fbpx
Menu

Fear, Anxiety and Healing

HomeForumsEmotional MasteryFear, Anxiety and Healing

New Reply
Viewing 15 posts - 46 through 60 (of 111 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #431714
    anita
    Participant

    Continued (trigger warning.. sensitive topic):

    Fear, the fear of being alone (autophobia), that’s been my fear for as long as I remember.

    There were 2 kinds of Alone: (1) being without that person (previously referred to in this thread, as my mother), once she does what she repeatedly said she will do: kill herself (commit suicide). And that, as she repeatedly said, that she’d kill herself because I was a bad, bad girl, the worst. The worst girl in the world.

    (I remember her threatening to kill herself when I was younger than 6, when I was 20+, and last time I remember, I was in my late 30s or early 40s).

    (2) being with that person: the crushing criticism, guilt-tripping, shaming.. shaming, lots of shaming, shaming me to the core. Crushing my spirit while keeping my body alive.

    Couldn’t live without her, couldn’t live (as in truly live) with her.

    The first was fear; the second was fear and anger: great anger, RAGE.

    I want to talk about that RAGE (talking to her, in my mind, here): You tell me: who do you think you are..? (you big zero).  Today, I ask you: who do you think YOU are? Your shame does not give you the right to inflict it on ME!

    You literally cut your head off in photographs, it’s a shame.. but you have no RIGHT to figuratively cut off my head by shaming me to the core, and at length, crushing my spirit, mutilating my brain. You have no such right!!!

    And yet, you took the liberty to do what was oh, so very wrong for you to do.

    You took that liberty because you were not afraid of retaliation, not from me, not from anyone else. For there was no one for me, no one with me.

    Who do you think YOU are?

    You called me names, you told me how bad, bad, bad, bad… bad, bad of a person I was- am.

    You are!

    It is a bad person who returns shame for the unconditional, most dedicated love of a daughter for her (perceived) mother, the love of a little girl looking up to her mother for love in return.

    Alone without her; alone and condemned with her. RAGE.

    anita

    #431715
    anita
    Participant

    Continued (trigger warning, still):

    You blamed me for what others have done to you before I was born. You pointed your finger of blame at me, accusing me of being the Bad Guy, and proceeding to punish the bad guy, who in reality was a good girl who loved her (perceived) mother more than anything or anyone in the whole wide world.

    And I believed you, how could I not…?

    There is no greater Betrayal.

    I figuratively reclaim my head, that which you figuratively cut off of me, and I form my sincere intent to hand you back the shame and guilt that does not belong to me.

    anita

    #431726
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I am taking a break from fear, anxiety and rage to mention Love. Here is a bible quote about love that I like very much (1 Corinthians 13:4-6): “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth”. 

    This is how I want to love.

    anita

    #431765
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    Rage. What a potent, powerful emotion and what great, colossal damage it produces on an individual and on a global scale, from a mother dropping a shaming verbal bomb on her daughter, to a nation threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on another/ on all of us. How important it is to exercise restraint, and how much more restraint is needed.

    How crucial it is to replace rage with compassion, wherever, whenever possible, so to save ourselves and our world. Because we are all in it together, no matter how separated so many of us feel.

    As I am approaching the end part of my individual life, and as the world approaches the real-and-present danger of significant collapse, I am tying loose ends of misunderstandings, resolving needless personal suffering. It boils down to: rage needs to be expressed in non-violent ways, and then, be tamed, contained.

    anita

    #431775
    anita
    Participant

    Continued (trigger warning, as always):

    I keep posting here because it is working for me, it gets me closer and closer to peace-of-mind. And if what I post here helps a single other person out there, that’s good enough for me, a worthy cause.

    I am alone this evening, not yet dark, autophobia. I feel the scream from the inside, inaudible, yet intensely, quietly, terribly loud: Mother! Help me! Somebody help me!

    This is not an intellectual exercise, here, it’s emotional: Help Me!

    I feel the despair. I feel the what’s-the-point, no one is here for me, no one is there for me, no one to hold me and help me.

    The Alone-ness.

    How is it that no one hears me, no one hears my cries?

    All alone, I am all alone, no one there for me?

    Autophobia, this means.. I am going to die, all alone?

    And no one knows, no one cares?

    I hear a noise outside,  a helicopter in the sky perhaps, The noise is gone now, It’s quiet again. Alone. A bit of darkness outside, alone inside… Here’s the helicopter sound again.. someone is out there, a human being.  Who is that person in the sky..?

    Those Formative Years of childhood, what they formed into me is a desperate alone-ness and loneliness, the there’s no one there for me.

    Judging by the desperate cries of a coyote pup a few years ago, one who found himself (or herself) alone, separated and far away from the pack that one night, it’s a terrible feeling, death-about-to-happen any moment. For a highly social animal (a human, a coyote, a dog) separation/ alone-ness = death.

    It’s darker now than when I started this post, not yet dark but really close to being dark, the closing of a day.

    anita

    #431781
    NotSoSadSoul
    Participant

    You’re not totally alone, although an online friendship definitely doesn’t offer what one in real life does, but I’m here. I hope you get this close enough to when you wrote the above for it to help.

    #431817
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I just wrote a poem for a friend. I like it (I hope she likes it), so in the spirit of liking it, I’ll write another to.. you guessed whom (if you did), I’ll write it to that person:

     

    I guess you were right all along

    I didn’t love you

    I loved what I needed you to be, just for me

    Not who you were.

    I loved the idea of a mother

    Not the person that you are, the person you have been

    For how could I love or like a person who hated me

    I loved the idea of a person (a mother) who liked me

    You disliked me in so many ways, thoroughly, inside out

    And in turn, I disliked myself, I disliked you, I disliked everyone-

    – A great start in life

    Not.

    And now, as I tie loose ends in my heart and mind

    I say to the idea of you: farewell idea.

    Left is what’s always been there; that person who disliked me

    I can’t change this reality, not retroactively, not in any other way

    it just so happened to be this way.

    Farewell.

     

    anita

     

    #431829
    NotSoSadSoul
    Participant

    I loved my mother for who I wished she was – actually somehow managed to look at her and see my dreams, not who she is.  I made so many excuses for her.  Good bye to my mother also.

    #431862
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    Saying goodbye to a non-mother means saying goodbye not only to that person, but also to her Message: that there is something wrong with me, something so terrible, that she had no choice but to get oh, so very angry at me.

    There was nothing wrong with me. I was not at all the reason for her hurt, and for her RAGE.

    To say goodbye to her (almost 11 years after talking to her last, on the phone) means to say goodbye to her message that there was something wrong and bad/ Guilty about me to bring about her rage, her revenge.

    As I typed the above, I felt love.. for the memory of what I wished she was, for moments when her voice was soft, for when she sounded like a mother.

    The complexity of being human: inside every bad person, every abusive person, there is a hurt, abused child, one that shows through at times. But often, that child is locked behind an impenetrable wall, inside a bad, abusive person.

    Goodbye locked hurt child, I wish I could help you, but I was born (to you) too late to help the child that you were.

    Goodbye non-mother.

    anita

     

    #431868
    NotSoSadSoul
    Participant

    I can’t seem to relax, it’s been a thing since 2015, but also I suppose I had the groundwork before then. I am never happy with myself unless I’m working hard, doing something, being busy or productive. I’m really struggling right now with guilt and anxiety. My stomach is churning from it.

    I’ve been unwell for a week but soldiered on through everything I must do, work and other things. Any quiet time I’ve felt so guilty and anxious. I’m exhausted and sick and when I stop at the end of each day the guilt takes over.

    My ex used to make a big thing of always working hard. He shouted it to the tree tops how hard he worked. And I believed all the loud words, I failed to see the physical truth, that he did not work hard at all. Sure, he played hard at the things he enjoyed doing, sports mainly. But he did not work hard. I’d get home from work and he’d have a push mower, the old fashioned non petrol type, out on the lawn. He’d say, ‘you’ve been sitting all day, while I’ve been out working hard, it would be good for your physical fitness to do some work.’ I’d nearly break down, exhausted from a 10 hour day, feeling fat and ugly because he said I needed exercise, and I’d mow the lawn with self loathing in my heart. He’d make comments about how hard he worked and how fit he was, and how I wasn’t fit because of my job. He was always doing big  things like skydiving, rafting, always doing things and making comments about my not doing things. But. The big but. When he wasn’t doing these things he was eating out, taking naps, visiting his friends, having coffee, swimming, doing enjoyable downtime things. Which was most of his life.

    I failed to recognise that it’s hard for me to do things when I started work at 7.30 to 8 and often didn’t finish till 7. That I physically was unable to be at work and skiing, or doing whatever big thing he wanted to do. That I couldn’t take months and months off every year to join him on his big holidays and trips. That when I wasn’t at work I needed to sleep and look after the home because he did not do that. That I needed to be a mother to and it was the most important thing to me to be one, I did not want to be at work all the time, I wanted to be at home baking biscuits and roasts and being a mum.

    My mother also made me feel totally inadequate, nasty comments about how easy it is to do this or that, she just does it while she’s putting the kettle on or waiting for the porridge to cook. It didn’t even factor that I was getting up, getting a family up, doing washing, feeding animals, making sure we were all out the door. Just, ‘it’s easy, you just do it while the kettle is boiling.’ except I was doing the other things while the kettle was boiling.

    I’m struggling. Really struggling with guilt. My head hurts. I’m so tired. Sorry, I’m complaining, but I’m going to read this again and hopefully the saying of it will help me let some go.

    I read it and I feel worse. Hmmm.

    #431907
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I have a problem with anger: I don’t know how to feel angry without feeling that I am a bad person for feeling angry. Feeling angry, to me, indicates that I am a bad person.

    I tend to be judgmental of people and .. jump into feeling angry.

    I need to fix my relationship with anger and moderate my rushing into feeling angry.

    Feeling that I am a bad person fuels my anxiety (hence the relevance to the title of this thread). I need to feel that I am a good person, and I often do these days, except when I get angry, and when I rush into it.

    I got angry at a woman, the day before yesterday, in real-life, because she sells eggs (she raised high quality chickens) for $5 a dozen instead of the $3-4 or so that the supermarket charges for free range eggs, and I told her that she overprices her eggs (which now I acknowledge, is not true). I was also angry at her for this or that other reason. Yesterday, I apologized to her and she accepted. But on the same day, I got angry at someone else, irl,  and was fuming inside me. This fuming in anger is difficult for me to endure. I can’t feel okay with it.

    The origin of my trouble with anger is two folds: (1) that person, formerly known as my mother, was very, very… very judgmental of people, often venting to me her judgments and anger at length, telling me how terribly they hurt her feelings, and in so many ways (which she generously detailed and elaborated on). As she vented, my empathy was with her, and I joined her in-anger at .. everyone, at one time or another, leaving me no people to not be angry at. Fast forward, I get judgmental and angry at .. well, almost everyone,  sooner or later.

    (2) I was angry at that person a whole lot. VERY ANGRY, but would be silent about it.  Angry at her and.. judgmental of, and angry at myself, for feeling so angry at her, as in being a bad.. bad.. bad daughter.

    Feeling Guilty for feeling Angry.

    To be continued.

    anita

     

    #431934
    anita
    Participant

    Continued (as always, trigger warning):

    There is a combination of intense fear and rage (intense anger) that I am aware of this afternoon, that which I experienced growing up (growing in, really, shrinking in fear, not expanding):

    The fear was fear, always fear, this zzzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZzzz.  And rage, rage at being humiliated, taken over, subdued, going belly up in front of the aggressor. The need to fight back, to have some power in powerlessness, to rise up, to rebel, to take power, to subdue the enemy instead of being subdued by the enemy.

    When the enemy is your mother, you don’t have a mother. She is that person over there, taking over.

    To be taken over, to be made a Nothing, a Big zero (her words) is ENRAGING!

    I stumbled earlier today on some writings about parenting styles and though to myself: abuse is not a parenting style.

    Some say you should forgive your parents, forgive your mother. I agree when you happen to have a mother. When you have an enemy, run away or fight. Except that when you are a child, you can’t. You aren’t allowed to. And people say: don’t be angry at her, she is your mother!

    Again, I never had a mother.

    What I do have is fear and rage inside, rage at all the people who hurt my paranoid and histrionic-personality-disordered “mother”, and rage at her for hurting me so badly, repeatedly, never to correct, never to regret, never to .. never to acknowledge, as if it never happened but only in the deluded mind of a bad, bad girl, bad daughter, bad person.

    She hated me for the rage in my eyes as I looked at her, as a teenager. Rage in my eyes was all the evidence I had that I was a person, not a Nothing. Nothing doesn’t rage. A person rages.

    To be continued.

    anita

     

     

    #431935
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    Every person needs to feel like a Someone,  not like a Nobody. It is a non-negotiable human need, withing the family of origin, and within society at large, nationally and internationally. Everywhere, a human being needs a basic measure of respect.

    And every human being who needs respect, needs to extend respect to others, to others who still hold on to a measure of humanity.

    There are humans who crossed the line into non-humanity. Come back to humanity, please.

    Make it better, not worse.

    anita

     

    #431984
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    My mother was a weak, tormented woman, in so much pain for so long. No wonder she took advantage of this unique opportunity to turn things around and be The Powerful One, for a change, the powerful one over a child she brought into this world. For she gave me life, she OWNS me.. I owe her. It’s her time then, time to cross over from powerless to powerful. It’s her right… Not.

    Strange when motherhood is about getting even, taking power back. At the expense of.

    Did I say my mother? Yes, I did. That person.. the one with the title mother.

    The RAGE within me is about me being powerless, subjugated by her, humiliated, blamed, shamed, tormented.. for her contentment, for her relief, for her getting even, being in power, for a change.

    I understand her motivation, her pain, her powerlessness, yet I can’t help but feel enraged.. as if I mattered too, as if I am a person too, like her, not some thing to be used and abused.

    That person destroyed so much of me, so many decades, just so to get even with people who were not me, none of my doing.

    The Story of Abuse. No. Not a mother, but a person who took advantage of a child.

    anita

     

    #431995
    NotSoSadSoul
    Participant

    I’ve been trying to understand my biological mother’s anger and nastiness since reading the things you have posted.  As I wrote that I realised that I’ve spent my whole life being understanding of her meanness and this is me finding another way to excuse her.  I’m not going to try to understand anymore!  I sometimes catch myself thinking of trying to reconcile with her, but I get stuck at the beginning of these thoughts, because I didn’t instigate it and I don’t know what to be sorry for.  I don’t know what to humble myself over.  I tried when she first cut me out of her life and got nothing in response.  I apologised for everything even though I hadn’t done anything, just because I was terrified of losing her.

    I will tell you a little thing though, something really horrible that I did.  It was a year and a half after she cut me out of her life.  She did something really mean and underhanded and it got back to me.  So I sent her an email:  I wish I had never loved or trusted you.

    I felt so evil after I sent it.  So mean and nasty and dreadful.  The worst human in the world.  I still do to some degree.  But I am aware that it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said to her.

    She did me a huge service cutting me out though.  I don’t have her judgemental criticisms and meanness hounding me every day of my life.  I don’t have the woman who told me I didn’t deserve to have my children, and they should be taken off me, in my life any more.  I don’t know why she thought I didn’t deserve them, but I imagine a lot of the things she said to me were to make herself feel better about leaving her children when they were tots.  I have only just started being able to look at the things she said without thinking they were true and feeling like I was the worst human in the world.  She said so many things that were lies and manipulation.  Why would a mother do that to the daughter she professes to love more than anything?  Only in the last couple of years am I starting to see that maybe she was playing us all.  She used to have my sibling over for tea a lot which hurt because she never had me or my kids over to tea.  One day she said to me that sibling lied about that and she never had sibling over for dinner.  Only she had just finished whinging about sibling going there and drinking all stepfather’s beer, and eating all their food, which is definitely something someone can do when they never had dinner there?!  Plus sibling would brag about the lovely dinners she cooked when sibling got home.  Why would she play games like that with her own children?  That isn’t love.

Viewing 15 posts - 46 through 60 (of 111 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Please log in OR register.