Hi Tee,

In your latest post you say she didn’t complain to you directly:

Thanks for pointing this out. It was not in such a direct way when I remember right.

Yes, I belief this is it. I met her a week ago and I saw it in her eyes.

I talk about a situation where showed myself vulnerable last year around the time of the Post and instead of being listen too she started with her pain cause there was a space for it.

From this, it more seems like she complained about you, i.e. was displeased with you, when you didn’t clean the kitchen or didn’t do what she told you to do? And then she would “lose it”, you say.

It would accumulate and then at one point cause she needed support she’d loose it in a sense that she is crying and overwhelmed.

Does it mean she would get angry with you, start yelling etc? Or she would start pitying herself, saying something like “No one ever helps me around here. Why can’t you do what I’ve asked you to? Why is everybody so ungrateful when I am doing so much for this family?”

I wonder what she said or expressed it. Mhh, propably her need got very urgent she could breakdown or get bossy. Mhh, I’m not too shure.

Or perhaps both? Maybe she would be angry that you didn’t do what she told you to do, and then she would start pitying herself, complaining about her life, perhaps about being disrespected and not cared about by you (and your father and brother)?

Observing myself it can be a breakdown and also rebellion. Like I have impulses to trigger people once there is tension. Mhh, like I that my mother would struggle to stand up for herself and when she tried my father, brother and I’m not shure if I did. Cause I’m more like her than my Dad. Would put her back to her place in a way. Because she would be emotional and it would not make sense in a logic way.

Because my mother was like that – she was strict with me and expected obedience (and I was mostly obedient), but still, in my puberty and adolescence I wasn’t too eager to help in the household. So she would use that to criticize me and then to present herself as a martyr. In fact, she would use every opportunity to pity herself and blame someone for her misery, because she always had complaints about other people, specially about me, my father and my father’s side of the family.

My mother too, she liked to boss me and my father around. She was strict and behaved a little bit like a tyrant within our small family. But to the rest of the world, she presented herself like a meek, nice woman. But within our four walls, she definitely was abusing power.

I wonder if your mother was abusing power with you, but perhaps was weak with your father?

For shure she did abuse her powers. I can just hardly remember. I think/feel it’s something like my space. She was too close. There was not enough space for me. Maybe it was something like when I had a similar pain she had she felt understood.

My father was a people pleaser, so she could do that with him. But you said that your father was more black-and-white and colder (My dad and brother are more black and white and colder). Perhaps that means that he didn’t really care about her complaints and didn’t try to please her? (and that your brother is similar?)

Does that mean she would be cruel and then present herself as victim to your Dad?
When she was emotional he kinda put her back to her place. Like when you need empathy and you get logic. She would let it happen. My brother also does that. It’s the other way around here.

I understand. You don’t want to be bossed around. Perhaps you were bossed around as a child, and sometimes you tolerated it (because you wanted to please your mother), …

I assume I did not set boundaries or when I did maybe I was sent to my room and then

disobeyed and smashed something, hit your own head, etc. Was that the dynamic between you and your mother?

Maybe my Das is involved too.

It’s good that you can now say No to her bossing you around, and that she actually apologized for treating you like that. So it seems that she is getting more insight into her behavior and that therapy is actually helping her…

Yes, I’m proud at her and at me.

I wonder if she was eager to give you hugs and kisses when you were well behaved, when you were a “good boy” and did everything she told you to?

I don’t know, I think too: Or needed it herself. It’s like taking a hug.

You haven’t been talking much about your father. If I may ask. What is your relationship to men these days? Is there a sex which company you value more.

But maybe you felt those were conditional, because she didn’t really care about you and your emotional needs? She only liked you when you were obedient?

Yes, I don’t think she could care much about my emotional needs.

Well, I know daydreaming can be maladaptive, like when we do it to escape our painful reality (because in that imagined future we feel good, we feel loved, and so we escape our grim emotions).

But imagining future situations – e.g. envisioning what you would like your future to look like – can also be a good thing. If it’s not an escape, but something you actually believe you can achieve.

I really need to share this. I think the same as you about daydreaming. For me daydreaming is a loose of control there is the way of daydreaming which is triggered with a painful feeling and then I loose touch to the moment and hardly remember anything.

When I talk about envisioning the future it’s more conscious. There are many teachers saying that you imagine something to make it happen. I think there is a right and a wrong way to do it. Like when I observe myself:

I Imagine possibilities and opportunities, goals and it feels good. Also I kinda experience it in my head, feel the good feelings as if I archived it and it’s as if I did it and don’t need to do it anymore.

Sometimes there is the experience of no perspective which I usually try to overcome. Lately I thought and felt that maybe that’s the place which is peaceful and grounded in the moment. It feels like it’s a burden to keep ties with the future and all it’s ways and keeps me from meeting higher needs.

What do you think about that? Does it sound reasonable?