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Anita – how do I find my joy again?

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  • #359120
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    no problem.  After all that thinking and remembering, I need a bit of a rest myself!  There is no hurry anyway, it’s not an acute situation, just one I am very happy to be able to learn how to heal.

    I hope you have some nice summer weather to enjoy your Sunday!

    Juanita

    #359141
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Juanita:

    In regard to Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams that you mentioned,  I found this quote that I like, which fits with a reply you wrote a few hours ago to another member regarding true vs false self, and with what we are doing here, on your thread: “When we heal ourselves, others are healed…When we speak the truth from our healed hearts, we allow life abundant to continue on our Mother planet”. A bit flowery, for me, the last part, but I am all for healing, promoting others to heal and speaking the truth from our healed heart! (I like the distinction between speaking “truth” from a sick heart vs a healthy heart).

    Regarding Borne Free that you mentioned,  the 1966 movie- successfully rescuing Elsa the lioness cub from being sent to the zoo brings a smile to my face right now. Animals in cages exhibit anxiety much like humans do, including OCD symptoms, symptoms not observed in animals in the wild. Living in a cage damages the mental health of other animals, not only humans. We are all.. born to be free.

    “I am sorry that this is a lot to read again and I hope it’s not too much for you?”- sometimes it is, so I postpone it to the next day when I am more focused. I often have to re-write information part by part so to process information thoroughly. But I asked you a few questions heavy duty questions in a post,  and you answered my questions, so…  I asked for lots of information.

    You shared that your father is dyslexic, and that he envied you at 3 for having a photographic memory, for learning fast, and for being able to write and spell so much better than him at 7 years old. When you were 9-10, you disagreed with him in a calm way and stood your ground. “he still portrays himself as inferior in reading/writing/intellect compared to me… He was also intimidated by my calmness and logic.. he felt shame”.

    Your mother was creative and talented, and was intimidated by your creativity and talent, so she ignored or dismissed your creative productions. For example, you sew clothes for her as a present when you were 8, and it fit her perfectly, her response: silence. She didn’t express any praise for you cooking and baking creations, and simply gave you a list of what to cook for dinner. When you asked her for help, she was vitriolic (synonyms: virulent, venomous, later you wrote about your mother: “I always thought of her as .. icy and poisonous” ). She displayed her creativity to guests, but not yours or your sister’s, “too messy”, she said.

    Once, when a friend of the family asked you if you started reading the book he gifted you for your birthday a week earlier, you told him that you already read it, and your father said: “yes, she reads a book like that in half an hour”. The family friend was “speechless and couldn’t believe it”.

    Your mother told you from a young age that it was your fault that the family didn’t have enough money, that you were living in her house and had no rights, and that you should be grateful that she lets you live there. You therefore felt like “an unwelcome outsider” (I am focusing on your mother because you wrote that she didn’t behave this way when your father was around).

    You experienced your mother as the one in power, and that she perceived you as a challenge to her power. You “often couldn’t get to sleep as a small child because of trying to think how to earn enough money to buy my parents everything they needed/ wanted. It felt very overwhelming”. When your father argued with your mother, he used you to triangulate, that is, he didn’t talk to your mother directly, he talked to you for the purpose of her hearing what he said. You didn’t know it at the time, you thought he was sharing his thoughts and feelings with you personally, but now you realize that he used you and that he dropped you instantly when she was friendly.

    When you cried, your mother didn’t attend to you. When you were injured or sick and approached her for help, she was “hugely resentful and verbally attacked, criticised, guilt tripped and humiliated” you. She “avoided affectionate physical contact, only violence- plenty of that”. She didn’t help you “unless there were witnesses” present.

    When you were 5, you had a serious accident, but your parents did not take you to a doctor, and as a result, you suffered a lifetime of “costly and extremely painful health problems”. She continually verbally attacked you regarding your physical appearance, mainly for being “too big.. tall and large build compared to her”, and when you got to puberty she said that you will have “a big fat arse like all the other women in the family”. She repeatedly told you that you were “lazy and useless like ** (family member) who has come to nothing and you will come to nothing!!”, even though you did “a huge amount of cooking, cleaning and ironing from very young age”.

    When you were 5, 6 or 7, she chased you “around the garden with a knife”. When you were 5,  your mother “vented her fury upon me.. by chopping my quite long hair off in a rage.. screaming hysterically”.

    You remember your sister “maybe 4 at most.. cowering and terrified, hardly able to keep standing, utterly desperate, extremely confused… I would yell my opinion (opposition!) until I got a beating and was sent to my room (or kicked into it)”.

    She vitriolically verbally attacked your sister as well, saying she was too  big, that she looked like your father’s mother, that she was fat, and your sister believed from an early age that she was “an ugly, wrinkled old lady.. too fat”. She compared her to you unfavorably in regard to her body and intellectual abilities, questioned her decisions she dared to make and “forced her into retreat”.

    At this point, I will quote two of the things  you shared and offer you my thoughts:

    You wrote regarding your mother: “To this day we both get our hackles rising when the theme of inherited characteristics arises as neither will budge  position”.

    You wrote about your sister: “I hated feeling so powerless to be able to  help her as she always nevertheless continued to look towards my mother…. She has already suffered so much which is why I do not want to hurt her more by distancing even more from my parents. I hope that she may gain courage if I am successful in my liberation from the cage and she sees my example”.

    My thoughts: after thoroughly processing the information you provided about your mother’s decades-long terrible and un-repented mistreatment of you and your sister, I don’t think that it is possible for you to do the following two things: (1) to achieve your own “liberation frm the cage” (2) to provide your sister an example of such liberation, one that she may follow herself with action- not for as long as you still submit to your mother’s abuse.

    Your mother never apologized and made amends for chasing after you with a knife, for cutting your hair in rage, for screaming at you, for calling you names, for all the things she has done to you repeatedly, over the years.. for not taking you to the doctor, for causing you a lifetime of health problems and anxiety and dysfunction because of her neglect and abuse.

    So.. even if she is not literally chasing you with a knife now, she is still chasing you with a knife figuratively because there was never an apology, never a regret, never a compensation offered to you for her cruelty.

    When you talk to your mother, be it as little as you  do, you say to her “please” and “thank you” I imagine, or you ask her: how are you? And such niceties, while she is still figuratively chasing you with a knife: this is submission to her abuse. You can’t liberate yourself while still submitting to abuse, and you therefore can provide your sister an example of such liberation.

    Let’s say, you keep the niceties with your mother and you manage in real life to slay a dragon, exhibiting great strength by slaying a dragon! But you are still too scared to get away from your mother. Your mother is the biggest dragon there is in your life. But you are too scared to end contact with The Dragon in your personal life.

    anita

     

     

     

    #359144
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    thank you so much for processing and summarising my very long posts.  You truly are “walking your talk” in your desire to help others grow and also end their suffering, and I am deeply grateful to be so lucky as to receive your help.

    As I wrote in my last post, I am needing some R&R time, as all this stirring up and remembering has been very tiring, but also I only have a limited amount of time each day to write and whilst writing to you, I have not had the time to do any journalling.  I feel I need to go through all our “talks” again (I have a copy of them in my computer) and re-write this journey again in my own words, taking longer to feel my way through each step, let all this new awareness sink into deeper levels, but also I am interested to see what else I can connect and which other puzzle pieces I become aware of by taking more time.  I also have a big urge to at least begin with a piece of artwork or an art journal for exploring the theme of a caged wild animal as my blocked creativity.

    So I am planning to take a few days for this when I won’t be posting. I don’t know how long I will need, but I know that when I get that feeling of being “full to the brim”, then this is what I need to do.  Therefore I will be responding to your last post in more depth in a few days.  But as a first response I can say that you are right, of course.  I can totally follow your logic and after writing all my answers to you, I was really feeling too that I should never have maintained contact with my mother after first leaving home.  However, I have a ****load of feelings to work through, I know that already.  Guilt, pity, sadness, to name a few.

    Additionally, and much more difficult, although I would prefer to have no contact with my mother, she however lives with my father, sister and nephew (with special needs), who are not to blame for my mother’s character or actions.  I absolutely do not feel I can justify causing these three both great sadness and even more difficulties in their life, and the feeling of aloneness with their problems.  They have all been supportive to me, so that I feel I would be being very mercenary indeed.  There will be a way for me, but that is not it.

    I am very aware of what you pointed out with the heron and frog, that we can stay in the loop when in the cage, believing we are escaping, yet in the end it is all just a repeat.  Like changing the wallpaper but it’s still a cage.

    I would like you to know, to end this post on a more cheerful note, that despite all these very emotional subjects, I have nevertheless been feeling a lot happier in recent days.  Just happy being me in my life.  I also passed the test of “husband visit” with flying colours today.  I noticed a little tension arising before he arrived, but was able to address it and relax again, and I was able to be cordial but without connecting emotionally with his conversation = no confusion, sadness, or fog!! Yay!!

    So, dear Anita, I have some work to do!

    Wishing you a lovely Sunday,

    Juanita

     

     

     

    #359148
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Juanita:

    You are welcome and thank you for your kind words. I am glad to read that you are feeling a lot happier in recent days and that you felt “no confusion, sadness, or fog!!”, Yay indeed!

    What you are planning on doing, taking time away from our communication so to re-read the now five pages of it, process the information, is what I thought of suggesting that you do earlier, fearing that we were going too fast and that you will get overwhelmed. It is amazing to me how much on the same page we are!

    So do take your time, all the time that you need, be it days or even weeks, as long as you need. And do your artwork or an art journal exploring the theme of a caged wild animal. I will be glad to read from you when you return.

    Before I close this post, I will respond to your thoughts regarding ending contact with your mother: I understand “Guilt, pity, sadness, to name a few” involved with the thought of ending contact with one’s mother, because I have done it myself, back in 2013. Regarding your concern for your sister and nephew if you end contact with your mother, you may want to think how exactly or precisely will they get hurt if you end contact with your mother, and if you will be able to have contact with them, but not with your mother.

    Have a good night and week ahead.

    anita

    #359170
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    thank you for being so supportive, I was worried it might look like I’ve hit a wall and decided to slope off!  I am actually really looking forward to doing some exploring, even if it might be tough at times.

    It makes me feel very happy to know that we are on the same page, hearing that warms my heart!

    Thank you for your good wishes for the coming days, I look forward to being back in touch with you again soon.

    Juanita

    #359174
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Juanita:

    You are welcome, and thank you for starting this thread, it is very meaningful for me to communicate with you and I am looking forward to more, when you are ready. I will be here.

    anita

    #360158
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    How are you?  I hope you are well and enjoying the summer.  Thank you for writing that you find it meaningful to communicate with me.  I feel the same and am very grateful for our connection.

    I think you remember I said I was going to take some time to think through all we had covered and to work on some issues, but I also wanted to let the emotional “waves” settle again after so much stirring!

    I have been thinking more or less every day of the metaphor of being caged, and that staying in contact with my mother postpones my freedom.  It is a difficult situation for me, as I enjoy the contact I have with my sister.  It has become more frequent this year and is not monitored by our mother (well, not physically, but I realise her psychic influence is omnipresent until we are liberated).

    I have also had a lot of everyday life things to deal with, so I’ve mellowed in my process whilst doing what has to be done.  I bought myself a workbook “Detox Daughters” by Peg Streep, which is a practical step-by-step working through what happened and is supposed to help you become more aware of the subconscious and normalised aspects of having a toxic mother.  I thought it would be a good start.  It is depressing and hard going though!

    I have also started to draw again – finally.  I cannot believe how immensely difficult it is to allow myself to just put pencil to paper, but I finally managed it.  I am working with the imagery of cages, poison, false persona, and basically just feeling into how I feel about all these things and then drawing/painting.  It helps me very much to feel more balanced.  I am also astonished to see that I can draw, even though I used to draw and paint in the past, but my mother’s poisonous influence still causes me to doubt myself.  The first thing I drew was a bottle of poison!

    I was so tense until I was finally able to break the ban and draw that it really annoyed me and I tried to feel what kind of core belief was hindering me.  It was very interesting: “I will be punished when I am creative”.  So I turned it around and wrote my new affirmation down immediately: “I will be rewarded when I am creative”!

    All in all it is very hard work, though the time I spend sitting and drawing/painting makes me feel very good.  I notice the same kind of self-doubt around planning my garden although I have plenty of experience and am good at it.  So I am starting to learn to recognise all the forms that the cage takes.

    Same goes for making my home more beautiful.  Having believed I was not worthy of having a home in my parents’ house, I am finally beginning to understand why it has been so difficult for me to ever have a home of my own (even when I had one), or settle in any place.  I have moved so often in my life it is exhausting just to think of it.  This is why I have decided to stay put where I am now and make this my home and learn to be settled.

    So this is where I am at right now.  Becoming aware is a very slow process and I vacillate between happy and pensive, but definitely moving in the right direction.

    The other evening it was a very warm evening and I finally did what I have been longing to do for at least 10 years now – I lay down on the ground on my new, springy lawn and looked at the stars.   It was such a GORGEOUS night, the stars looked like sprays of diamonds tumbling out of the heavens, the moon glowed like a softly luminous pearl, a lovely scented breeze from some night-scented plants enveloped me, the frogs and crickets going ten to the dozen, and some little bird singing away in the trees.

    I felt like I had won a million dollars!  I love lying on the earth and looking at the sky and I haven’t been able to do this for so many years (always living in places with no lawn and hard soil full of ants).  These are things which make my life worth living.  I must be doing something right to be getting back to these joys again.  It helps balance out the daunting task ahead of me.

    Juanita

    #360168
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Juanita:

    “the stars looked like sprays of diamonds tumbling out of the heavens, the moon glowed like a softly luminous pearl, a lovely scented breeze from some night- scented plants enveloped me, the frogs and crickets going ten to the dozen, and some little bird singing away in the trees”-

    – I feel refreshed just reading this description, beautiful. I can’t say that I ever read anything more beautiful than this.

    I am fine, thank you, feel more refreshed this morning after reading the literary gem you shared with me. Good thing, that you started to draw and paint again. If you draw/paint as beautifully as you write, I can imagine you putting together a lovely book combining your writing, drawing and painting talents. I imagine the cover page having the image of a cage and some symbol of freedom, or liberation.

    Interesting, you wrote: “I will be rewarded when I am creative”- your creativity rewarded me this morning!

    “definitely moving in the right direction.. I must be doing something right to be getting back to these joys again”- keep moving in the right direction and doing what is right for you.

    anita

     

    #360288
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Juanita:

    June 5, in your original post, you wrote: “I have recently come to realise that I must let go of the hope that my mother will ever love me… letting go of that hope makes me feel really frightened… I was reading recently that other people also describe never having had a mother’s love as feeling like you have a huge hole in your heart and in your life”.

    July 1, most recently, you wrote: “I bought myself a workbook ‘Detox Daughters’.. a practical step-by-step working through what happened”

    The full name of the book (which I didn’t read and didn’t know about before you mentioned it) is “Daughter Detox: Recovering from An Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life”.

    Having an unloving mother created a huge hole in your heart, a hole that keeps craving her love. No craving more intense, no feeling more Fantastic than the anticipation of her finally loving you, after all these years of waiting and hoping.

    When you talk with your mother, when you see her, you might not be aware of that craving, and of your lifetime and ongoing motivation to finally feel that Fantastic feeling of being loved by her. But that primitive craving and motivation is always there (the book and terms such as setting boundaries and whatnot do not take away from this decades old craving and motivation).

    “Anita- how do I find my joy again?” is the title of your thread.

    My answer: start with removing the object of your craving from your life. And the object I am referring to is your mother herself, the person, completely. That will be the first step, not the whole journey.

    You are welcome to ignore my answer, of course. And I am okay with you doing so. I mean, the journey is very difficult and long, and I am not there with you to hold your hand as you walk this journey, so I have no right to .. tell you what to do. But you asked me a question and this is my answer. I have no other answer based on the totality of my life experience.

    anita

     

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by .
    #360298
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    I am glad to know that you are well, and how lovely to hear that my words have given you such pleasure!  If I had known I would have written some more!  It was such a beautiful, inspiring evening and I am glad to have shared my joy with you.

    I have to admit though, that whilst I find it easy and pleasurable to share my joy, I find it difficult to really see myself as having written anything “special”.  Perhaps because the evening was so magical and it is difficult to capture the essence of such moments with mere words.  But also because I came to believe that my writing is nothing special (due to my parent’s discouragement) and hardly dared to try and write anything.  Perhaps I may rediscover my writing, the way I am rediscovering drawing and painting.

    I am becoming acutely aware in the very moment of how my negative self-assessment tendencies form the very bars of the cage I have been stuck in for so long.  I am just trying to be with these new, intense feelings of awareness, often of frustration, at the moment.  I am noticing how much my realisation of what was done to me as a child has changed through our exchanges, as if I now have permission to feel and see those things in the cold light of day.  You have a very special way of naming things.  I will write to you again about these processes in a few days’ time.  At the moment I feel like everything is jumbled up and I can’t seem to find words to describe what is going on within me.

    You said about combining my talents into a book and I do actually want to make myself a kind of art/poetry journal to incorporate my journey of becoming more aware, and hopefully free.  I feel I need time to let these thoughts and feelings sink in and become integrated.

    I would like to thank you in particular for the very special gift that you give of being there consistently when I post.  I have had very little experience of people being consistently there for me and I am finding it also very healing.  A bit amazing too!  It makes me feel very lucky.

    Juanita

    #360299
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    I have only just seen your new post now upon posting the above.  I am thinking about that, believe me.  I am going to respond specifically with regard to that subject but, as I wrote above, I may need a few days as I’m just in a “fermentation” phase right now.

    It is true that you are not there in person, which would be even more amazing, but you are more “there” for me than I have experienced most so-called friends and family during my whole life.  So I am more than happy with your company and I thank you for your continued support.

    Juanita

    #360306
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Juanita:

    After I submitted to you my last post (and before I read your recent two posts) I went for my daily long walk and it occurred to me that I made a mistake in my post to you. I wrote there that I was answering your question: “how can I find my joy again?” (my answer: first step remove the object of your craving-your mother- from your life). My mistake is that I answered the following question (that you didn’t ask me): how can I get unstuck/ no longer be stuck in confusion, conflict and distress?

    Joy- for me, that’s the Fantastic feeling I wrote about, the fantasy of mother loving you, finally quenching that thirst for her love. The benefit I personally experience from not having my mother in my life and mind is not joy, but clarity and calm, which make it possible for me to be engaged with life, to be available to the here and now. In other words: I got unstuck. Now, I live my life similar to an animal in the wild who continuously interacts with the here-and now, feeling all kinds of feelings, as opposed to a cage animal who primarily feels distress as she paces in the cage for what seems to be eternity.

    Then I read your two posts: “I came to believe that my writing is nothing special.. and hardly dared to try and write anything”- I do so much want to read more of your creative writing, if you can, at a state of calm, let the words come out of you, set the words free from the caged-you, set them free ahead of you. You can follow your words to freedom later, or bit by bit.

    You are welcome and thank you for your appreciation and kindness. I appreciate you very much! One more thing: I do answer quickly to posts, but I don’t expect you to answer me as quickly, take your time, and no need to respond to every point I bring up. Back to your creative writing.. you can do it here, set your words/truth free, stating the truth like it is, in a raw way, your way. You can try it here, as an exercise, if and when you are able and willing.

    anita

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by .
    #360338
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hello Tony,

    I have a question for you because you are a man and I would like to hear you suggestions/opinion, if you don’t mind.  It is about my estranged husband.  When he comes here, which in recent times is to be of help with something, he is generally much more civil than in the past years.  However he still has a behaviour which makes me seething with anger, although I remain quiet because I notice that something is missing for me to be able to meet him at a level.  I think probably male genitals (LOL) as I feel he’s being macho, but I would like to hear what you suggest because of knowing how to deal better with him, but also others like him.

    If I say something which he considers to be unimportant, then he completely ignores what I have said/requested.  So in the particular situation I requested that he not do something and he didn’t even respond or look at me, he just completely ignored me and continued.  I repeated my request a couple of times and insisted which lead to him eventually complying.  I said something to the effect of, “I am grateful for your help, but it doesn’t give you the right to invalidate my opinions and ignore my requests.”  His response was to confirm that he thought I was wrong and therefore he didn’t need to respond.  I didn’t say any more.

    My feeling is that a man telling another man, “hey pal, don’t do that please”, would not let himself be ignored and would say something sufficiently aggressive/warning to let the other guy know he’s not going to do that again.  Obviously my ultimate “he’s not going to do that again” with my husband is going to be when I can finally divorce and never see him again.  But a lot of men in the country that I live in have a very “interesting” attitude to women – it is as if your opinion doesn’t count or you haven’t said anything worth listening to.  I am not the kind of person to accept that treatment, but I know that raising your voice to such men just confirms (in their minds) that you are an hysterical, brainless idiot.

    I would so love to know if anything occurs to you of how I might respond to this behaviour?  I give a damn about appearing feminine, attractive or “nice”, I just want the respect I feel is due to me.  I think we generally communicate very much with body language and insinuations when in person, so I am hoping something occurs to you.  What would the man say as a warning to a friend who overstepped his mark, who didn’t respect his boundaries enough?

    I hope I have explained myself enough, otherwise please ask for more details.

    Juanita

     

     

     

     

    .

    #360339
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear Anita,

    I am sending you a virtual hug across the miles!!!  Thank you for being so adorable!  I understand your behaviour and comments as being a deeply caring person and I am touched that you are taking such care in your communications with me.

    It is honestly totally okay for me that you wrote your thoughts in that way.  I think maybe the moment or presentation was not apparently directly connected to our previous posts, but we have covered such a lot of material in a short space of time, much of which has been left uncontested because it is just not possible to deal with so much at once, and therefore I do understand everything we are communicating about is related to my original question, and all the questions and issues and learning which it has set in motion.  So I was genuinely comfortable with your post.

    I think it is a very big, uncomfortable question – how to deal with the life-giver, the supposed most important person in your life, when they do not fulfil their job description.  I have some possibly unusual ideas regarding this, so I will explain more in detail as soon as I have more time.  I have some things I must get done within a certain time now so I am only posting when I can sit down for a break, which is not long enough for deeper explanations.

    So thank you again for being so caring, and I will respond to the rest of your post as soon as I am able.

    Juanita

     

    #360342
    Canadian Eagle
    Participant

    Juanita

    I have read your question and will consider my response carefully before giving a full response.

    Reading your words , it reminded me of the old realtionship book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, we live on differnent planets. Also, men can lose these identify and mascalinity in a long marraige, men need some space to be men, real men respect their woman …I know this sounds sexist. In summary, your husband needs  space and you derserve to be loved and respected, this is not an oxymoron, these needs can live in harmony , the key is honest communication and understanding.

    Let me mull over your words, let them stew a while and I will come back with a full response.

    Kind Regards

    Tony

     

     

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