Dear Seaturtle:

I just noticed that by mistake, I wished you happy birthday on your old thread instead of on this one. So, here I am, wishing you a Shakti-full, Samskaras-empty, All Chakras working together for the greater good birthday and Year Ahead!

anita

Hi Seaturtle!

Happy 25th Birthday! How was your party?

As you guessed, people pleasing has it’s roots in trauma. So basically, when there is a child there is something called magical thinking. Our brains automatically seek patterns.

Your father conditioned you to cater to his needs with verbal abuse. Perhaps your “reward” sometimes was not being verbally abused? Not being praised, just not being attacked verbally. Some “reward”, huh?

Back to the magical thinking and patterns. So you picked up this idea as a child that if you did everything perfectly then MAYBE there would be peace for you. We all seek control in the chaos in abusive situations as children. The alternative that it is just chaos is too frightening.

But children don’t do everything perfectly do they? Heck, even adults don’t. So no matter how hard you tried, it was never enough because he was always looking for mistakes as an excuse to unleash his abuse upon you.

The secret is that there was no actual rhyme nor reason to his behaviour. If he was in a bad mood he would find a reason to abuse you. This is the truth.

So you’re in this abusive situation with a father with unstable emotions being told to manage his emotions for him. Such a large responsibility for a child and frightening to be at his whims.

Recognizing that it is not your responsibility to manage someone’s emotions and it is not your fault if they snap at you (unless you did something seriously wrong) is how to get past people pleasing. Getting used to setting boundaries with unhealthy people is helpful too. It is stressful at first, but you get used to it with practice.

I think it’s helpful to view people as equals. Your emotions matter as much as theirs do. But you still have the responsibility to take care of yourself and they have the responsibility to take care of themselves. If that makes sense?

I don’t think it’s selfish, it’s just not your responsibility unless they are a child as children often need help with regulating their emotions because they are still learning. But even then, it is important for them to learn developmentally appropriate self-soothing techniques. My son is currently learning to fall asleep without being held or fed. Next, he will learn to fall asleep by himself.

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏

Dear Seaturtle:

“Kind of funny, my dad and I shared a mother, in a way. Although she had 7 boys, my dad being the oldest boy… I became my grandma’s little girl she always wanted. So although the same mom as my dad I am sure she treated me with more favor.“- your father was her 2nd child and first boy. Six boys and 21 years later, you were born, and, in practice, you became her long-awaited 2nd girl. I imagine she did indeed treat you, when you were growing up, differently than she treated her first boy, when he was growing up, a few decades earlier.

She treated all 8 children somewhat differently, and treated you perhaps most differently.

I didn’t know until you shared today that you spent so much time with your grandmother: how did she treat you?

anita

Hi Seaturtle

I’m sorry to hear that you were made to feel imperfect as a child from all sides. The beauty of being a child is being imperfectly perfect. Making mistakes is a huge part of growing up. Raising my son, he does things that are stressful sometimes. His crying was stressful early on, he wakes through the night and he is a messy eater. But it is all part of being a baby. It’s not the child’s fault the parent experiences stress when the child does something natural for a child (like making a mess). It is a parent’s job to learn to manage the situation and their own emotions properly instead of blaming the child.

It sounds like your father tried to control you to a horrific degree. The more details you share, the more grim the picture. Made to exercise the way he wanted, made to do what he wanted and made to think and feel what he wanted. No wonder you were feeling hypervigilant cleaning up after the party.

An image of a young Seaturtle comes to mind. Worrying about crumbs. Hypervigilant and fearing her father’s punishment. You didn’t deserve any of it. You deserved to feel safe, happy and loved in your own home. Such difficult circumstances that you had to grow up in.

This type of thing with the letter… I have some baggage here, so I don’t know if my thoughts are correct. I welcome Anita or Roberta to give their input on this if they have any?

My instincts are pessimistic and say that your instincts are correct about the gaslighting. It reminds me of my mother who likes to play a role on special occasions. But outside of special occasions, doesn’t act in that way. Has your father ever behaved like that at all before?

Then another small part of my mind is playing devil’s advocate. Well relationships can improve after children move out. Perhaps he is trying to change?

Well done on handling your roommate and her temper when it comes to money. People who lash out about money tend to have very individual and unique beliefs about it. In my experience, the only way to not trigger them is to follow their rules. But, it may not suit you to do so. The only other way would be to get a new roommate or get used to the situation.

It is difficult with your friend who has ADHD and Depression. I think that your feelings about it being difficult to spend time with someone who is gloomy and won’t stop talking about that type of thing is honestly fair.

But at the same time this is how someone with ADHD and Depression acts. Expecting her to be able to control her behaviour and act differently. It’s extremely unlikely from my point of view.

I don’t know if you knew she had ADHD before this conversation or if you know much about ADHD as a condition?

I don’t think that you were being mean or unfair. Just perhaps that you were overly hopeful of her ability to change and not aware of the impact of her conditions. It is an honest thing to happen.

The conversation is a trigger for her though. People with ADHD regularly encounter people complaints about things like talking too much, which is as she said is a part of her condition. The negativity is a result of the depression though. The depression may make it more difficult than usual to manage the ADHD as well.

I think a difficulty for you may be that as you have said you try really hard to work on yourself. It isn’t easy the work you are doing but you are doing amazingly and should be proud of yourself. Understandably, you feel like she should try to and see her as an equal in this way.

But sometimes being an equal doesn’t mean treating someone in the same way as you. We are all unique individuals.

I also think that her being triggered and her comments about her feelings could be hurtful to you? Do you feel hurt by her?

All around it is a difficult situation for you because you have to figure out how you want to manage this friendship.

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏

Dear Seaturtle:

* I am adding this comment following a few hours of putting this post together, so to let you know that parts of it may be distressing to read. Please read when calm, take breaks, and as always: remember that you can read only a part of it, or no part at all. My goal in this post is: Win-Win, Win for you, Win for me. Here it is:

The more I understand you, the more I understand myself.

Original post, April 12, 2024: “Hello, I have been reading from Michael Singer… Michael Singer calls these blockages ‘Samskaras’ which come from the Buddhist concept of clinging… Clinging happens when we resist or hold on… a blockage inside of us…  I would really like to discover more ways to uncover and release these samskaras… I want to live from a place of surrender, by accepting things the way they are and acknowledging the outside world cannot fix my inside world“-

-A few quotes from Michael Singer that I like: “When a problem is disturbing you, don’t ask, ‘What should I do about it?’ Ask, ‘What part of me is being disturbed by this?'”, “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it.”, “True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection.”.

What I get from these 3 quotes is that, in my case, the part of me that is disturbed by my mother’s shaming, judgmental and accusatory voice (a voice regenerated and expanded by my brain), is the part of me that believes that what her voice is telling me- is objectively true. The part of me that is disturbed by some of the experiences in my current, daily life, is the part that allows her voice to interpret these experiences for me.

* My voice, through the years, having believed her voice, and having interpreted earlier life experiences through her voice, has added a lot more content to her voice, making it much more verbose and comprehensive.

My true personal growth is about realizing that I don’t have to live under the oppression and misinterpretation of her voice (and what I added to it); that I don’t have to either submit to her voice, or to keep fighting it (trying to protect myself from it). Instead, it’s about transcending it, meaning, to no longer Fight it, Flight it (run away), or Freeze.

To transcend it, I need to no longer believe in it, to no longer have faith in it.

I started my first reply to you in this thread, with: “Dear Seaturtle: I would like it if this thread will not be only a conversation between you and I, but a place where more members will participate in, members with more knowledge of Buddhism.“. In your reply (your 2nd post), you quoted me and added:  “-I would love nothing more!“. I now assume that you meant that indeed, you would love getting more people to participate in your thread.

But that’s not what I heard when I first read it (and for some time later). What I heard was you saying to me something like this: anita, you suck, I have no regard for you and what you want to say to me, you are of no importance;  this is why I would love valuable, important people to reply to me.

I interpreted your 5-word sentence through her voice, carrying her message (italicized).

Let’s look at the voice within you (Oct 11, 2023): “My dad would accuse me of planning my showers around avoiding talking to him… If my boyfriend is showering by the time I come over I think, ‘wait why couldn’t he plan his shower so he would be out when I got here, he must not care very much about our time together.‘ I know it’s ridiculous right? all these are ways my mind just was exhausted living with him and I needed to get away from, well now I am realizing I needed to get away from myself“- your father’s voice kept being regenerated (and expanded on, I assume) by your brain while you were living with your boyfriend at the time. It is my understanding now, that what exhausted you so much back then, was fighting the voice, or running away from it, keeping your brain-body in state of ongoing, distressing motion (Fight, Flight, Freeze), no rest. Coming to think about it, no-rest is in the title of your first thread: “Please help me, my mind hasn’t rested in 8 months” (July 29, 2023).

You believed your father’s voice when he accused you of not caring about him, of being selfish, unloving (being a bad daughter), when you didn’t plan to shower before he arrived home, and when you didn’t otherwise make yourself perfectly available and attentive to him when he was home. Believing his accusations caused you lots of distress. Fast forward, living with a boyfriend, your father’s voice was interpreting your life situations for you.

Maybe, having taken in (internalizing) your father’s accusations, you proceeded to project them into your boyfriend. So, when projecting those, you were temporarily free of them, free of the distress that accompany believing that you are selfish and uncaring, a bad person, that is. And this became a kind of an addiction, an addiction that exhausted you. Maybe.

Fast forward to April 30, 2024 (this thread): “I notice in my adult life now, I often ask how I could be better.. I told my employer once to let me know if I was doing anything that bothered them so that I could fix it… I seek validation from my roommate about my behavior… living with my father and I was constantly called selfish or ungrateful. I don’t want my actions to hurt other people or offend them, but I also want to live in alignment with my true self. Is our true self selfish? How do I think of others and care for them, without comprising my true self?“- right here, it reads like you have a core belief (a belief formed early in life) that you are a bad person who hurts other people, who needs validation that you are not hurting people, a core belief that your father instilled in you by constantly calling you selfish and ungrateful: two adjectives that amount to being a bad daughter=> a bad person.

So, your dilemma, or conflict, expressed in the quote right above is: “I don’t want my actions to hurt other people“, that is, I don’t want to be bad, “but I also want to live in alignment with my true self. Is our true self selfish?“, but my authentic self is allegedly bad, so how can I be okay being my authentically bad self?

May 8, 2024: “The other angle was religion, my mom spoke a lot of keeping my heart pure, no lies, and treating my siblings with kindness. I remember before sleeping at night I would say ‘tomorrow I will be perfect.‘”- tomorrow, I will be a good daughter; tomorrow, I will be a good sister.. tomorrow, I will be a good person.

“This weekend at his Palm Springs house I was VERY hypervigilant, like I was living at his home as a teenager. I picked up every crumb and replaced anything I used in larger amounts. I told my friends to be careful and we left the place spotless“- at 25,  still trying to get your father to say that you are a good daughter, a good person.

“But this is the mind trick: When I emailed him ‘thank you’ and told him about the food I replaced and anything we used, he responded –’... You were probably overly considerate of utilizing some of the goods in the house. I suppose we could have had a conversation about that, because I would have wanted you to feel more freedom to help yourself on basically everything…‘…  I felt gaslit when I read this email, because if I would have left anything out of order, I know he would have said things. But he is acting as if I am the hypervigilant one and he has never asked such a thing of me“- he is changing the rules on you: all those years, his rule was that to become a good daughter, you’d need to be perfectly hypervigilant in his house. And now.. you are supposed to earn the title good daughter by NOT being hypervigilant.. enraging, is it?

Thing is, neither is the way to earn the title good person from him. During a critical time in your earlier life, when core beliefs are formed, he projected some other person or persons into you- inaccurately, and so, his legacy in your life has been the formation of a false core belief, which is that you are a bad person.

(I am guessing that behind his email is that you being so careful to replace the food in his frig, etc., made him appear- in  his mind- like a stingy person, a scrooge who does not allow his own daughter to eat his food, so he reacted to that image of himself).

My mother’s legacy in my life has been the message- turned core belief- that I am a bad person, bad and inferior to others. We humans (and sea turtles, lol) have this need to believe that we are good people. Some people cross a line of no-return and permanently block this need (antisocial personalities), but you and I are far from crossing that line. We still want to believe that we are good people, and we want others to believe it too.

Let’s believe it about ourselves and about each other..?

anita