Hey Beni,

How is your back?

my back is fine, thanks for asking. The worsening that I experienced about a month or so, has now passed, and I am back to my baseline, which is a low-grade pain but manageable. I am fine with this status and not really focusing on being pain-free, because it seems like something I cannot control. So this is good enough…

And how is your back?

Mhh, my Dad was in Hospital as a child for one week and his mom couldn’t see him. I think that created some kind of void and he needs my mom and his job for it and my mom needs my dad.

He can’t really say how he feels. Lately he said he was depressed for a decade in his 40ies. He would just say he’s alright all the time. My mom would always want to know how our day was or his day at work and we did not really wanna answer.

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.

When she was emotional he kinda put her back to her place. Like when you need empathy and you get logic.

Okay, it seems your father wasn’t really good at expressing emotions, while your mother wanted emotional intimacy. That’s why she would ask him how his day was etc. But it seems he wasn’t attuned to her (or his own) emotional needs, e.g. perhaps he failed to notice when she was sad or there is a problem. Her emotional states were “invisible” for him, which in practical terms means he lacked empathy for her.

She probably felt unseen and was stuffing her hurt for a while, until she could no longer bear it. That’s when she would break down and start crying. A trigger for that could be if the kitchen was in a mess. In those moments, she probably felt that no one cares about her, no one “sees” her, and she would react with anger at you, ordering you to do something ASAP (perhaps a chore or something).

But it was out of character for her, because she wasn’t a bossy person. She wasn’t a strict, authoritative parent. But sometimes, when she was desperate (believing that no one cares about her), she would lose it, and that’s when she acted angrily and “bossy”. You said it felt “like she needs an illusion of control“.

It seems she didn’t have much control in your family, she was suppressing her needs. Or when she expressed it, your father would dismiss her complaints (When she was emotional he kinda put her back to her place.). But sometimes she couldn’t bear it any longer and that’ when she would break down, start crying and/or become bossy with you.

Maybe when she would finally express her needs, it would be from the position of a victim, like “why don’t you ever see how I am suffering?”, or “why can’t you do xyz for me, but let me do everything by myself?” Like, blaming your father (and you and your brother) for not being caring enough or sensitive enough, or for not helping her enough?

My mom would always want to know how our day was or his day at work and we did not really wanna answer. It didn’t feel right. It was/is often a too open a question and doesn’t feel save to reply. It’s in someway food for something unwholesome. When you don’t listen but project yourself on the reply it can be painful to the replier.

Perhaps you felt that she wasn’t really asking how your day was because she was sincerely interested, but because she was looking for an opportunity to start talking about herself and her issues and her problems. Since she never felt heard and seen, she needed to “steal” those opportunities from you. She wanted to force you to listen to her. But you didn’t want it, because it was a burden for you (and indeed too much for a child) to act as an emotional support for your mother.

In fact, I am thinking now that perhaps she had an unmet childhood need to be seen and appreciated. Maybe she felt like no one cares about her. And so she was trying to get love and appreciation from her husband and her children. But that’s impossible because our unmet childhood needs are like a bottomless pit – they cannot be met by anyone but ourselves. They can only be met via healing.

So if she was expecting her husband and specially her children to meet that unmet need, I can imagine it led to frustration on both sides.

Your father, as the adult, could in theory have had the capacity to “see” her, to give her the appreciation she craved for (except in practice, he didn’t have the capacity because of his own wounds). But you, as her child, definitely didn’t have the capacity to meet her emotional needs. You needed her to meet your needs, not vice versa.

That’s probably why you rejected her hugs and kisses – because you felt she is hugging you to meet her own need (Or needed it herself. It’s like taking a hug.)  She might have hugged you when she felt unloved, hoping you would give her what she is missing. But you felt it – you felt that her hugs were not for you, but for her.

But you also had some empathy for her – you didn’t want to always reject her, unlike your father and brother (My dad and brother are more black and white and colder).

So perhaps you had some feeling of guilt when rejecting her? Perhaps that’s why you nowadays struggle with ambivalence in certain situations:

[I said this:] It sounds like if you don’t do things others expect from you (or you believe they expect), you fear that the person might feel rejected, and it causes you pain. And you feel helpless because you don’t want to hurt them, but at the same time, you don’t want to do it either. So you are conflicted. You feel ambivalence, and perhaps you freeze in that neither-nor state, not wanting to do it, but not able to reject it either.

[you replied this:] What you write is very close to how I feel. Yeah, this impulse confuses me and it is a challenge to bear.

The above sounds the same as the conflict you had with regard to your mother: feeling guilty for rejecting her, but also not being able, or not wanting to, give her what she needed, because it went against your own needs, or because it felt inauthentic to you.

If we lift it to a higher level, it might mean that you are not able to clearly express your NO (towards the things you don’t want in life), but also unable to clearly express your YES (for the things you do want in life).

So perhaps that’s why you have issues with envisioning what you want? Because there is a subconscious fear that you would be harming someone else (your mother) if you actually allowed yourself to go after your true desires?

Okay, I’ll stop here. I made a lot of assumptions while putting this together, so there might be a lot of misses. But anyway, this is my current theory of your family dynamic. Let me know what you think and if it resonates… (corrections very welcome!)