Home→Forums→Emotional Mastery→Fear, Anxiety and Healing
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anita.
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June 3, 2024 at 6:12 pm #433426
anita
ParticipantContinued:
It’s mind boggling to me, the truth of it, the reality of it: that I invested all of me, for half a century, in a project (my mother’s love) that was 100% a failure project, as she was blind and deaf to me. Looking back, there was 0% chance of her hearing or seeing me. When I say zero, I am not exaggerating. It was- is- zero chance for me to be heard or seen by my mother.
She just couldn’t, didn’t have it in her, the ability to see/ hear me.
That was/ is Fact. Always has been, since the day I was brought into the world.
So, I .. shake off me 1/2 a century of a wasted life.. a misunderstanding, on my part.
Notice, it’s been a waste of half a century (for crying out loud!) of my life, not because of war or a natural disaster, but because my mother couldn’t, wouldn’t see me/ hear me/ acknowledge that I Am Here, in this world.
To be continued-‘
anita
June 3, 2024 at 7:45 pm #433429anita
ParticipantI can re-join humanity, once I un-join my mother.
anita
June 4, 2024 at 7:21 pm #433480anita
ParticipantContinued:
I couldn’t love me (=care about my well-being), for half a century+, because I kept loving my mother (caring about her well-being), and her well-being was dependent on destroying mine. She used me to EXpress her misery and rage, to relieve the pressure within her, so to live another day.
She INserted her misery (through histrionic displays) and rage (through raging displays) into me, so that she could- temporarily- be free of that misery and rage.. so that she could get a relief.
For more than half a century, I kept loving the woman who used me in this way, used me as a repository for her misery and her rage, a receptacle, a container.
Misery and Rage Container is an accurate description of what I was about.
It takes a lifetime (a half a century+) to see this terrible truth as it is.
I can’t think of a more appropriate a definition of Enemy than what my mother has been to me.
That my mother was born a good, innocent little girl who was abused, terribly mistreated- before I was born– makes no difference to my experience of being a total victim of a vicious enemy, the enemy that the former innocent girl has become.. in my life.
I have never been as clear as I am this evening. It’s all so clear.
She is old now, and every time I thought about the physical age-related aches and pains she must be going through (I haven’t talked to her/ seen her for over 11 years), I used to feel pain for her being in pain, every single time, until this Tues, June 4, 2024. The strangest thing happened this evening, for the FIRST time in my life: I smiled when I thought about her being in pain.
I want to clarify: if it was up to me, she wouldn’t be in pain at all; if it was up to me, there would be no war, no violence in the whole world. But since it’s not up to me, the thought of my mother in pain- for the very first time in my life- made me smile.
I can’t believe it, this has never happened before!
What a strange, strange thing: the smile just happened, and I didn’t feel badly about smiling!
It reminds me of the smile she had on her face right after she shot a few shaming, hurtful words my way, uncensored; equipped with as much shame- ammunition as possible; that anticipatory smile, anticipating hurt and shame to be registered on my face, anticipating it with pleasure, the corners of her mouth going slightly up. Waiting for my pain; My Pain= Her Pleasure.
I was never able to wrap my mind around it: that my pain meant pleasure to her (No, it can’t be, it’s impossible!). It can be. It happened to me.
It’s such a horrible truth, but truth nonetheless. No more doubting that mild, anticipatory smile on her face.
To be continued-
anita
June 5, 2024 at 1:28 pm #433513anita
ParticipantContinued:
It’s still strange, but Refreshing and Exhilarating! Just now, as I capitalized refreshing and exhilarating, I “heard” her voice criticizing me for capitalizing the two words, calling me out on it: what’s wrong with you? And then, of course, proceeding to tell me: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you: you.. you.. YOU.. ! And how dare you…!
I “heard” potential readers saying this to me, by proxy of her.
This (there’s something terribly wrong/ inferior, shameful about YOU!) is what I heard her say every day of my life: 365 (days per year), times 50+ (years), times 10+ times per day.. that’s 17,25o+ times so far. No wonder I keep “hearing” her. It’s the habit of my mind to hear and re-hear her, here, there, and everywhere.
Thanks Mom!
Oopsie, I said Mom, with a capital letter (I don’t “hear” her complaining about that!)
My mother was big on being M and me, being small, weak, submissive to her, a slave to her rage.
I can feel my rage at being subdued, diminished, terribly, oh so terribly disrespected, subjected to abuse, not because I deserved it, but because she felt like it.
I remember seeing her face, as she was watching the pain on my face: her smile, I remember it so vividly, so clearly. That was the only way I pleased her: giving her that pleasure of being on Top, the one in Power.
She had no other use for me.
The mix of loving her and wanting to give her more of what she got out of me, and.. my need to get out of the hole she dug for me: to BE. That mix was excruciating.
Her dark, dark eyes.. they were dark brown, but not as dark as I remember them to be. It’s her dark heart that I saw in her eyes, dark for me.
– To be continued-
anita
June 5, 2024 at 3:00 pm #433515NotSoSadSoul
ParticipantGO AHEAD AND CAPITALISE EVERYTHING! THESE DAYS IT ISN’T SUCH A GIGANTIC FAUX PAS! Do it to scoff in her face. Do it to break the chains! My employer’s new squeeze capitalises every formal letter she writes – she’s in her 60s and supposedly ran big businesses her whole life as office manager, etc. Hahaha, laugh in the face of shonky mother!
June 6, 2024 at 7:50 pm #433577anita
ParticipantContinued:
Loyalty to an enemy is misguided loyalty. Therefore, loyalty to my mother is, and has been misguided loyalty. (1) I need no longer suffer (shame, guilt, that deep, disturbing self-doubt, confusion, distress) out of loyalty to her. (2) I need no longer hate people she taught me to hate (everyone, sooner or later).
The above 2 things are the legacy my mother-enemy left in my life. I am rejecting her legacy, undoing my loyalty to her.
-To be continued-
anita
June 10, 2024 at 6:51 pm #433679anita
ParticipantContinued:
Seems like suddenly (as in after half a century), I am not angry at my mother anymore. I never allowed myself to NOT be angry at her because I was afraid that otherwise, I will get close to her again.. and get hurt again. But now, as I hold myself accountable to the promise I made to the child-within-me (aka inner child) to never see her again irl, never hear her voice, never feel her hand in mine or any such thing, never communicate with her in any way.. Now, that I trust this promise to myself, I am no longer angry at her.
Strange. It’s like I let her go, let her be gone.
I hold myself accountable to the promise I made to me. To never expose myself to the woman who stole so much of my life, the majority of it, quality wise, never re-expose myself to my “personal Nazi”, as I referred to her 40 years ago, the one who having made my childhood, “my personal holocaust”. She made my life.. my private holocaust. And this is the truth, when it comes to my mother-myself, when it comes to my life.
To be continued, still-
anita
June 12, 2024 at 8:57 pm #433790anita
ParticipantContinued:
There is a war in the middle east, Iran (by proxy of Hizballah and Hammas and the Houthis) vs Israel. I was born in Israel, lived there for 24 years. I speak Hebrew.
All along, my Mother was My Enemy: not the terrorists, not the Arab nations nearby (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon). My personal enemy was my mother: isn’t it amazing, that in this context of national enemies & terrorists-within, my own, personal, private enemy, was this one person, just one: my mother..?
I think that the BEGINNING of every war is a mother (or father) turning against her/ his child.
anita
June 16, 2024 at 8:09 am #433874anita
ParticipantContinued:
I never paid much attention to the word narcissistic (and to the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, NPD) because it’s so commonly used online and elsewhere as name calling. It is only recently, that I am taking the term/ diagnosis seriously when it comes to my mother. I accepted long ago, that she is/ has been a mix of these personality disorders: Borderline, Histrionic, Paranoid, and Obsessive Compulsive, showing strong evidence for each part of this 4-part combo.
Understanding myself requires that I understand her because of the very, very long-term fusion- in my mind- between who I am, and who she is. Recently, I see that I cannot understand her without adding a 5th part of the 4-part combo above, a 5th part that is the basis for the other 4: her NPD, the covert type.
It explains her “highly developed compensatory false self” (quotes are from online sources about NPD) which created great confusion and self-doubt on my part: for how can such a nice, friendly, empathetic, good person- with others- be the bad mother that I personally, and privately experienced?
It explains why she didn’t see me as a person (entitled to my own thoughts and feelings, such that are not always identical to hers), how she was not about relating to me, but about dominating me, and using me to feel better; how she placed herself in the center of attention with me and in every social occasion, if it was possible for her to do so. It explains how I was not allowed to be a center of attention (except as a thing to be cleaned, dressed, fed, and brought back to health when I was sick with fever).
To her, I did not exist as a person, I was a thing that she expected to .. be her/ an extension of her who thinks her thoughts, feels her feelings at all times. It explains her RAGE, her narcissistic rage: “unreasonable, disproportional and cuttingly aggressive… intentionally trying to inflict pain.., on others“. It explains how in her mind, the problem was always someone else, always my fault. It explains why she never took in any of what I tried to educate her with (as a teenager, reading about psychology in books, trying to help her).
It explains to me that really, there was nothing I could have been differently or done differently to have anything but a troubled relationship with her. A healthy relationship was simply not possible: not because of who I was, but because of who she was/ is.
There are things I understand most recently that I never understood before: before, I thought that she was the only good person in the world, and everyone else was bad and taking advantage of her (that was her histrionic theme). Most recently, a thought occurred to me for the first time: if she was the only good person in the world, the only person in the world who is being taken advantage of (because she is good), who do all the many millions of bad people in the world taking advantage of? They can’t all be taking advantage of my mother..?
In other words, if (according to her theme), she is and has been the only victim in the world, and everyone else (including myself) are her victimizers/ the perpetrators.. who are all the many millions of perpetrators victimizing? Surely, my mother is not available to be victimized in every town, city, country, continent, every moment of every day and night?
Surely, my mother is not omnipresent, except in her own narcissistic mind where she is everywhere and there’s no one there but her.
* I am still not angry at her, still no-longer angry after a lifetime of angry..
anita
June 17, 2024 at 10:29 am #433909anita
ParticipantContinued:
I am experiencing Less Fear, less Anxiety and enough Healing to feel, to subjectively experience mental health. To actually understand it, not from the rational level, but from the emotional level: to understand this novel idea that I am of no less value than anyone else. That’s an amazing emotional understanding for me, very new. I always thought/ felt/ believed that I was less than every one else, way less. It was a horrible way to go through life. It wasn’t really living, it was surviving as an inferior specimen.
How strange. Today, for the first time in my life, I can see myself a mother, and teaching him/ her well. Too old for that, but I can see it now, I can see myself a mother.
I felt today, for the first time in my life, no fear about making waves in real-life, expressing my discontent, for someone hearing my discontent, my complaint.. not afraid to cause things to happen, to affect events.
Me: having a say irl, expressing and feeling empathy for myself. I feel.. equal and healthy, and it is an amazing feeling!
anita
June 17, 2024 at 1:52 pm #433913NotSoSadSoul
Participant🌻
June 18, 2024 at 8:03 pm #433979anita
ParticipantContinued:
I am having a difficult day today, my mother’s voice, paranoid, negative, ‘all people are bad people, trying to take advantage, bad.. BAD people‘ has been playing and re-playing in my brain without my consent. I suppose this is how the brain works: it plays back old recording when one is tired and anxious (my shoulders/ upper back have been hurting for days, ever since I used a small, electrical mower, for hours).
I felt depressed for the first time in a long, long time, just not right. Still don’t feel right. Was up about 4 am, it’s now 14 hours later, the day is just too long when feeling this way. I am depressed over people’s pain, people (a person) I care about. I feel depressed over the state of the world: so much violence, war, cruelty.. I am not finding the Positive this evening. I WISH I could save the world.. like a superwoman- anita I wish I was. I’d do ANYTHING, everything to save the millions of people that need saving. How incompetent I am, how useless, how insignificant when it comes to making the world a bit better.
Hey, I just noticed I feel a bit better for having typed this.
I’d do anything. I’ll climb the tallest mountain, if.. it made a difference.
One person (me) wanting to make a difference, not having a way to make a difference. If only I was a world leader, a celebrity, I would have spoken, I would have made a difference.
But as it is, there is no way for me to.. what are the words to the song…: “If I can change the world, I would be the sunlight in your universe, you would think my love is something really good… If I can change the world, I would be the sunlight in your universe.. If I could change the world, if I could.. If I could change the world” (Eric Clapton).
I am a hard worker irl; I am known in this part of the world where I live as “the hardest working person”, so say some hard-working people observing me (physical work), day after day, month after month, year after year. If I could.. if I could change the world with my hard, physical work.. I would!
But.. how futile my desire to change the world.
Here I am typing to.. who is reading? A person or two.
It’s so very weird, this internet thing. Eric Clapton I still singing on the other window as I am typing this: “I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot no deputy… I shot… I shot the sheriff“. I live in a very wild-west area, U.S., men in cowboy hats and beards (younger men: long beards, older men: short beards), and of course, weapons that go along with the beards and cowboy hats. I may be digressing. but hey, I am feeling better for it.
Somehow the music on the other window passed on to “the thrill is gone“/ B. B. King, great music (thank you for being here with me, those of you who are reading, 2-3 people I gather, at the most): “The thrill is gone” (the thrill is always gone, says I, it’s in its nature to be gone): “you know I’m free, free now baby, I am free from your spell… You’ve done me wrong; you’d be sorry some day“- my goodness, this is excellent music, the Blues. This song is thrilling me (!) and the day’s depression is gone!
The magic of the Blues.
There are other songs about changing the world: “Can’t do it by myself… Together we can change the world.. With our hand and our hearts, we can make a start.. What if we spoke with one voice… Together…” (Mark Shepard, so it says, never heard this song before).
Back to Eric Clapton: “this love I have inside… it’s only in my dreads; I can change te world.. If I could, cha-change the world… I would be the sunlight in your universe… cha-change the world“.
It seems like too much to ask: TO CHANGE THE WORLD, to BE THE SUNLIGHT IN YOUR UNIVERSE, for crying out loud!
“If I could reach the stars.. shining on my heart, so you can see the truth, then this love I have inside… it’s only in my dreams“-
– human/ most human’s impotence.. if only I could change the world…
“I would be the sunlight in your universe, you would think my love was something good“- which brings me to my story: my mother thought that my love was something bad, that I was something bad, and so was everyone else. And these were the thoughts circulating in my brain today: how bad everyone is.
“I must be strong and carry on” (Eric Clapton still, Tears in Heaven) “Time can bring you down… Time can break your heart… Beyond the dark, there’s peace for sure… There’ll be no more tears in heaven“.
“It’s late in the evening… And then she asks me, Do I look alright?… And then she asks me Do you feel alright?.. because I see the light in your eyes.. My darling, you are wonderful tonight” (Eric Clapton, Wonderful Tonight)
Here is one of my most- ever- favorite song: “mama told me when I was young, sit beside me, my only son, and listen closely to what I say, and if you do this, it will help you some sunny day… take your time, don’t live too fast, troubles will come, and they will pass… and be a SIMPLE kind of man… be a simple, be a simple man, why don’t you do this, for my son, if you can… All you need is in your soul… follow your heart, and nothing else, you can do this if you try… a simple kind of man” (Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd).
Thank you 1-3 people reading this, being here with me this Tues night.
anita
June 18, 2024 at 9:36 pm #433983anita
ParticipantContinued a bit tonight:
I just double checked, asking someone who just had a meeting with other people, very locally: “what do they say about me being a hard worker?” and the person said: they say you are the hardest working person around here! I was told this in person too, and I am so pleased, so proud, because my mother used to say (again and again and again and again.. and again.. and f**** again) that I am LAZY.. But these wild-west, hard working farmers and others around here say that I am the hardest working person in this wild-west world, so she was/ is WRONG. Always have been wrong: I was NEVER the bad, lazy person she said I was.
I will still hear HER words, especially when I am tired, like earlier today, the recording will re-play, such is the nature of the brain. But I want to remember that.. I am the HARDEST WORKING PERSON around here, around this wild-west, cowboy-hat-beard, wild, wild-west.
She was wrong all along, she WRONGED me all along, it still boggles my mind: why/ how did she have to be so mean to .. the hardest working girl. I mean, really, I can see how she DISTORTED who I was, who I am, COMPLETELY! I am not, not who she kept saying that I was. And she was wrong out of CRUELTY: she hated me and she wanted to inflict pain on me.
It’s a lifetime process to really UNDERSTAND that your OWN MOTHER was/ is your ENEMY. HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE TRUE???
I can’t believe it, still, it’s bamboozling my mind! Oh.. I just need to fully confront the difficult, horrible, bamboozling reality that my mother, MY MOTHER, was/is my Enemy. It is (I have no word) difficult to take in. I mean: my own mother wanted me to be in pain. My OWN MOTHER whose love I needed more than anything, her motivation was to see me hurt.
It’s just so difficult to take in, it’s just that one expects one’s mother to be on one’s side, and definitely not against… Okay, it’s Tues late night here. Good night/ good morning, 1-3 readers, thank you for being here with me, reading.
Let us be guided by the Truth, however difficult it is to take in and absorb.
anita
June 19, 2024 at 1:11 am #433989Helcat
Participant❤️❤️❤️
June 19, 2024 at 11:28 am #434013anita
ParticipantThank you, Helcat!
anita
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