Dear Gigi:

I have questions for you to help me understand what is going on. If you would like to answer me, please do. Here are the questions:

1. You wrote in the first paragraph that it felt like your boyfriend was rescuing you, from what? What did you need to be rescued from?

2. Why did you get married (the one year marriage)? What was the relationship with the short term husband like? Why do you feel guilt about that marriage?

3. You agreed with the therapist who said that you are not used to being vulnerable. Can you elaborate on what you mean by not being used to be vulnerable?

anita

Dear Gigi:

Your line above the last one: “it’s hard not to constantly think something is wrong with me”- caught my eye after reading and re-reading your two posts on this thread.

I think there is nothing inherently wrong with you. What happened is that an injury to you occurred when you were a child, an injury in the context of your relationship with your mother and/ or father (main caretaker). That injury has left you… injured. Until that injury is attended to, you will feel that there is something wrong with you.

Your posts show desperation to be attached to another person, a confusion about sex and love, that is feeling safety in being wanted sexually, as if it means, in itself, that you are loved.

Will you share about that injury, the one caused by your parent/s when you were a child? Maybe still in the present?

anita

Dear Gigi:

I didn’t read the article you mentioned. I hardly ever do, not in the habit of doing so. Therefore I do not know what in that article I agree with and what in it I disagree with or will agree under certain circumstances and not other circumstances.

You wrote in your last post that you “had a good life as a child and never had to struggle”- you must mean that materially you didn’t have to struggle, to find food and shelter, that food and shelter were given to you. When you wrote “good life” you must mean you had food, shelter, toys, right? Material things…

Your description of your childhood is that of a bad life, not a good life.

The criticism by your mother is horrendous, incredibly severe, unreasonable and abusive. The fact that neither she nor your father ever spoke to you about how wrong they were, how much they hurt you, makes a healthy relationship with either one of them in the present, an impossible thing.

The fact that you broke “the rules once in a while like staying out late”- I wonder that is all you did when being as severely abused as you have been. How can you expect to have been perfect in such an imperfect home. Not to mention that being perfect and following the rules all the time is impossible. Look at your mother and father- how often did they break the rules of being decent parents?

I feel anger, yet again, to read about another child being abused.

I need to take a break so to calm myself. Please do post again. I am interested in continuing our correspondence.

anita

Dear Gigi:

In your first post about your childhood, you wrote: “(Mother) was and still is very critical. Growing up I remember never having the right body type for her, my grades never being good enough, embarrassment to discuss me with my relatives or her friends. She would always make fun of me for being introverted. Anytime we went somewhere I would get the third degree about how I’m an embarrassment.”

She gave you the following messages loud and clear:

* Gigi’s body is wrong.
* Gigi is faulty, an embarrassment.

You wrote: “I tried to turn to my mom for help when I wanted to drop a class because I was dating a guy who had tried to choke me. She said that unless I had brain damage I had no reason to drop the class.”

The message there was:
* It doesn’t matter to me (to your mother, that is) if Gigi gets hurt.

In describing her current behavior with you, you wrote: “She would yell at me to break up with whomever I was dating because they were not good enough, tell me I looked fat, my skin looked bad, my job was horrible even though it wasnt, tell me I’m pathetic for still living in apartments and using college furniture.”

Her messages:

* I am yelling at you because your feelings don’t matter to you. If they mattered, I wouldn’t be yelling. And I can get away with yelling at you. No negative consequences for me!
* Even though Gigi is has the wrong body and is faulty in so many ways, an embarrassment, that guy is … not good enough for you (huh?)
* Your body is wrong (fat, skin..)
* You are a failure, an embarrassment (furniture)

From only a few lines you shared, the same messages repeat themselves. How so unfortunate for you to have a lifetime of these same messages repeating to the present!

And you wrote later: “I didn’t even think I had mentioned the worst of it!” and “This doesn’t even touch the tip of the iceberg.”

Later you wrote about your sister: “She believes my mom had a hard life too and tries not to blame her, although she can also only take her in small doses.” I am sure your mother had a hard life and she made your life very hard, unnecessarily. She can take her in “small doses”- I must say you took your mother in very large doses. And your description of what she tells you in the present, that would be a large dose for me. I don’t think your mother comes in small doses. Each sentence she says, each one I copied here is a concentrated dose of harm.

About the article you wrote: “The article was basically saying, if I can remember, that to accept the fact that parents are human and make mistakes, and that it can sometimes be best to forgive than to hold resentment.”

Your mother is indeed human. She makes mistakes and always will as do I, as do you. But her messages to you are not “mistakes”- they are acts of aggression that were repetitive, not corrected and continue to this very day. The article may be correct about mistakes, if your mother put salt in your hot cocoa instead of sugar, a mistake. Yes, do forgive her. It tasted badly but she made a mistake.

Like I wrote earlier, when I read an article or a book, I think: is this correct? In what circumstances is it correct and in what circumstances will it not be correct? (Critical Reading).

I recommend you consider cutting contact with her, especially if she will not completely stop her acts of aggression toward you. (Although just the sight of her can trigger all her messages even if she no longer verbalizes them, in which case cutting contact may still be a solution).

If you do cut contact with her, you will still have to deal with the severe consequences of her lifetime acts of aggression against you.

Please do post again, let’s keep this thread ongoing.

anita