed because any child/ daughter would fail.

We will talk more about this, for as long as you want to.

anita