Anita,

You have so elegantly and succinctly synthesised my feelings. Thank you. I deeply appreciate the time and thought you have put into your responses.

I agree with your perspective on my emotional state and the fantasy I chase. Yes, this obsession is really an addiction. Indulging in these fantasies will keep me from doing the work I need to achieve wholeness and clarity. The further my mind is from reality, the more it will inhibit my healing. The prospect of having to endure the emotional suffering is difficult, though I have hope. I have noticed that I have become better at dealing with distress, enduring through the discomfort with the techniques and mindsets I have taught myself. I agree with you that there is potential for healing in an equal relationship, when I am ready. I wish to first achieve some sense of wholeness and clarity, to feel that I can love from a place of stability rather than need.

I have gradually decreased my contact with my parents, perhaps a phone call once or twice a week now with my mother. I find myself struggling to shed my dependent child role. This has caused some tension with my mother, as well as with my oldest friend of 13 years, who have always seen me as a helpless creature needing to be taken care of, constantly needing them to fix my problems for me – a role I resented yet easily fell into. In fact, my mother called yesterday. Our relationship is loving and fun until I discuss my any sort of problem – and as I attempt to explain my feelings and she quickly attempts to fix me with increasing agitation and I try to explain that she is misunderstanding what I mean, it turns into her emotional indictment of how I have become so moody, difficult and easily offended lately, how she has to be so careful around me, how she feels attacked for being a bad mother but she read hundreds of parenting books and loves me so much and why can’t I understand this, she cries – I cry – and I reassure her that she is in fact a good mother, acknowledging that yes she had a horrific childhood, apologising for making her upset, tending to her emotional needs.

My relationship with my oldest friend is interesting as we are opposites. She is grounded, entirely focused on fact and certainties, rigid in her mindset. I have always looked to her to remind me of reality, to give me perspective from a purely logical standpoint. Now that I have less need for this, she finds the change in our dynamic difficult. She is terrified of my intense emotions. We have arguments about misunderstandings and how she views herself having power over me due to my emotionality.

It bothers me a little that in my journey towards wholeness, I have alienated two people who are important to me. I’m unsure whether this is something inherent in my personality that is “difficult”, “critical” or “annoying” that was just masked by my childhood sweetness and eagerness to please. Or if it is the development of my emotional understanding, if I am delving so far into my own psyche that others who do not have the ability to understand my emotions are left feeling lost and powerless to help. They both react to my emotions with fear – becoming agitated and defensive when they think I am critical and angry with them for not being able to understand me. I think there is also an element of their jealousy – I have since found others I can deeply connect with, I am embarking in a career they have no understanding of, and they are losing their control in my life, not least because I live far away and have my own life. I feel so strongly that I am becoming closer to my true self, but I am now someone they are finding more and more difficult to understand, someone less passive, less “easy” to deal with and control. Yet the way they treat me sometimes makes me wonder if I am acting like a toddler deliberately being difficult to achieve some perceived autonomy. I find myself apologising for my attitude, yet I am uncertain how much is really my fault. I am struggling to navigate the shifts in dynamic, wondering if our relationships can survive this change.

Your suggestion that I saw my mentor as my god is interesting. I have always admired the trust and comfort my religious friends feel in their relationship with God, how it enables them stability where their parental figures have failed them. I longed for something similar, although I have never been able to believe in a god. In moments of deep desperation, I thought about what my mentor figure meant to me, and his words of encouragement, placing him in that same role as a god, the loving parent figure I wanted. However this perception of him dissipated when I spoke to him in real life, when I was confronted with his reality, his humanness. In reality he cannot be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, and I was sometimes disappointed by this. I can see the folly of equating a flawed human as a god, and my desire to grasp onto some godlike figure for comfort has lessened as I continue to gain more understanding of myself. I still however find myself wondering where to put my faith. I have a vague faith in the universe, that everything will be ok. I wonder if I will find comfort in mindfulness and meditation? Buddhism has always appealed to me and I wonder if I will find peace in continuing to explore this further. I suppose if I find ways of healing my own pain and accepting my own suffering, the desire and need to put my faith in some external god figure will diminish, much as the patient no longer needs the therapist.

Thank you very much for your perspective.

Olivia

Anita,

Thank you for your insights. Yes, I see that this is my dynamic with my mother. The existence of my problems threatens her fragile identity as the “good mother” that she worked tirelessly to attain. This helps me understand my childhood anxiety, perfectionism and fear of asking for help. I could not express weakness or faults without being attacked, as though my imperfection was a threat to her. She sees motherly love as doing everything she can to make my life as happy, safe and easy as possible. When problems arise, she will agitatedly try to fix them for me, as though I am helpless and have no ability to do so myself. When I attempt to refuse her intrusive “help” she sees this as rejection, and a criticism of her as a mother. She tearfully attacks me until I surrender, apologise and reassure her that she is a good mother, and then I am a good daughter again.

Part of me wishes I could make her understand what she is doing, but I also know how difficult that will be, and how important it is for me to heal. I sent her an email after reading your response. I told her that I would always see her as a good mother. Whatever problems I have in my own life now, they are separate from her, and do not reflect on her abilities and skills as a mother. I am an adult, I am able to tend to my own emotional needs and she does not have to feel the need to solve my problems for me. I tell her these things because I love her, want her to know what is happening in my life, and value her advice. I wish for her to continue healing. She did not reply directly to the email, though she was very much affectionate and loving towards me afterwards. I felt the need to strengthen the boundaries between us, and tell her in the most clear and loving way possible that I am able to look after myself. I set my boundaries lovingly. I felt it was a healing experience for me.

I know that one email will not change very much. She repeatedly says to me that she knows what she has to do in order to heal – yet she has never done anything about it, despite all my previous efforts to help her in multiple ways. Growing up, I often felt the need to try to solve other people’s problems for them, though they were not my responsibility. I know now that I cannot change others unless they themselves ask and are motivated, and if I want to create change the best way is to lead by example and inspire others to follow. I hope that as I go through my own healing journey and embark on my training, she sees how passionate and fulfilled I am and will be motivated to work on her own life.

Regarding my friend, she has now accepted that she must “let me go” in her own way, to not see me as her subordinate, to not try to solve my problems for me when I do not ask for it. We often laugh at how she sees our close group of four school friends in a hierarchy determined by levels of logic, common sense and how much in need we are of her help in life, with our ranks enabling her to order around her two underlings. This week, I discussed the need for us to let go of the relationship problems of our friend, who she sees as needing the most help. We have for four years now attempted to do everything we could to convince our highly dependent friend that she had to leave a volatile relationship. Yet we have come to accept now that the only way for her to build the self-confidence and emotional maturity to do so is for us to stop meddling and telling her what to do. This is a journey that only she can go on herself. In discussing with my friends the developments in my relationship with my mother, I was able to recognise the pattern and resolve the issue about our friend with the toxic relationship, as well as enable my friend to accept that she must similarly let go of her need to solve everyone’s problems for them.

Ultimately, both my mother and friend want me to be successful and happy. I think that their anger stemmed from their insecurity and perception that I was somehow rejecting their love in the form of their unsolicited help. I have always had difficulties with setting firm emotional boundaries and I have worked very hard to resolve this in the past year. I hope that I have communicated clearly to both of them this week and this issue will continue to resolve. I think the main issue will be maintaining this development. I will of course prioritise my own healing no matter what.

Olivia

Anita,

I think I understand what you mean. Although it felt good at the time to send this email, I realised afterwards that I had fallen into the well-worn pattern of temporarily calming my mother’s anxiety. It is not my responsibility. I will stop sharing my problems with her, as I realise that her response will inevitably be unhelpful and lead to further tension.

I think over the past few years I had wanted to shed the pretence of perfection around her. I felt I was being inauthentic by not being truthful about my problems. I wanted her to see me as I was. It is hurtful that her love is conditional, that she cannot truly accept me as my honest self, though I do not blame her. I understand that she is struggling with her own anxiety and insecurity.

I realise this conversation has strayed far from my original topic. Although I guess the issues with both my mother and my mentor are far more interconnected than I thought. I always thought that my positive transference towards my mentor was more to do with the hurt I felt in my relationships with my ex boyfriend and with my father, although I see that the pattern of poor boundaries and validation-seeking is present in so many areas of my life, including with my best friend.

I find it difficult to set boundaries, as I have had no real guidance in this and not much perspective. So far this past year I’ve blindly barrelled through reassessing and reconstructing the dynamics in my relationships with others. It was one thing to do this with close friends and family, as I knew they wouldn’t abandon me despite how strangely I acted towards them. Trying to set personal emotional boundaries in my interactions with my mentor, however, made me incredibly anxious as I felt so attached, he was the most important person I had met in my life, I had no precedent for this sort of relationship, it was incredibly emotionally intense, and I was terrified that the wrong actions would push him away from me. I don’t know how to improve in my boundary setting other than reading more books and gaining more insight.

I feel like I am back to my original problem of finding someone who understands me and helps guide me in life – especially as I cannot confide in my parents, and I want to set a professional boundary with my mentor going forward. Most definitely I will seek psychotherapy, and continue with meditation and mindfulness. However this week I began speaking to my younger sister about our relationship with our mother, asking her how it had affected her. She is someone, other than my mentor, who truly understands me, although she is younger, is still living at home, and has dealt with our parental dynamics by repressing her emotions and problems and bottling them in. Thus we rarely connect in a deeply emotional manner. I hope that we can become even closer and support each other in this way. I find that some of the people I am close to, such as my sister and another good friend of mine, are people whom I would like to confide in deeply as I know they understand me and have the emotional ability to empathise and the intelligence to advise me well, yet they themselves are so emotionally guarded due to the trauma of their own childhoods that I am uncomfortable being vulnerable myself.

Thanks to everyone who helped me see a different perspective on my problems these past couple of weeks. I feel like I have gained a much clearer understanding and have made so much progress in my emotional development and relationships. I am still struggling along – especially with the future fantasies, obsession with my mentor, and constant distraction from the present and the work I need to do, but I am putting into practice all of your suggestions and I have faith that I will see a gradual positive change.

Olivia