Dear Junsheng:

You wrote about your behavior toward your ex girlfriend: “I did not call her names, physically, or verbally abuse her – but I have often been unable to keep my temper in check whenever I am in distress…I have also been guilty of shutting her out (silent treatments)”.

I suppose your mother gave you the silent treatment that time, when she didn’t speak with you for a few weeks.

When people experience distress, they respond in different ways: some respond in overtly aggressive ways, others respond in covertly aggressive ways. The loving way to respond, when one is angry at another, is in an honest, assertive and responsible way. To talk about it (not to execute the silent treatment), to gather and verify information (not to assume and automatically blame), to consider one’s responsibility for the problem as well as the other’s, and to allow oneself and the other the opportunity to correct their behavior, when wrong.

If you hold on to the perception that your parents are “absolutely wonderful people”, then you figure that your impatience with them is evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, that you are an unloving man, a bad person, perhaps.

It is a big step toward mental health and future healthy and loving relationships to figure see reality more and more closely to what it is. It is only when you see your parents as less than absolutely wonderful, perfectly perfect, that you are able to see yourself as one who was born good and loving.

anita

Dear Junsheng:

I am glad you asked for my thoughts (I have plenty of those…)

You wrote: “Certain situations may have triggered my mum’s reaction (silent treatments) towards me… I did do something wrong/flawed back then to trigger her reaction towards me that way”-

I will be making a very important point about your quote and I hope you pay attention to it. I hope you focus on the following and consider it, take it best you can, because, I believe, it can be of great help to you:

When your mother gave you the silent treatment (a form of punishment, a covert way of aggression), she did not react to you doing something wrong. It was she who did something wrong.

She was the actor of wrong doing, not the reactor.

It is not until you realize this point, that you can assume correct responsibility in your present life, in all your relationships. Until you realize this point, you will tend to believe you are responsible for more than you are, carry on false responsibility, and burdened by such guilt, alternately blame yourself and others, back and forth.

Taking the correct responsibility for your behavior is fundamental.

You wrote: “Perhaps, instead of thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong with me, I should accept my faults and try to make myself better everyday”-

You believe that “there is something fundamentally wrong with (you)” because you took responsibility for your mother’s actions and called them reactions to you being .. fundamentally wrong.

anita

Dear Junsheng:

“getting upset”, feeling anything is never wrong. Feelings are never wrong. Only behavior can be wrong.

Feelings happen to us without our choosing, therefore they are not right or wrong.

No choice= no right/wrong.

Some people are impulsive and react automatically, or almost automatically. They feel something and immediately act, without thinking, considering, evaluating. They react automatically to what they feel.

Considering the specific of a child and parent- a child is born with the biological need to be physically taken care of by the parent, dependent on the parent for survival. This means that a child is born with the motivation to please the parent, to be liked and loved by the parent. To hurt a parent would risk the child’s chances of physical survival.

When a parent is aggressive toward the child, unloving, the child is greatly threatened, because of his dependence on the aggressive, unloving person. What happens next is that the child makes believe the parent is safe and loving and is only reacting to the child’s faultiness, defectiveness, badness and so forth. And so, if the child becomes good, then the parent will be a safe, loving parent.

So the child tries and tries, but occasionally the aggression against the child repeats. The child keeps trying, holding on to any and every seemingly loving act by the parent as proof of that love the child needs so desperately, be it food, as it often is. A smile here and there, a word.

In the context of a child and parent (except, maybe, for detectable brain abnormalities a child may be born with), the parent is always the actor and the child is the reactor. Aggression is always initiated by the parent, acted by the parent and it is always a wrong doing.

anita

Dear Junsheng:

You are not a child anymore, you wrote. Your brain though was formed when you were a child. The beliefs about who you are were formed then and exist now.

Post again anytime.

anita