Dear Jenna:

You wrote in your recent post: “children taking on guilt for the adults mistake. That’s exactly what I did”- it is because a child sees an adult caretaker as perfect, all knowing, all good. So when an injury happens, physically like your foot injured, or emotional, the child feels hurt, sad, what the child does is figure she herself did something wrong, she must be bad. Because the parent/ caretaker cannot be bad, only good, like a god, all knowing, all powerful, all good.

You wrote earlier about your children: “Sometimes the last thing I want to do is being touched…I hug them all the time but if I’m being honest it makes me feel bad. Gives me a surge of anxiety every time they reach to hug me”- can you tell me about that anxiety when they reach to hug you, the anxiety you feel when they touch you, what thoughts go through your mind when that happens?

anita

Dear Jenna:

You are welcome. First thing to hold in mind is that you are not responsible for what you feel, that it is not a matter of your choosing. If it was a matter of choice, you would be choosing to love hugging your children, for a long time, however long they need. If feelings were a matter of choice… no one would be miserable, fearful or depressed, and everyone would be happy, all the time.

We don’t choose our feeling, they just happen, spontaneous chemical processes in our brains and bodies.

When you hug your children or accept their hugs, take a deep breath and calm yourself best you can. Say to yourself, I don’t choose how I feel. It is okay for me to feel however I feel. But I will still allow them to hug me at some times during the day, when they need it, I will hug them as calmly as I can and it is okay if I feel uncomfortable or numb when I hug them.

Are you aware of why you feel uncomfortable being touched, when you started feeling this way?

anita

Dear Jenna:

You are not responsible for any and all of your feelings, this is true to everyone. None of our feelings make us good or bad people, it is what we choose to do that is good or bad to ourselves and to others.

“I get so stressed when (your mother’s) upset or angry… I am always trying to find ways to make her feel better and get upset with myself when I can’t”- this is what children do, automatically taking responsibility for a parent’s ongoing anger, sadness, worry.. any kind of distress. This false responsibility is a terrible burden for a child to carry and it doesn’t disappear when the child is 18, or 28 or 78, unless we correct what we believed for so long.

This burden lowers one’s function in every part of life, including parenting. It is like carrying a heavy load on your back wherever you walk, everything you attempt to do is more difficult because of that heavy load.

“The only time I remember getting a hug is if I did something wrong and my mother, after feeling bad for overreacting apologized for yelling and hugged me”-

– can you tell me how she overreacted, what did she say and do when overreacting?

You wrote earlier about your father: “He was emotionally detached but I always knew he loved me”- can you tell me how you knew that he loved you, anything he said or did… (or was it what he didn’t do)?

anita

Dear Jenna:

“She yelled and screamed… I was probably 7 or so. She was screaming and throwing things around the room, telling me I was a slob… It was like she hated me… It was the yelling and the way she looked at me with her eyes, like I was the worst child in the world… it lasted for hours… At the end of the fight, when she was calm, she hugged me and told me she was sorry, said something funny to make me laugh and that would be it. This would happen.. every couple of months. It would feel like I ran a marathon after those episodes”.

I share your childhood experience, those episodes, I experienced them too, hours per episode, repeated over my first two decades (into my early twenties). When my mother was done she was very quiet, for hours, a whole night, the next day.. slowly, after a few days she was back to normal until the next time.

My input on what I quoted above (and I do hope it is not too difficult for you to read and consider):

1. Violence, aggression scares children. Yelling, screaming and/ or throwing things around is aggression. A child feels in danger when she witnesses aggression, even when it is not directed at her.

2. “It was like she hated me”- she did hate you during the episodes, you were able to see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice and in the content of what she said to you during the episodes.

3. “like I was the worst child in the world”- for a child, a parent is like her mirror. The child believes she is what she sees in that mirror. When your mother looked at you angrily, disapprovingly, you believed that you were a bad child. The Parent is God for a young child, so when God is angry, her human subject is guilty, bad.

4. “At the end of the fight”- it was a one-woman fight, the aggression was all hers. You didn’t fight her, you were “just laying there and crying”.

5. “it lasted for hours… It would feel like I ran a marathon after those episodes”- for hours very distressing chemicals were released into your brain and body. The purpose of those chemicals was to motivate you to run away from danger (the Flight Response) or to fight the danger (the Fight Response). It is very tiring for the body to be prepared-for-hours,  for a flight that doesn’t happen, for a fight that doesn’t happen. When an animal runs from danger and gets away, once in safety, it feels very tired and rests for a long time. But staying in the dangerous situation, there is no resting, not for hours.

You wrote in an earlier post regarding your mother: “I get so stressed when she’s upset or angry”- these are those chemicals causing the stress in the unactualized Flight or Fight. This kind of stress doesn’t happen to the child only during the episodes, but in between, whenever the child imagines her mother might be angry. This alertness in between the episodes is exhausting.

And then, away from your mother, as an adult, these chemicals still get released often and it is tiring.

5. “she hugged me and told me she was sorry, said something funny to make me laugh”- it doesn’t undo what happened, especially because you already learned that she repeated those episodes after the short make up sessions.

Your father, he was your safety because he wasn’t dangerous: “He never yelled at me like my mother. I don’t remember him ever scolding me”, and in addition to not being dangerous, he was nice to you at times: “he would joke around a lot… come to all my softball games.. played catch with me. He always seemed proud of me. He smiled a lot.. he’d always tell me everything was ok. He always made me feel safe”.

When you wrote earlier regarding your children, “When they come for affection my arms feel really heavy.. my chest tightens and I want it to end as soon as possible”- this is the safe Flight/Fight Response I mentioned earlier, the same feeling you had as a child during an episode, this is how it felt then. You want to end the hug as soon as possible so to no longer feel that stress. We can talk about this point further later, if you want.

anita

Dear Jenna:

I don’t mind you asking and I will answer you and respond to your recent, fascinating post in the morning, about 11 hours from now.

anita