Dear Leslie:

And my true name is anita. Glad you gave me your name.

I understand. Mastering fear, what does it mean? It can’t mean not feeling fear anymore as we can’t eliminate any feeling. Maybe it means to not react to fear against our well being, to not rush to get rid of fear any which way, but be discerning; For example, when afraid, take a hot bath instead of a narcotic. What does mastering fear mean to you?

anita

Dear eris:

Let me know if you’d like me to refer to you by your real name.

Before I comment on your above delightful-to-read post, I want to tell you that yesterday, after I sent you the post about mastering fear, about choosing how I react to it, as in taking a hot bath instead of a narcotic, I wanted to take a walk (4 miles, some steep parts) right after I had lunch. I was full and that triggered my fear of gaining weight and the “solution”- to burn calories via a walk. Problem is I was sick yesterday, still am. I realized taking a walk can exacerbate my cold, so… I took a hot bath instead and stayed home. If I took the walk, it is possible I would have become sicker. Instead I had a good night sleep after two nights of hardly any sleep.

Now, regarding your post: how well written and humorous as well. I like your visualization. Please do let me know how it works for you.

Regarding your last paragraph: I can relate to not being afraid traveling: I too traveled alone, with no planning whatsoever, all through Europe and to the U.S. And I often was in scary situation but felt no fear. This is because the real danger I encountered in my life was from my mother. As long as I was not with her, I was almost fearless. It is what we associate with fear that scares us, and what we associate with fear from our early childhood.

It therefore makes sense to me that you are fearless in many situations, as you described, but are very fearful, petrified when confronted with an authority figure because the latter triggers your fear association, or connection formed in early childhood.

It is like a person who is afraid of spiders is so afraid because such an association was made between spiders and fear. Another person may not be afraid of spiders, but is no less fearful of snakes.

Your five year old self has a super matador on her side, oh, yes. If only you did have someone powerful on your side when you were a child. And indeed, this is what you still need. And so do I. Only that someone-powerful, well, it has to be me.

“Things are going to change around here!”

anita

Dear eris:

Enduring distress without reacting to it destructively is a crucial aspect of mental health. It is part of emotional regulation skills or ability. And the part that beats us up will take any excuse to do so, including: I did well today, so why didn’t I do well yesterday? It is like the real person who criticized us, in reality internalized in our brain, is saying: Aha, you &$%%b- what was your excuse yesterday? Anyway, that is my projection of that Superego/ internalized parent.

It takes identifying that voice again and again, and over time silencing it.

You are a private person, is my feel. A proud person, not sharing your latest challenge/ “bad news”- I feel honored that you chose to correspond with me as I feel you choose who you interact with carefully.

anita

Dear eris:

I am glad I am getting you, and when I am not getting you, please let me know what I need to know so to keep understanding you accurately.

I think turning that inner voice (internal critic/ superego) into a bull is creative, it just occurred to me. I like that! And the bull having no voice, therefore, effectively silenced, is part of this effective imagery. You being the matador, the one in control is major. “No actual bulls are harmed in he creation of this visualization” is hilarious, great humor, says I!

It is my experience that being in control is a process. I was hoping for a “happily ever after” existence, a “problem solved” status achieved after enough work, but my process is still ongoing. I still feel anxious and distressed often enough, but I am less reactive to these. I know I am on the right path regardless.

anita

Dear eris:

I’ve been thinking about your post often in the last hour plus, talking to you in my head, so I am back to stop that talking.

The Happily-ever-After dream and she, your mother neatly removing herself from the story. It makes me think of my redo dreams. It is as if I was saying: “No, no, this cannot be it, this cannot be My Life. It is all wrong. If I will make her happy, then she will like me, then I will have the life I am supposed to have. I wanted so badly to just BE, care free, to no longer suffer.

But I had to suffer, so I believed, because I was bad, I was making my mother hurt and bad. If I suffer, if I make it up to her…Oh, that happily-ever-after dream: my mother happy, smiling at me, liking me, liking ME, of all people.

“From now on” I said to myself thousands of times, “From now on, I will be perfect. I will do nothing wrong. I will be very careful. And she will like me.” And every time I failed. There it was, her explosion, hell on earth, death and destruction. I say death because she histrionically threatened suicide, not someday, but right there and then. I was there at five and twenty five, with her. I had to be until she was not going to kill herself. Or me. In the quiet of the night.

The intensity of the fear, the despair cannot be described with words. I believe you felt it, you know it. I’ve been dizzy since I felt it in your post, in your anger at her. Of course, we didn’t have the same mother, or the same story but I think we experienced the same hurt and it is a mind boggling kind of hurt, such that expressed as anger, will make it possible for me to pick up a huge rock and squash the world in one drop of that rock.

anita

Dear eris:

It is not happy people who repeatedly hurt other people. It is hurt people that do that. But people get confused I think, like I have been all these years. I didn’t understand that it was not my job to feel empathy for the one who was damaging me, intentionally, repeatedly, with no efforts of repair. Yes, she, my mother deserves empathy only not by me.

I live in a wooded area. I see sometimes a fawn, a baby deer follow its mother into the woods. It feels that attachment (that we felt to our mothers) to its mother. It is that attachment, or love, that motivates it to follow her. What if the mother deer would turn around once in a while and bite, kick and throw her baby to the ground? the baby, bleeding, limping will continue to follow her, still feeling that attachment, that love it was born to feel for its mother.

But it doesn’t happen in nature, only in humans, a mother turning against her own child, again and again, and injuring the child. What a perversion of nature.

Empathy for her stopped me from healing for many years. It was not the anger that kept me stuck, it was empathy for her.

She was hurt, of course, had a terrible childhood AND she chose to hurt me, intentionally. It is when I saw my own pain and stopped seeing only her pain as valid, that my healing started.

anita

Dear eris:

I am glad you are making good progress! I understand the unwillingness to feel empathy for the abuser- that is self destructive. It is only natural and constructive to feel anger at a person who is hurting us, that is the purpose of anger: to fight off a person who is hurting us. It is the case in other animals. (And I am talking about the feeling itself, not the behavior following the feeling).

Now that your mother is dead and mine is out of my life, anger has no practical purpose. The one hurting us, the danger is gone. Except for the Bull, the abusive Inner Critic, keeping her work going. This is why you are a matador, the one in control. This is why I am in the process of healing, on The Healing Path, to stop the self abuse, to undo the significant consequences of the abuse.

anita