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Fear, Anxiety and Healing

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Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 143 total)
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  • #432009
    anita
    Participant

    Continued (trigger warning, as always):

    The simplicity of feeling angry at an enemy who is a stranger vs the complexity of  feeling angry at an enemy who is one’s mother. When the enemy is a stranger, there’s no longing for love, no hope for love that’s in the way of running for one’s life, or fighting for one’s life. When the enemy is one’s mother, the longing for her love is a curse.

    It takes the full understanding that a mother (the person, not the idea) does not mean a friend, or even a neutral party, not to many, many of us. And when she is an enemy, it takes the full understanding that the love/ longing we feel is for the idea of her, it is not for the person that she is. And so, it’s okay to feel the love and longing .. for the idea of a mother.

    When I have her image in my mind, as I do now, and I have this loving feeling attached to this image, I no longer feel threatened by the loving feeling because it will not motivate me to reach out to the person and get hurt again.

    Instead, this loving feeling will motivate me to be this desirable idea of a mother to other people, people who are not enemy.

    Who is my enemy? A person who desires to inflict pain (criticism, shame, guilt, a beating) on me and then proceeds to do so, because she/ he is momentarily free of HER OWN pain when observing it in me.

    She used me that way, aka abused me. She helped herself to me, taking advantage of a child who loved her, a child who had nowhere to go.

    She said one time, and I quote (translated): “You think I don’t know I am wrong? I know, but what can you do? You have nowhere to go”.

    Quite cruel, isn’t it? Unfair, unjust… day after day, month after month, year after year, never to stop. Never to apologize, decade after decade. Never to relinquish her unfair advantage/ her selfish, cruel use of her power as mother.

    The RAGE, my rage is about all those endless moments, days years, eternity of abuse, subjugation, humiliation, soul-rape is a term that just occurred to me, soul and body rape, is more accurate. Again and again. Unrepented.

    The idea of mother and empathy are synonymous. I didn’t have a mother. I had an obscene twist of a mother: an enemy.

    anita

    #432055
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I am not guilty for the rage born out of the abuse I suffered. Little girl-me so hurt, so deeply hurt, such raw hurt.. a non-expected hurt, a surprise.. as in, I didn’t see it coming, and it’s coming at me again and again. Want to run, have nowhere to run; want to fight, but little girl anita is a little girl. Little girls don’t fight big people.

    anita.. no one there for you back then. I am here for you, now. I am a big person now. I will fight for you now. Someone has your back!

    anita

    #432101
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I have a better understanding now. There really is such a thing as Anger Addiction. It’s not an official diagnosis but the principle behind the term anger addiction is part of official diagnoses such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

    Anger and rage (intense anger) involve the release of POWERFUL- FEELING chemicals in the brain. And powerful feels way, way better than feeling weak, meek, timid and anxious.

    My mother aka that person was indeed very anxious, timid, meek and feeling powerless most of the time, but when she raged. Oh, did she feel powerful then!

    I tried to explain to her that I didn’t mean to offend her when I said this and didn’t say that, when I failed to do that, whatever her false accusation was about, but she was not interested in what I said and never considered it. Instead, she ARGUED, a lot, and spared no twisting of logic in her arguing. She wasn’t interested in peace with me, she wasn’t interested in exploring the truth; she was interested in prolonging the war because it felt good, for her. And so, she argued and argued and argued, justifying her anger so that she can keep on angry and feeling powerful.

    I used to feel guilty for not making her life better, for not helping her feel better. I didn’t know that she already helped herself to me as she enjoyed many hours of feeling-powerful (at my expense). You are welcome-not, no mother of mine.

    anita

    #432158
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    To me, she was Adversarial, not Amiable; Contentious, not Cordial; Critical, not Complimentary; Cross, not Calm; Cruel, not Compassionate; Hostile,  not Hospitable; a Monster, not a Mother.

    Sometimes she was nice to me, but the Adversarial, Cruel and Hostile, over time and with repetition, deeply sunk into me. I couldn’t just peel it off and let in her niceness in. And if I did, the next time would hurt eve more.

    I am in the process of saying goodbye to the monster and become to others all that I wish she was to me: amiable, calm, complimentary, compassionate, cordial, hospitable.

    anita

    #432161
    anita
    Participant

    Edited and re-submitted:

    Continued:

    To me, she was Adversarial, not Amiable; Contentious, not Cordial; Critical, not Complimentary; Cross, not Calm; Cruel, not Compassionate; Hostile, not Hospitable; a Monster, not a Mother.

    Sometimes she was nice to me, but the Adversarial, Cruel and Hostile, over time, and with repetition, deeply sunk into me. I couldn’t just peel it off and let her occasional niceness in. And if I did, the next time would hurt even more.

    I am in the process of saying goodbye to the monster and become to others all that I wish she was to me: amiable, calm, compassionate, complimentary, cordial, hospitable.

    anita

    #432184
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    When I started this thread, I chose the title “Fear, Anxiety and Healing”, no mention of the very powerful emotion: Anger. Today, I would choose the title: Healing from Fear and Anxiety, Anger and Chronic Anger.

    Anxiety is a condition that involves chronic fear and the repression/ suppression of fear. Chronic Anger is similarly long-term and as destructive to the body as chronic fear, and it too involves the repression and/ or suppression of anger.

    To be continued-

    anita

    #432273
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    Chronic Fear, Chronic Anger are making me twitch right now, aka tics. Fear and Anger, in their nature, are e-motions, energy- in motion.  They create movement: Fight or Flight. In the absence of both (I didn’t Fight, I didn’t Flight=run away), not as a child, day after day, year after year.. The motion had to happen, so it happened within me, fighting within, running away within, TICS. It’s experienced as tension within, like the body trying to exit itself.

    anita

    #432278
    NotSoSadSoul
    Participant

    This is very interesting and I am in agreement. I hope your body can relax as you find your way away from these huge emotions

    #432302
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    Here is an idea: to extend as much empathy to myself as I have extended to another person, any other person for whom I felt empathy,  and to whom I expressed empathy. Not more. Not less.

    anita

    #432327
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    I don’t remember ever arguing with my mother.. I wouldn’t dare. I tried to explain myself many times, to create a moment of understanding between her and me.. oh, what a beautiful meeting-of-the-minds that would have been, a place to rest, a place to settle and take a deep, slow, much needed breath in. And out.

    I didn’t argue, but she argued against my sincere explanations, accusing me of lying and making things up and trying to hurt her feelings. There was not to be an understanding between her and me, not a single Yes, we Understand each other moment.

    I looked for the truth, I highly valued the truth; she didn’t. She cared about winning her arguments against me, and whatever it took to Win, that is, to Crush me.. that’s what she said. Whatever it took to hurt me, she said it. Truth was not a consideration.

    It’s not that she purposefully misstated the truth, it’s that she didn’t care if she did or not. Truth vs Lie was not an issue for her. She simply said whatever it took for her to come up at the top, and me- at the bottom.

    Submission of me, was the name of her game. Truth irrelevant.

    I noticed I typed above “my mother”, not that person, not mother-monster, just.. my mother. For the child within-me, I must confess, she’ll always be my mother, simply because there was no other.. mother. She was the only one there.

    Her legacy in my mind is that look in her eyes I remember seeing the last time I saw her in-person, that look that sends the strongest message: you (anita), you are a bad, bad, bad person!

    Is this message true, was it true? It’s been my concern (is it true?). Not her concern. Her concern was to Win. For her to win, I had to Lose. (It’s an instinctual thing, not an ethical thing)

    anita

     

     

    #432369
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    The search for truth- what a refreshing endeavor, a refreshing motivation: to understand that which is true, however terrible it may be. Truth is my personal salvation, my rescue from confusion, suffering, shame, guilt and despair. Seeing Truth is my hope, it’s what I live for.

    anita

     

    #432410
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    There really is such a thing as Objective Truth = The Truth. Such as gravity. People who jump off a cliff will fall down and get hurt regardless of their beliefs about gravity, or their beliefs about their ability to resist gravity.

    Not committing to any objective truth is living in fantasy, or it may be a matter of deceiving others.

    anita

     

     

     

    #432413
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    That person lied to me, repeatedly. A child is not born with the ability to handle being lied to by anyone, let alone by one own’s mother. I was lied to. The Truth twisted in so many ways, all for the purpose of her winning a argument (an argument that I didn’t participate in). The thing about people who lie regularly, is that they don’t experience a conflict about it. In their minds, it’s not a problem, no cognitive dissonance. No guilt. They are beyond it, too troubled to bother with truth vs lie. They are Angry and that’s it. No value to guide their anger toward an ethical expression of some kind. Angry= all hell breaks loose.

    anita

    #432419
    anita
    Participant

    Continued:

    It’s naive/ not true to believe that hurt people don’t lie, that abused people don’t proceed to abuse others, that abuse doesn’t breed abuse. You see a hurt person and you want to help that person, only that they have been already helping themselves to you. To really help another person.. you have to stop them from helping themselves to you, taking advantage of you, lying..

    For me to be honest with myself and with others, I have to detect deceit by others and keep myself honest with all.

    anita

     

    #432436
    NotSoSadSoul
    Participant

    I was thinking about the liars that have no conflict in it. My mother. I used to think she altered her perception of reality but now I don’t know. If I add up all the stories, how they supported her motives, manipulated people to think how hard she by she is, all of it. She didn’t like one of my siblings and said some of the cruellest things about. These things aren’t true if babies or small children. I should have known she said awful things about me, lies. If I ever wondered about something that didn’t add up she attacked me or created bigger stories, so talented in deflecting all responsibility, twisting and turning. Or rubbishing me so I was in disbelief she could say such things or think them when they were so untrue.

    Hmm. Liars.

Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 143 total)

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