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  • #275097
    Wanderer
    Participant

    Anita, are you there?

    #275157
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Wanderer:

    I am glad you reached out to me with that short line above because I was not aware that you posted a week ago, your last post on page 1. What probably happened was that your name didn’t appear by the title of your thread following that submission, so I didn’t know you posted.

    In that last post you wrote that you “did not like the intensity of the frequent arguments” with your mother, that she had the ability to “get to me”, that you were so frustrated with those arguments that you “recall punching/ slamming doors very hard out of sheer frustration”.

    In your last post you took responsibility for her arguing with you, stating, “how selfish I was”, suggesting that she wouldn’t have argued with you if you weren’t so selfish and “if I didn’t do stupid teenage things”. You suggested that you were an exceptionally selfish teenager, doing exceptionally stupid things, “that would have given any parent a real challenge”.

    You wrote about the women you were involved with: “I barely know these people! After initial contact, the conversation usually explodes”-

    What if you barely know who your mother was?

    You have to see your mother as she was before you can see any other woman for who she is.

    Your attraction I remember is toward “bad girls” with tattoos and piercing and such.. is it possible, Wanderer, that your mother was not a saint (as you suggested she was) but a bad girl, or a bad woman, one that argued with her daughters so relentlessly that she ran away from home; one who argued with her son so relentlessly that he punched doors… and continued to argue quite viciously no matter how badly she hurt her own children by doing so?

    anita

     

     

    #275657
    Wanderer
    Participant

    Thank you for your continued input Anita.

    I think you are confusing my thread with another. I have never dated anyone described as “bad girls with piercings/tattoos”. Quite the contrary, they’ve always been the “ideal type”. However, it is interesting you say that because the cold/distant women I described earlier are usually the ones I end up with the longest.

    Perhaps I didn’t know my Mum as well as I thought. She certainly was secretive. We didn’t even know Mum’s age until she passed away. We only found out she was married before our father when finding an old picture in the loft. It is hard because I remember mixed emotions with her all the time. Her mood was very changeable.

    I decided to attend “relationship counselling”. I will start soon, possibly next week. I obviously have an unhealthy attitude towards relationships and feel I am going into them for the wrong reason. I hope that I can do better in a face-to-face environment, because the more we speak, the harder it is for me to contribute. I am trying to keep an open mind, but am struggling with my memory. I am not trying to be stubborn, I really want what’s best for my mental health, and if that means forcing myself to admit there were difficult parts of my childhood then that’s fine. I agree that the intensity and frequent nature of the arguments were tough, even damaging. But it is hard for me to draw conclusions as my sister seems perfectly “normal” in comparison. Why me? Why have I been the one to develop such tendencies. From your previous posts, I remember others asking for memory techniques to refresh oneself of their troubled past. I remember your responses have been that the memories are alive in your current actions/words. As I am struggling with my childhood memories, I wonder what I can share currently that might give a hint as to what direction I should look at.

     

    #275689
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Wanderer:

    I read your recent post and it seems like I combined part of someone else’s thread with yours for a moment there, so better I re-read your thread tomorrow and reply then. But for now you mentioned your sister responding differently to the same one mother you shared, but that is most common, siblings reacting very differently to a parent. For one, a parent doesn’t treat all siblings the same, but more of a factor is that a sibling often takes the opposite role to the role of a sibling they observe, so if the one observed is a rebel, the “bad son”, or daughter, for example, the one observing will be the compliant one, the “good son”.

    You wrote that your mother was secretive, that fits with what I remember that you shared (and I hope my memory is accurate here, let me know), that your mother used to say often that there is only one of her. You wrote that you didn’t know what she meant. I think she meant that there was no one quite on her side, that it was her against the world, although she may have been referring in part to your father not helping enough with parenting)

    I will soon be away from the computer for about fifteen hours, will re-read and read anything you may add by then. Will reply then, with a fresh brain, improved memory.

    anita

    #275727
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Wanderer:

    I read all of your posts this morning attentively. I didn’t read my own or other members’ posts on your thread, only yours. In your recent post you asked: “my sister seems perfectly ‘normal’ in comparison. Why me?”- if she has healthy relationships with people, if she has a more whole sense of self, not fragmented like yours (you used the word fragmented), then it can be because that family of the best friend she had, the family with whom she spent time with before running away from home and with whom she lived when she was 16 and on, made a huge difference in her life. Maybe they validated Reality for her, the reality of her mother doing her wrong, not the other way around. Without false guilt, your sister was free to proceed with life.

    You, on the other hand, didn’t have that outside support and you took all the responsibility for what was wrong in the home, none of which was yours- false guilt.  Here is your false guilt: “I.. would describe myself as selfish… we certainly made life difficult for Mum. Since puberty, I can only remember being selfish… A typical brat of a teenager… We certainly got along better since I moved out and became more independent/less selfish… I do distinctly remember arguing a lot because I was a selfish teenager… The more I think back to particularly troubling times, the more I am reminded by how selfish I was”.

    At the same time that you establish in no uncertain terms that you were Selfish, you also established that your mother was a Saint: “My mum has always been a saint in  my eyes”. So what we have here is a Saint mother and a Selfish son-

    – a complete departure from Reality. As a child you were innocent, she was guilty. She was selfish, not you.

    You wrote: “Mum loved us more than life itself, and would therefore accept any criticism of her upbringing of us if she thought her babies were suffering mentally as a result”- I don’t think so. I think she would argue against any criticism of her. Not arguing would be a departure of her habit of arguing daily, year after year, for decades, and she intentionally caused her children mental suffering by shaming and emotionally blackmailing the two of you (“We argued incessantly… Shame and emotional blackmail were common themes amongst the daily arguments… I almost think she must have thrived off it because the amount of energy she put into arguing was excessive. She would argue with herself, you would ignore it hoping it would stop, then hours later she would still be going”).

    Here is what I think happened: your emotional experience living with your mother was so distressing, your emotional suffering so intense, that naturally you removed most of those arguments, most of your distress from your awareness best your brain was capable of doing (“My memory is seriously hazy, it’s almost as if I have blocked out a lot of this”).

    Here is a bit about how you felt as a child, the nature of that emotional suffering: “That inner turmoil is the worst feeling in the world for me. I have been here so many times,  I am all too familiar with it… it doesn’t go away”… The only thing that has stopped this feeling is to break off contact. It feels like a huge catharsis. I am able to function again”- as a child you wanted to run away but didn’t. You never got that “huge catharsis”. You suffered a lot.

    This intense emotional suffering, having been removed from your awareness in the context of you-your mother, gets  activated in the context of your relationships with women. It is that suffering that eats into you until you can’t endure it and you run away, “as soon as I sense they are ‘into me’, I feel an overwhelming sensation to stop all contact… The longer I go without breaking off contact, the more it ‘eats into me'”.

    Isn’t it interesting, and fortunate for your sister, that she was able to run away from your mother once and stay away, no longer needing to run away, but you did not run away from your mother but you keep running away from women, again and again.

    You wrote that you would love  to “quit playing these silly fames” with women. You are not playing silly games, you are running away from an insufferable emotional experience of living with your mother for nineteen years.

    Regarding you seeing women as “‘unworthy’, then purely use them for sex/ casual fun, or consider them ‘worthy/dateable’ then struggle enormously to end contact”, I think that the man that you became found a solution of sorts: how to have fun with women and not suffer. You found a group of women with whom you can take a break from suffering  and have some fun. Hopefully, with healing, this solution will no longer be necessary.

    (“Mum used to constantly remind us that there is only 1 of her… She would also remind us that she never remarried, and that it was easy for our father”. I think she didn’t want the life she had, she wanted what your father had, freedom from taking care of children, only “every fortnight for the weekend” with the kids, not full time).

    anita

     

     

    #276785
    Wanderer
    Participant

    Thank you again Anita for your continued input. I really appreciate it! My apologies for the late response (again). I have only just read this, partly because I didn’t feel I had the mental strength to approach this while being at work. Now I’m off work for 3 days I continue to tackle my problems.

     

    You wrote that your mother was secretive, that fits with what I remember that you shared (and I hope my memory is accurate here, let me know), that your mother used to say often that there is only one of her. You wrote that you didn’t know what she meant. I think she meant that there was no one quite on her side, that it was her against the world, although she may have been referring in part to your father not helping enough with parenting)

     

    Yes. This resonates with me. She would often claim that no one was on her side (2vs1). And she definitely carried the attitude “me against the world”, she wasn’t very positive. Whilst she was right, that my father did indeed have it easy in comparison, I had never thought about the implications of what that actually meant. When I think back to the life she must have had before children, I can see now that she may well have resented the difficult challenge of raising two children on her own.  She was an Air-Stewardess and therefore got to travel the world, back when Aviation was glamorous, layovers in exotic locations, per diem allowances for being away from home etc. She stopped once becoming pregnant with me, and never went back to work until I was about 16, where she enrolled as a mature student to get a degree and start her teaching placements. Possibly the constant arguments were her way of venting her frustration at how her life had irreversibly changed.

     

    Your idea that my sister has a healthier sense of self, and therefore better relationships with people because she was able to leave home and receive validation for her decision is interesting. It is something I would like to think about/discuss more in time. Especially in the context of my situation, and the fact I didn’t “rebel” in this way. When I spoke with my sister several weeks back (based on previous posts mentioned), I was struck by how “grown up”/matured she seemed. She has always been my little sister, and I guess I have always dismissed her as a “silly naive child” , but after hearing her speak, I can see she has a good sense of who she is, and seems to be at peace with herself. Complete opposite of me! One thing I might add on this topic is that she is quite close with Dad, of which I am not. They became much closer after Mum passed.

     

    At the same time that you establish in no uncertain terms that you were Selfish, you also established that your mother was a Saint: “My mum has always been a saint in  my eyes”. So what we have here is a Saint mother and a Selfish son-

    – a complete departure from Reality. As a child you were innocent, she was guilty. She was selfish, not you.

     

    Agreed. She was not a saint. But it is hard for me to fully agree with above as I do not remember the vicious arguments as a young child. I have fond memories of growing up, cycling together as a family, spending time at mutual friends houses as a family, laughing.. Whereas this seems to stop when I hit about 12-13. My sister agrees with me on this, she has fond memories of our primary school, but things drastically changed when we went to secondary school.

     

    This intense emotional suffering, having been removed from your awareness in the context of you-your mother,gets  activated in the context of your relationships with women. It is that suffering that eats into you until you can’t endure it and you run away, “as soon as I sense they are ‘into me’, I feel an overwhelming sensation to stop all contact… The longer I go without breaking off contact, the more it ‘eats into me’”.Isn’t it interesting, and fortunate for your sister, that she was able to run away from your mother once and stay away, no longer needing to run away, but you did not run away from your mother but you keep running away from women, again and again.You wrote that you would love  to “quit playing these silly fames” with women. You are not playing silly games, you are running away from an insufferable emotional experience of living with your mother for nineteen years.

     

    Above is very interesting. I want this to be true because I feel it is an important step on the road to healing. But the truth is, I just don’t know still. I am still confused how the “sensing they are into me” part is linked with the instant feeling of wanting to run away. It’s difficult for me to get my head around this. The fact I can go on for months and feel content/even happy with pursuing someone as long as I don’t sense they are “into me”. As long as they are the cold/distant type, I continue to focus on them without these horrible feelings. I hate the fact that in reality, these women are likely seeing other men/keeping their options open, and are clearly not “worthy” of my attention, yet these are the types of people who I will pursue. I tried recently talking to someone I had just met about the situation. They thought it was interesting that the “red flags” cold/distant women send actually happen to be the very things that cause me to chase them. When actually, most other people would take these “red flags” as a sign they are not worthy. After all, why would you want to seriously date someone who you potentially think is seeing someone else ? It just doesn’t make sense. When they told me this, it did strike me as odd that I feel this way.

     

    Regarding you seeing women as “‘unworthy’, then purely use them for sex/ casual fun, or consider them ‘worthy/dateable’ then struggle enormously to end contact”, I think that the man that you became found a solution of sorts: how to have fun with women and not suffer. You found a group of women with whom you can take a break from suffering  and have some fun. Hopefully, with healing, this solution will no longer be necessary.

     

    This makes sense to me. I guess it is my coping mechanism, my safety net to enjoy natural urges of being a man, without having too encounter the difficulties I experience with “dateable” women.

    #276797
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Wanderer:

    You are welcome and please feel free to post anytime, no such thing as a late response. This is a difficult topic and I am positively impressed every time you return to your thread. It takes courage and determination to examine what you are examining here.

    I learned more about your mother in your last share, about her life before she was pregnant with you. “she definitely carried the attitude ‘me against the world'”. The arguments with you were her against her son. The arguments with your sister were her against her daughter.

    Regarding your sister, I don’t know her, don’t know if she “has a healthier sense of self”. In my previous post to you I wrote if she has healthy relationships etc. You wrote that when you spoke with her several weeks back, you were “struck by how ‘grown up’/mature she seemed”. She may very well be mature, again I don’t know. But I do know that almost every person, no matter how troubled, anxious and unwell much of the time, he/ she has moments of appearing well, sensible, calm and having-it- all-together. This is why first impressions are suspect and better know the person over time and in different contexts.

    There is no doubt though that your experience and your sister’s experience were not identical, there was that family of her best friend, she was closer to her father (I don’t know from what age), her mother treated her not in the very same way she treated you, and so on.

    It may very well be that your sister hasn’t seen your mother as a Saint, not for a long, long time and so, she saw Reality better than you did, accepting it with some calm, and that does lead to better mental health.

    Regarding “I can go on for months and feel content/ even happy with pursuing someone as long as I don’t sense they are ‘into me’. As long as they are cold/ distant type… these are the types of people who I will pursue… why would you want to seriously date someone who you potentially think is seeing someone else? It just doesn’t make sense”-

    -it makes sense to me: if a woman is cold, distant, may be seeing someone else and is not into-you, then you are safe from being stuck, or trapped with her. You do remember the arguments with your mother, you described here on your thread very distressing times with your mother. You don’t want that trapped experience again.

    You wrote: “I do not remember the vicious arguments as a young child. I have fond memories of growing up, cycling together as a family.. but things drastically changed when we went to secondary school”-

    -children in distress remove the distress from their awareness best they can, forgetting events and/ or forgetting how they felt during bad events, the memories being dry and neutral. There is another thing about young children: they are full of life. That early youth life force, or spirit,  carries the child through a whole lot of misfortune and distress, still feeling joy over green grass and sun and joining other children in play. It takes years to break that spirit.

    anita

     

    #276845
    Wanderer
    Participant

    Anita,

    I am yet to find any posts of yours in other threads that I haven’t agreed with. The advice you’ve given to others has resonated with me. With other threads, it is clear for me to have an opinion, I guess because of my lack of involvement, I can think critically. But in my thread here, I find myself challenging your input, likely because I am heavily involved and cannot think critically. Logic would therefore dictate that it is my own inherent bias that is preventing me from moving forward, for the incite you give is surely consistent amongst all threads. That I can see, and is evident from your many posts on this forum. I apologise if you ever feel I am playing devil’s advocate. It is my own way of rationalising, and I find it helpful to counter the points you’ve made as it allows me to fully dissect the crux of the matter. Each time you’ve responded with helpful feedback and I can confidently speak for a number of lost souls on this site, we are lucky to have you here. Thank you.

     

    My sister became closer with my father soon after mum passed away, she would have been 16, me 19. As soon as I finished university, I left for a year to go travelling the world. It turns out my sister felt very alone, and in this period she became much closer to our father, which is understandable to me. I do wonder if reconciling my relationship with Dad would help me heal. We were never close, partly because I always felt like he didn’t enjoy our company on the fortnights we shared growing up. I have never told him how I feel. Perhaps I will, I would like to know how things were between him and and Mum, especially as both myself and sister’s memory isn’t the greatest.

     

    It may very well be that your sister hasn’t seen your mother as a Saint, not for a long, long time and so, she saw Reality better than you did, accepting it with some calm, and that does lead to better mental health.

     

    She knew enough that she needed to move out from home. When she explained it to me in person during our heart-to-heart, she said that her wellbeing was at stake. So I think you’re right, she must have known and accepted that Mum was not a saint. I don’t think I could have ever moved out from home if it wasn’t for a natural excuse like university. I guess this is denial. I always felt like I had to protect mum’s image. I have never shared with anyone the frequency/intensity of the arguments we had growing up at home, until now.

     

    -it makes sense to me: if a woman is cold, distant, may be seeing someone else and is not into-you, then you are safe from being stuck, or trapped with her. You do remember the arguments with your mother, you described here on your thread very distressing times with your mother. You don’t want that trapped experience again.

     

    Bingo! I don’t know why I didn’t see this before. This explains why I get cold feet as soon as I sense they are into me, I don’t want to be trapped again.

    I would like to explore my compulsion to “get them into me”. I really put a lot of effort in, and only to throw it all away as soon as I get it! I wonder if this drive, (obsession with wooing them to show me they like me) is somehow connected to Mum’s death also. It has been suggested to me in the past that I am attempting to replicate another relationship with my Mum. Which  of course is weird. I don’t even know what this actually means either. But it is odd how I work so hard to get shown they like me, to then just run away soon after. Always rushing in, have never gotten to know anyone. I call it “push/pull’ because it’s one extreme to another, and have barely got to know the person the meantime.

     

    I am looking for a local counsellor to discuss things with. I aim to attend 1-2 times per week. You have shown me that my memories of childhood are hazy at best. I think it’s therefore a good place to start , but worry about how I am going to implement change in my life.  I am not going to ask a trivial question of how long this will take. But I would like to know what actions I can take that will maximise my chance of healing.  I want to resolve this, to enter into a relationship for the right reason and feel connected with my inner self.

    Separately, I came across this video on Youtube. It is interesting and describes some of the symptoms I suffer. It led me to believe that my experience with women are nothing more than a “distraction” to help me avoid the fear/pain I am suffering.

     

    #276847
    Wanderer
    Participant

    Hit enter before I finished.

     

    I think the pain I am suffering from is connected with my childhood.

    #276855
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Wanderer:

    Thank you for your appreciation and your kind words. It is okay with me that you are honest and disagree with me. Your honesty is most important and I appreciate it, deeply. It is not about me winning an argument. This is not an argument, it is an examination of Reality, looking at it, considering this and that. A rational  understanding of a possibility without believing in it is just an exercise. Believing in an understanding is what matters. So let’s keep examining and considering, on both sides.

    “I always felt like I had to protect mum’s image. I have never shared with anyone the frequency/ intensity of the arguments we had growing up at home, until now”-

    it would be  okay for you to protect her image if it was possible to  do  so without you tarnishing your own image. The price of promoting her image as Saint/good, is to promote your image of yourself as Selfish/ bad.

    I think that the feelings you had then, during those arguments, the anticipation of the next argument, her bringing up the old argument, and a new one… that distress was intense for you, and that distress is activated in your experience with women with whom an intimate relationship seems likely. With the intimacy comes that intolerable distress, the worst feeling in the world, I believe were your words.

    “It has been suggested to me in the past that I am attempting to replicate another relationship with my Mum… I call it ‘push/pull’ because it’s one extreme or another”-

    I think that as a human you need intimacy, always did, always will, that is the natural pull. The push is what came with that intimacy that you experienced with your mother, that most terrible or horrible feeling in the world, feeling trapped with an argumentative, angry woman who won’t stop tormenting you, really.

    I didn’t click on that Youtube, don’t want to do that. If you want to write to me what about it agreed with you, please do.

    Regarding healing, if you do choose a counselor, in the first session when you interview him or her, ask him how he (or she) views his mother and father. It will be a bad idea to be counseled by a person who  has not resolved his own issues.

    Regarding  your future relationships with women, get to know a woman, if you find her insightful, honest and trustworthy, share with her what you shared here. Don’t be alone  with your conflicts, share with her.  There may be a growing closeness with doing just that, having honest conversations, a game changer, so to speak.

    anita

     

     

    #277001
    Wanderer
    Participant

    “I always felt like I had to protect mum’s image. I have never shared with anyone the frequency/ intensity of the arguments we had growing up at home, until now”-

    it would be  okay for you to protect her image if it was possible to  do  so without you tarnishing your own image. The price of promoting her image as Saint/good, is to promote your image of yourself as Selfish/ bad.

     

    It actually feels good to admit this. It’s hard to keep denying it when in reality I have never really confided in anyone about it. That suggests to me that I clearly have gone out of my way to protect her image. Why else would I not tell anyone about it? It was traumatic.

     

    I think that the feelings you had then, during those arguments, the anticipation of the next argument, her bringing up the old argument, and a new one… that distress was intense for you, and that distress is activated in your experience with women with whom an intimate relationship seems likely.

     

    Your words are spot on. It really did get to me.  It was like a broken record, over and over again. Funny thing, I just noticed the title of this thread “Stuck on repeat”, oh the irony….!  I never felt we moved forward after arguments. We would make up, but barely discussed it afterwards. It was only a matter of time before the next blow up.

     

    I think that as a human you need intimacy, always did, always will, that is the natural pull. The push is what came with that intimacy that you experienced with your mother, that most terrible or horrible feeling in the world,

    When you mentioned intimacy, I thought to myself, what is this? I obviously strive hard to create this, and for some reason women always seem to get there very quickly with me. I’ve been told over and over again that “I’m not like other guys” and people can “sense I am a good person”…. But I think this is a load of BS, because I’ve been selfish for my entire adult life. Have hurt so many people in the past. I don’t think I’ve felt true intimacy before. I am affectionate, but I think I am “forcing it”, and could possibly be tied in with the sexual element too. I mean, how could one obtain intimacy with someone after a few meet ups and jumping into bed ?

     

    In the Youtube video I posted, it spoke to me in that it suggested my relentless perusal of women is nothing more than a distraction. The unresolved pain I carry is linked with my childhood and by the fact I have not dealt with Mum’s death. Despite the constant arguments, I felt close to Mum, and I miss her.

     

    Regarding healing, if you do choose a counselor, in the first session when you interview him or her, ask him how he (or she) views his mother and father. It will be a bad idea to be counseled by a person who  has not resolved his own issues

    Interesting! I had not thought of that. What sort of answers should I be expecting? In other words, what indications would suggest they have not dealt with issues. I guess proclaiming they were saints is a red flag. I actually called a number of different people, and found that the majority just wanted to book me in, before actually asking what the problem was. Kind of left me feeling like they just wanted the business… I guess I’ll just have to test the waters, try out several people and see which fits best. But would like to hear more about choosing the right person based on their parental outlook. Could you elaborate a little ?

     

    issues.

    #277005
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Wanderer:

    Regarding choosing a counselor, if an initial free session is a possibility, take advantage of that. Ask the counselor about his or her feelings about an adult child terminating contact with a parent based on the parent’s past behavior, in what context does he think it will be okay.

    Let’s say he answers that if the parent severely hit the kid, then it would be okay, and then says nothing else, this answer is suspect. What about a parent who severely abused the kid verbally?

    Ask him what he thinks about terminating contact with a parent who currently verbally abuses the adult child. If the counselor answers that the adult child should teach the parent to no longer be abusive, that answer will keep me from making a second appointment with that counselor. So are answers that reveal empathy for the abusive parent, encouraging the adult child to focus (more than already) on the parent’s difficult life.

    If the counselor’s answers are vague, ask a clarifying question, if the counselor is still vague, don’t make a second appointment. You can do vagueness all by yourself.

    You wrote in your recent post: “Despite the constant arguments, I felt close to Mum, and I miss her”-

    – this love that you feel for your mother, this is a very personal feeling, most precious, most deep, so very meaningful. And yet, this is how every child feels for his mother, dead or alive. No matter who she is or who she was.

    That closeness is what draws you to women (as well as the physical need for sex), this is the pull. The torment of the arguments is the push, what scares you away from them.

    anita

     

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