Dear Girija:

I wanted to clarify two things:

1. The reason I wrote that you (and I) will lose everything via death is to encourage you to live your life between now and death your way. Not your mother’s way. We can’t change the unsafety that is inherent to life, but we can make our lives better.

2. My mother and yours have a lot in common and I may have projected mine into yours when I wrote to you about not being able to help her. Please let me know what in what I wrote to you is not true to your situation, and what is true.

anita

Dear Girija:

1. “It is weird how when I think practically my mother does not have a life that would make me want to follow her lead- yet I feel more at home listening to her than listening to myself”-

– the part of you that observes her life and evaluates it as a life you don’t want to follow is a later part of you, an older child, maybe the teenager part of you able to think for herself.

– the part of you that feels more at home listening to her is the younger part of you, that bright eyed very young child whose mother is everything to her. This young child was not able to evaluate her mother and her mother’s life as desirable or not. That part was all open to her mother with no evaluation. There was no separation, in that young child brain, between herself and her mother, the two were one, one mental entity. Home was Mother, and Mother was Home.

2. “the words I dread the most are ‘be careful that you don’t regret this later’.. the moment other people warn me or suggest impending danger I always listen, never do I consider for a second why this person deserves a say in my life”-

– I live in a wooded area where there are a lot of deer and elk. When I am on my daily walk I often encounter deer or elk. The second they hear me walking, they stop eating and they all look at me and stay looking at me for a long time. They don’t automatically run away, they attentively look my way. If I walk away from them, they keep eating. If I walk toward them, then they walk or run away. It is natural for all animals to attend to possible danger. But the deer and the elk, before they walk or run away, they evaluate the possible danger: is it getting closer to them or moving away from them?

You should do the same- evaluate the possible danger before you run away (the running away can be in the form of losing all motivation to do what you decided to do).

– the reason why you run away before evaluating the danger is because as a young child and throughout your relationship with your mother, she scared you: we will live on the streets… we will all have to kill ourselves if your father lost his job… yes, she scared you big time.

There is a way for you to no longer run away, to no longer abandon your plans because of possible dangers. One way is to see that danger is at home with your mother. Evaluate this danger, how it harmed you so far to live with her, and figure if you should indeed run away from this very danger, your mother!

If you do run away from her and stay away, you will still have her voice in your brain. You will have to develop your own voice, increase its volume so that eventually you don’t hear much of her voice, but your own.

anita

Dear Girija:

Often the walks are refreshing. The woods are interesting. When a tree gets injured and stops growing straight up, it still grows sideways. In a similar way, when we are emotionally injured (ex., scared at an early age and on by a… scary mother), we can’t grow the same as we would have if we had a sensible, calming mother. But we can grow sideways-

– meaning, I am thinking, you, Girija, cannot grow within the home you are in, having your mother in your life every day and night, but you can grow.. sideways, someplace else away from her.

The emotional voice you mentioned, it will continue to speak to you. It will take time and work- after you move out, not only before- to weaken that voice, to make the rational voice dominant in your brain. Practice now, talk sense to yourself whenever you hear the emotional voice. Or take a walk  yourself to relieve the anxiety and talk sense to yourself during the walk.

anita

Dear Girija:

You said it very well, you really are exceptionally insightful and intelligent. Justice is a good value to use as a guide. When you get scared, when you  doubt yourself, let justice guide you, do what is just. It is justice to move away from the one who damaged you, so to give yourself the opportunity to heal.

anita

Dear Girija:

You are welcome. One belief we have that is not true is that feelings are dangerous. Back to the deer- the reason fear is so very unpleasant is to motivate the deer to run away as fast as it can and quickly, immediately! The fear itself feels very badly, but it is  not dangerous. The fast approaching mountain lion is really dangerous, the fear of the mountain lion is not dangerous.

Fear is uncomfortable. We cannot be comfortable with it but we can remove some of the fear of it, the … fear on top of the fear. Sadness also is not dangerous, neither is anger or any other feeling as long as we are careful about how we react to those feelings, what we actually do, for example: avoid accidents when fearful, pay attention to the road we are crossing when we are very sad and spaced out.

Separating your voice from your mother’s is healing, questioning your core beliefs and correcting those that are not correct is healing. Give yourself time doing this work, take breaks, no way of rushing this kind of work. If you go to fast, you will get overwhelmed. And as you do this work, make sure you don’t find yourself arranged to be married. My goodness, your mother is not qualified to arrange such a thing!

anita

Dear Girija:

Congratulations for seeing that it is possible for you to approach life “calmly and see it through”. I am glad that you felt proud of yourself independently of getting praised from others.

“I do not have the time or energy to go through me saying no to arranged marriage and her acting frenzied“-

– frenzied is the opposite of calm. You don’t want to make choices while being frenzied yourself and you don’t want to let another person choose for you when they are frenzied. It is a bad idea to let another choose for you when he or she is calm in most circumstances. But to let another person choose for you when he or she is frenzied, well, that is a bad-on-top-of bad idea.

anita

Dear Girija:

“calm is my motto now. It is so valuable. I want to remember this week forever. It was beautiful.. I felt COMPETENT… I felt so content… I am happy being who I am”-

Excellent experience. Absorb it, take it in and let it be absorbed in your brain. This experience did happen and therefore it can happen again and again, it can be your ongoing life experience.

But prepare for the following: a problem will occur soon enough, some distress at work or at home, an intense painful feeling occurring in your brain and all that contentment and confidence and calm, all that will be … nowhere to be seen or felt. This is where most people fail and return to the mindset of before.

When that happens, whatever it may be, come back to this thread, re-read your own experience and this very post I am writing now. As well as the following that I am preparing for that future event:

– what happened just now is a sort of an earthquake in the brain, the new experiences of calm and contentment were shaken and temporarily gone, but they are retrievable. You experienced those before and you will experience these again. Calm down best you can, let that earthquake and the after shocks settle, let the dust settle, take some time and make no decisions during this time, don’t panic.

When you are calm enough, think rationally. Plan rationally according to your values and according to what worked for you before. There will be other earthquakes, other distresses coming up. Over time you will get better and better at managing these crises. Have patience, it takes patience and practice, keep at it.

anita

Dear Girija:

Beautifully stated, my goodness, you do have beautiful and strong wings!

Talking about birds, it is happening again in  my house, a bird from the outside is flying into the window, trying to get in. But the window is closed, yet the bird hits it (it must hurt some), recovers some and.. flies into the closed window again. Here it did it again, just now.. and again.

When you fly, fly away from closed windows, Girija. Unlike this bird, figure out what doesn’t work for you and choose something different. To be poetic somewhat, fly into the big blue sky.

anita