Dear Sann:

Your fear about feeling again the intensity of your guilt regarding your past confrontation with her- that fear of the guilt, fear of pain- I understand that fear. Because I have no way of being there for you, holding your hand, walking with you through- I have no right to suggest that you do this or that. You need the support that you need to do the scary things that will be good for you in the long run. You need some support, a relationship with a person who sees you and is able and willing to be there with you enough to … give you the courage to do what needs to be done.

You do what you can handle, at your own pace, considering the support that you do have. Take as little steps as is reasonable to take considering the amount of fear you are facing and the amount of support you have- or not.

I have more to say about you and your mother and questions I could ask but I don’t want to because I don’t want to trigger your fear and distress… because I am not there to provide you with the support you need to confront such again, on a deeper level.

I found it very interesting that you wrote: “I guess you have to be able to give yourself some kind of importance to say that you were treated the wrong way.” I think it is very insightful and something I became more aware of myself recently.

It was easier for me, personally, to take on the belief that I deserved bad treatment, and therefore received it than to think that my mother meant to hurt me. It was easier for me to believe that she only reacted, automatically reacted to my defectiveness, faultiness then to believe that I was innocent and good as a child and the evil was her action, her initiative, not an automatic reaction.

I think the reason it was preferrable for me to believe that she didn’t initiate hurting the good little person that I was, is that once I thought of myself as bad, faulty, then there was something I could do to get better treatment: change from bad to good. The alternative, that she was … bad, that she intended to hurt me when I did not deserve it meant there was nothing i could do, no power to make things better. That option meant I was indeed a perfect victim. Taking on the guilt meant I was not a perfect victim, that I had some power.

Reality is that I was a perfect victim as a child, with her. My delusion helped me survive that time. It had a function. But delusions are helpful only when temporary, as temporary coping mechanism. On the long term, they harm. Healing is about peeling off delusions.

I suppose I did talk about mothers and guilt after all. I hope this is not too distressing for you, is it? I wonder if I should erase what I just wrote…

Yes, the diagnoses – Borderline. I assure you it is not something one is born with. It is nothing but a collection of symptoms. The origin of all those diagnoses in the DSM book is HURT and fear in childhood and then it goes on like a snow ball down a mountain, gathering more and more snow, more and more problems, and individuals ending up with individual collections of sympotms to fit in the hundreds of diagnoses (or more.. how many are there at this point…) But the origin is how a parent or parents hurt us.

In the animal kingdom, the animal knows who the predator is and has no guilt about running away from the predator- or fighting- and the young animal knows safety is with the parent. It is all clear: parent= safety. Predator=danger. Running away from a predator is no problem because the animal doesn’t live with the predator. In humans, where often the parent attacks its own young, child, the child gets all confused: safety=parent. Danger=parent. What the hell?

Here I am back to mothers and guilt, again. Please go back to my point of dealing with what you are able to deal with, fear and support. I assure you that if you post again here, I WILL respond and as long as I have access to the website I will respond to every one of your posts (if I don’t although having access, I must have missed it somehow, hope not- I will look).

Regarding what therapy and how you know- when you get together with a therapist- CBT I hope, with DBT and mindfulness (what I had)- i would look for a therapist who will give you an initial free session, who will talk about giving you after a few sessions a written plan with his or her evaluations of where you are and what you need, his or her objectives- how to define success of therapy, all typed up. I would expect a therapist who will give you homework in between sessions, maybe some email communciation in between. I wouldn’t go to one who seems like the only time she remembers you is during the 50 minutes or so you are there. i would need one- like the one I had- that is concerned about me, has a sense of responsibility for her patients or clients, a hard working individual, one that doesn’t apply a magical kind of insight but HARD WORK. Notice how hard- he or she is willing to work for you- or not.

anita