Dear Addy:

Mamata, Motherly Love, is a wonderful thing, oh how I wish that growing up, I could bask in motherly love, feel its warmth envelope me, protect me, keeping me safe from harm. When we think back about the mothers we had growing up, we naturally want to see her in the most positive light because we still need to bask in the light of her Mamata, if only for a moment or two. We explain away her neglectful and even abusive behaviors, assigning it to lack of education, to her difficult life and whatnot. I wouldn’t have suggested anything negative about your mother if it wasn’t for your assertion that you suffered from Childhood Emotional Neglect by both parents.

parenting for brain. com: “Child emotional neglect (CEN) is the parent’s failure to meet their child’s emotional needs during the early years. It involves unresponsive, unavailable, and limited emotional interactions between that person and the child. Children’s emotional needs for affection, support, attention, or competence are ignored… Despite the lack of overt traumatic events, experiencing emotional neglect as a child can be just as damaging as abuse​​”.

healthline. com: “Childhood emotional neglect occurs when a child’s parent or parents fail to respond adequately to their child’s emotional needs. Emotional neglect is not necessarily childhood emotional abuse. Abuse is often intentional; it’s a purposeful choice to act in a way that is harmful… Parents who emotionally neglect their children may still provide care and necessities. They just miss out on or mishandle this one key area of support”.

It is unfortunate for the human child that he/ she needs more than food, clothes, medicine when sick, and a physical shelter to protect from the weather and the cold… unfortunate for a human child that he/ she also needs to be treated… as if what he/ she feels (outside of hunger, cold and sickness) is not irrelevant.

“I also believe she taught me about being kind, honest and resilient but as human being some negative patterns do affect us more than the other when we overthink, or with some triggers so…“- teaching you to be kind, honest and resilient is a very good thing; the negative patterns she instilled in you… not a good thing. I hope you bask in the former and heal from the latter.

anita

Dear Addy:

“I used to be scared of him when I was little but scared not for abuse or anything. Just his anger“- inherent in the expressed emotion of anger, is a threat of violence. Think of a guard dog who angrily barks at a possible intruder: the angry bark is scary enough to chase away the possible intruder because there is a threat in the bark: if you get closer, I will bite you to death! 

My mother used to hit me with her hands and feet, and she often yelled insults at me for what felt like hours at a time. But for years, as an adult, I had those scary, weird dreams: not of her hitting me or yelling at me. In my dreams she was just standing there with an angry face, saying nothing and doing nothing,  staring at me silently and angrily. Anger by itself scares everyone, especially children.

“I used to be scared of…  his anger when I’d do something wrong“- was he angry with you only when you did something wrong, or was he angry at you otherwise, and you figured- as a child-  that if he was angry, it must have meant that you did something wrong?

anita

Dear Addy:

I think I know the “dead eye” look, that’s the look I dreamed about at nights: her looking at me with those dead eyes. There was definitely no love whatsoever in those eyes, only hate and a silent promise to kill, meaning,  those eyes had let me know that it would be easy for her to kill me. No love to stop her, no feeling for me other than hate.

“he gets angry if things aren’t going as he wants it to be….  whenever I do something wrong, or get anxious to find tool or take some more time to find, he’d get furious and scold me“-  you didn’t do something wrong, nothing wrong at all. The one doing something wrong is Him, not You. The wrong he did was to get furious and scold a child who wanted and tried to help him. His expectations were unrealistic: that you will help him exactly like he imagined that you should help him: perfectly.

Plus, very important fact of life: getting furious at you and scolding you made you (understandably) significantly anxious. Anxious people don’t function well because their anxiety distracts them from the task at hand. If he wanted anything close to perfection from you, he should have provided you with calm, positive support, not angry, negative opposition.

“my mom stopped me tried so solve this matter“- I wonder how she tried to solve the matter.

anita

Dear Addy:

“she just told me be silent“, “how can I heal from that?.. any things that you’re trying and it’s helpful to you?“-

-yes, healing takes not being silent anymore.

“I didn’t wanted to arguing anymore so“- don’t argue with him, but don’t be silent either. To heal, you have to assert yourself with any person who mistreats you. Let’s say that you see your father only once a week, or once a month, or even less frequently than that, but if when you see him, he still mistreats you with his uncalled for anger, be it by giving you that “dead eye”, you can’t heal if you allow this to happen. You have to either assert yourself with him (ex. saying in a firm, strong voice: stop looking at me with your angry eyes and if you can’t manage that, don’t look at me at all!– no yelling, and no arguing to follow), or you don’t see/ visit him at all.

anita

Dear Addy:

I am glad to read that you stand up for yourself 99% of the time outside the context of your family.

“Recently we did got into conflict but I was like kept asking what I did wrong and I said you’re being angry for no reason so he just cut the call“- what if you cut the call with him?

“if I did tell him like you said “otherwise don’t look at me at all”, he’d definitely take this as like disrespectful bomb“- your father has been misusing his authority position as father to disrespect you, and he feels comfortable doing so because there are no real negative consequences for him when he disrespects you.

“I may have to find softer way for conflict resolution“- I think that for your father, soft Addy = submissive Addy.

In your first thread, on Sept 22, you wrote: “I don’t want my parents to work anymore“. You can tell your father that you will not work for him in the future (no future financial support) unless he respects you always (never to disrespect you). It is not too much to ask of a person you financially support (or plan on financially supporting) to respect you, is it?

anita

Dear Addy:

“His intentions aren’t wrong and I do think that he has a soft spot for me as well“- if you had a child, a little boy, who trusts you and looks up to you (Addy) for love and protection, would you let your father (your boy’s grandfather) criticize your son like he criticized you, day after day (or once in a while), for as long as your father does it without the intention to hurt your boy, and for as long as he also has a soft spot for your child (between the criticisms)?

“And the thing is that if I disrespect him it would just hurt him more… Like if I do same thing he’s doing to me what’s difference between me and him?“- if you had a child, and you cared about your innocent child not being harmed (more than you cared about your father’s feelings), you would be different from your father, a different kind of father, and in a good way, wouldn’t you?

About your father’s intentions: when he was angry at you (“he’d get furious and scold me… angry for no reason”), I am sure that he did not have the intention to hurt you long-term: to the extent that you will not have an irl relationship with a woman,  and/ or to the extent that you will not be able to financially support him when he gets older. But of course he had the intention to hurt your feelings. I say of course, because naturally, when people and other animals feel anger, they have the intention to hurt the object of their anger. The intention to hurt is inherent in anger.

anita

Dear Addy:

Good afternoon (your time, is it?), Addy! I asked you in regard to you having a little boy, if you would criticize him the way your father criticized you, and you answered that you wouldn’t, and that you would be a different kind of father to your boy, a better kind.

“I want to break this pattern and start the healthier pattern because I’m aware of it and I’ll try my best for that“- break the pattern today and every day by not permitting your father to criticize you and target his anger at you. After all, a whole lot of the boy that you were is still there. Emotionally, you are still that boy, and underneath your adult style and almost-indifference to how your father treats you, there still is that hurt boy who cares, the boy whose love and trust was betrayed.

You wrote earlier: “my father is not able to aware… He’s just doesn’t have EQ that we have“- well, he is a civil engineer and he understands logic, right? Then educate him: tell him that when he criticizes you, he is hurting your productivity, and not helping at all. Tell him that you love him and you want to financially support him (and your mother) and therefore, you  need his help: to stop criticizing you and to stop directing his anger at you. In other words, tell him that you need him to be nice…. as nice as he is to some people in his life (there are such people, right? Neighbors, co-workers or supervisors at work?).

Or did you already educate him but he didn’t care to be educated by… whom he perceives to be inferior to him?

anita