Dear Gaia:

“It’s like I was on a path to develop nicely but then I went for another, sideline path and my whole self got twisted and sick”-

– we all start “on a path to develop nicely”, at least, the vast majority of babies do.

But then many millions of babies starting on that path get sidelined. Young children are resilient and nature does its best to protect the young children (ex. disassociate so to not hurt too much), but nature can do only so much when the family we are in messes us up.

We forget how we were and how we felt as  young children, and as we got older. We tend to remember teenage years more so than earlier years. We tend to remember small portions of the early years and..  mostly if not solely, the happy or okay parts.

A child has an uncanny ability (provided by nature) to close her eyes to what she doesn’t want to see.

I mentioned disassociation. Healing is about re-association with that lost child of long ago.

anita

Dear Gaia:

“Spirit guides or higher self”- I never did any such meditation. I don’t believe in spirit guides and at the moment, I can’t relate to higher-self, meaning what?

I think it was John Bradshaw, whose books I read long ago. He was heavily into inner child work. I did his exercises at the time but was confused and couldn’t be clear about what part of me is the child, what part is the parent and what part is the adult (his idea was that each one of us has these three parts).

But there is no need for you getting confused that way, because you “always have so much vivid memories of almost everything ever prior being 4”-

– type away these memories then, prior to 4, starting with as early as you can remember. Type and type until you get tired and submit. I will read and get back to you.

anita

Dear Gaia:

You wrote yesterday: “I always have so much vivid memories of almost everything ever prior being 4”.

I then asked you to “type away these memories then, prior to 4, starting with as early as you can remember. Type and type until you get tired and submit”.

Today, you typed the following (I will separate what you typed to groups):

1. “I remember .. I was obsessed with drawing, playing on the PC and was obsessed with animals… I was obsessed with reading”- a child younger than 4, even a child younger than 10, does not have the verb to obsess in her vocabulary. She doesn’t spontaneously think: I am drawing too much, or I am playing on the PC too much, or I am reading too much. A child is told these things by a parent and later in school, maybe by a teacher.

Remember I told you that you have to know who your mother is, so that you can know who you are? Well, what I am getting from this collection of quote here, is that your mother told you that you are obsessed and obsessive, that you draw, play and read too much. She clearly suggested to you that you are abnormal, that you abnormally draw, play and read.

I don’t know that you really did draw, play and read too much/ obsessively/ abnormally. I know your mother said so.

2. “I remember that I was a very imaginative and artsy kid”- this is also something that you were told. It may be true and I tend to believe that it was, because children are imaginative by nature. But a child imagines; a child does not say to herself: I am very imaginative! I am artsy! Someone told you so.

3. “I remember.. I was a homebody and I remember my mother being concerned about me loving home more than going out, she thought something was off”- again, your mother sent you the message that there is something abnormal and unusual about you, something that is off.

I don’t know if there was a realistic reason for concern on her part. Maybe there was nothing to be concerned about, for.. a normal mother. You see, it can be that you were very normal and she was abnormal, inaccurately projecting her .. abnormality into a little normal girl.

4. “I remember.. I genuinely had more fun at home than going out… My.. school peers .. at times they wanted me to  play, other times rejected me”- I think that this is the usual experience for children in school- being accepted by some, at times and being rejected at other times.

5. “I remember…was kinda of an intellectual, but sucked at math, I felt stupid.. When I was 6 or 9 years  old, my peers and classmates overwhelmed me with their desire for me to draw stuff to  them”.

– Notice that you are no longer talking about being 4 and younger than 4. Notice how little you remember from 4 and younger (most of which is what you were told, not what you experienced), even though only yesterday you wrote that you have memories of “almost everything ever prior being 4”- what you actually remember is very little and far, far from being almost everything.

You remember being “kinda of an intellectual”- no. This is something you either were told early on or looking back you figured (as an older child, a teenager maybe) that back then you were an intellectual. What is clear is that you liked to draw for a while and you did it well.

6. “I remember.. I have a temper so  often teachers lamented that I was very short fused”- maybe you were short fused because it was difficult to live with a mother who repeatedly sent you the message that you were abnormal, unusual and that something was off about you. You were frustrated and angry as a result, then acted unusually in school which confirmed to your mother (and to yourself) that oh, there really is something off about me!

anita

Dear Gaia:

You wrote: “I was very sensitive to criticism”.

Do you think that there is a single child in the whole wide world who is not very sensitive to criticism?

anita

Dear Gaia:

I don’t understand your answer: do you mean that some children are not very sensitive to criticism and are able to shrug criticism off easily, meaning it doesn’t bother them to be criticized?

anita

Dear Gaia:

“I was very sensitive to criticism”- every child is very sensitive to criticism and every adult is still sensitive to criticism. Some older children and adults develop (over time) what I call the Teflon-ability- nothing, including criticism, seems to stick to them (like cooking an egg in a Teflon pan, the egg doesn’t stick to the pan). This is what you referred to as people’s ability to “shrug is off a lot more easily”.

But even the Teflon people are sensitive to criticism, not liking it.

Put it in another way: just as every child feels pain when falling and injuring a leg, so does every child feel emotional pain when criticized.

I re-read your posts on this thread this morning. I read about the little girl (you) “pulling my dolls hair in spite” and later, as a teenager, pulling her own hair. I read about the girl angry at her mother for “making me less carefree.. preventing me from.. joy”, the girl”jealous and envious of others”- others who seem to have the carefree life you wish you had.

I read about the girl who feels that she is treated by peers with  coldness and indifference while she treats others with coldness and detachment: “peers who treated me with coldness or indifference… others can’t help but feel coldness or detachment from me… people being indifferent to me”.

A girl/ young woman who is “very uncomfortable anytime I have to interact with someone….. in relation with others.. most often I can’t help but feel taken by intense overwhelming uncomfortableness, cringiness, discomfort… being in social environments make me feel sh** with myself”.

When you were very young you thoughts things will be  okay later- way later, when you grow up, but then the OCD hit you at 16, and now.. you are already grown up, but things are not  okay: “I was very young and I knew I was very young and had all the time to develop into  something that would made me proud. Then my ocd hit me.. finding that my mind and my self just functioned in weird, twisted ways”.

My thoughts this morning: there is no doubt in my mind that it will be better for you to no longer live with your mother/ family, but instead- live far away. I understand that you cannot afford it. And that you will soon be living near the university you attend (although home on weekends). What I am saying is that if it was possible for you, it would be a very good idea for you to live far away from your family. Every day you live at home, however detached you feel from your mother, the strong emotions that she brought to your mind and heart (the dread, the repulsion, are such two that you mentioned) these can’t resolve while you are still exposed to the person who brought about these emotional experiences into you.

On the other hand, if you did move far away, you will take that dread, repulsion, intense discomfort, cringiness, anger and jealousy of others- you will take all these emotional experiences with you wherever you go, making relationships either impossible or very troubled.

What needs to happen is you moving away and attending some sort of psychotherapy or counseling so to heal from what your mother did to you.

I understand that you experienced rejection, mistreatment and indifference and so forth from other people, but it is the rejection, mistreatment and indifference from your mother that hurt you deeply and set the stage for you to feel these things about people who reject, mistreat and ignore  you and people who  don’t reject you, mistreat and ignore you. In other words, because she mistreated you, you experience mistreatment from everyone.

My own experience in life, childhood, teenage, up to your age 21 was not better than yours, including severe OCD.

It is from my own life experience that I tell you: it is very possible for you to get better and better, find calm in yourself, a sense of solid identity, a better and better understanding of yourself and others- but you will need at some point to move away and attend counseling. Maybe counseling first, before moving away.

As I re-read your posts today, a few questions came to my mind (so that I understand better), answer them if you want to. I know English is not the language you are most comfortable with, so feel free to use the dictionary as you put together your answers, and take your time doing so. As you can see, I invest a lot of time and energy in trying to understand you. I want you to invest your time and energy to help me understand you better:

1. You wrote: “what caused a huge part of this cringiness is that I did a lot of embarrassing things and SAID embarrassing things”- can you give me examples of embarrassing things you did and said?

2. You wrote regarding your mother: “the reason I don’t like to talk with her is because she go to act like a psychologist trying to make deep heavy sessions out of  people”- can you type away what she says during those heavy sessions: what she said to you, what you said to her, what she said next, and so on?

3. You wrote: “my mother unfulfilled desires or feelings make her feel entitled to project those on us and at times, lash out in a way that repel us”- can you describe in detail how she projects her desires and feelings on you, what did she or does she actually say, and how does she lash  out?

anita

Dear Gaia:

You shared before: “I had a overall smooth home life.. Nothing truly remarkable”, and that you and your mother “Always had a fair relationship”-

– not true, cannot possibly be true.

It cannot possibly be true because you also shared: “I dread spending time alone with her, I  just have this irrational repulsive feeling at the idea that she might try to  do deep conversations or inquire about me”.

The emotions of dread and repulsion connected to your other do not go together with “a fair relationship” with your mother, with a “smooth home life”, or with “Nothing truly remarkable” having happened in your home.

Your mental/ emotional issues at 21 also do not go together with a fair relationship, a smooth home life and nothing remarkable that having happened in that home. What you described in your most recent post is the shut-down that happened to you in your home. When a child/person is under great distress, the person shuts down. It is similar to a tree in great distress- having no water in the ground. What it does is shutting down: shedding leaves, then shedding branches, shedding everything possible so to remain alive on little to no water.

These are the ways a human shuts down (taken from your most recent post): “my life is dull”- if your ability to see color is like a branch of a tree, you shed that branch, and life looks dull, no color.

“it takes my brain some seconds to recognize something happening around and how  to interact with it…. I don’t know what to do with my hands and with my eyes, how to interact with all the things happening around.. I genuinely look off or subtly uncoordinated”- if your ability to pay immediate attention to what happens around you in the here-and-now is like a branch of a tree, you shed that branch.

Sometime in your childhood, life at home was so distressing that you shut down, shed those branches. What remained is an overthinking, fantasizing brain that is not paying attention to the real- life distressing home life. And that is the purpose of the shut down: to not pay attention to that dread and repulsion you feel about your mother, to not pay attention to her emotional outbursts and lashing out.

But the body cannot shut down attention only at home and not outside home: you shut down your attention to your mother so that you were able to have as smooth of a home life as possible, but you are also  shut down to everything that goes on outside of you.

The good news is that the shut down is not permanent. You do have some ability to interact, it just takes you longer. And you can increase your ability to interpret a situation and interact with it effectively. I too was shut down, I too felt uncoordinated and clumsy and didn’t know how to interact  with other people, as if I too “just entered another dimension that don’t belong to me I can’t comprehend and I’m forced to act”.

Sometimes I felt okay with people, laughing a lot, almost hyper, but most of the time I was clueless as to what was happening and what I should do or say, and I felt out of place, weird, and abnormal. And I imagined everyone can see that and pity me or think  so very little of me.

With healing, which I started in 2011, I no longer feel this way. It took a few years of healing work though.

anita

Dear Gaia:

Maybe our communication here can help you. If you want, thoroughly and attentively answer my three questions to you in my yesterday post to you. Like I wrote to you yesterday, you will need to invest in what I hope is our effort together, to understand you better and better.

Invest, and we will continue.

Don’t invest- and we will not.

anita