Dear Lada:

These are my thoughts:

1) Your job at the factory: I think you should take a long leave of absence- a couple of months at the least. If that is not possible, I think you should quit. I think you should not be going there for at least two months (June and July), with the strong possibility of never.

And this is regardless of your mother’s back problems or any illness. And regardless of anything: do not go back to th factory for at least June and July of this year.

2) You wrote a few posts ago that “nothing terrible ever happened to me”- that nothing terrible happened to you to explain your distress and dysfunction. This is what I think happened to you: you suffered many thousands negative criticisms from your mother, from a very early age to the present. The last one you described was something like: Lada, you shouldn’t put vegetables on your plate like that! You should place the vegetables so that they are pleasing the eyes.

These criticisms, each by itself seems small, maybe, but the fact that there have been SO MANY, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of those oever your lifetime INJURED you. It is like getting punch in the face hundreds of thousands times, not so hard each time, but so many punches and bones break. So did your spirit, eventually, it broke.

What I mean by broke, is that your brain raised a white flag, figuratively, giving up. It stopped fighting to do things right because it figured it can’t win. It can’t get your mother’s approval- or your own (same thing since you internalized your mother). So it gave up:” what is the point?” is what your brain says. “I can’t do anything right! I am done trying!”

So that is why you feel that you are getting more and more stupid (your word)- your brain is giving up.

Therefore, I believe the plan should be to move out of your mother’s because she keeps criticizing you or she doesn’t have to: you just see her, hear her voice and you feel criticized.

I know you don’t feel ready and maybe not even willing. But I am hoping you will keep it in mind as a possibility.

What do you think (yes, i am asking your tired brain to think… I hope it is willing…)

anita

Dear Lada:

Negative criticism is harmful, not helpful. Two examples:

1) Your mother criticizing you for not placing vegetables attractively on the plate before eating: that sends you (again) the message: Lada can’t do anything right. Is that a good message for your well being? Let’s say you re-arranged the vegetables on the plate to please your mother, what good does it do for you? Nothing. She will criticize you again for something else.

Your mental well being is what she hurts while promoting a temporary vegetable arrangement.

If it is sooo important for your mother how vegetables are arranged on a plate- she is welcome to arrange them on her plate as she wishes. Live and let live; be herself and let you be yourself and do things your way.

2) Let’s say you clean and it takes you an hour. Your mother says: Lada, you are doing it the wrong way. If you do it my way it will take you only half an hour. Now she may corect and her technique will save you half an hour. But what she is doing is again, promoting the message: Lada, you can’t do anything right.

So.. how do you spend the half an hour you saved with her technique? Deeper in distress. Time well saved?

—— It started with your mother critizing you, then you criticize yourself and there are other people too willing to join the criticism.

You are hungry for approval, for acceptance, for someone to give you a different message: “Lada, I like you. I like how you do things. You are okay. It is okay for you to be you. It is okay to do things your way. I love you.”

Your brain is tired trying to get that approval from your mother, father, strangers.

I am more than willing to give you that approval, if it could be possible in the context of this forum, whatever little bit is possible.

anita

Dear Lada:

As unsettling as your stat of mind is, it is similar to how my brain worked… or more accurately: how my brain did not work in the past. There is a way back from this confusion, distress, separation-from-oneself or this split. There is a way back. I made it back. So can you.

Only not just yet, not now. Be patient, Lada. Where you are going, it is not a one way street. Relax best you can, don’t be alarmed. It will be okay, you will see.

Like I wrote, your brain figures: what is the point? What is the point of trying, of studying (English), of trying anything? It says to you: go to the factory, you can be (almost) nothing there. Don’t think. Don’t ..

Somehow, sometime in the future, you will figure out that there is worth and value in Lada without the approval of your mother, your father and strangers. Somehow, sometime in the future, you will give up- not on your own brain, your own person- you will give up on trying to get others to approve of you. And then, you will find value in you, you will get to approve of yourself.

anita