Dear Milda:

“I’m always there for people… I have friends that are much less invested in other peoples’ lives and live happier than me“- is it that growing up, you had to always be there for your mother (or father) because she was very unhappy and so, you tried to solve her problems/ make her happy?

And some of your friends were able to focus on their lives while growing up (and onward) because their parents seemed to be emotionally okay?

“I want to start being less invested in others too. Any advice on how to do that?“- I understand and support your desire to be primarily invested in your own life. In asking the questions above, I am trying to figure out your motivation for focusing on others. My advice will probably depend on your answer.

anita

Dear Milda:

You are welcome.

“I had a very chaotic childhood, my father had serious drinking problem, so mother was always thinking on the next step, most of the time tired, scared or just with thoughts floating somewhere else…  I had a need inside to always solve their problems, so that maybe then I can live in a happy, stable and calm family with happy parents… what I do all day is thinking of others, feeling what they feel, thinking on how I can cheer them up, which advice I should give… This high sensitivity helped me to go through my childhood, to get parents love, but now this high sensitivity doesn’t serve me, it exhausts and I feel as I have never lived my own life, because I had to think of others and help them live their life“-

– I quoted all of the above because you articulated it so well, excellent awareness of the problem.. one that I can relate to, being that my childhood was chaotic too and my focus growing up was on my mother. I didn’t live my life (in my mind).. I lived her life. This became a habit and all through my adulthood, until most recently, I didn’t live my life. The frustration of not living my own life has been intense. It still frustrates and angers me, the concept of not living one own’s life, as in not being the central character in your own life, but a side character, one on the outside looking in.

As a child, I was powerless in real-life terms and my existence depended on my mother: her choices, her moods; and so my focus was on her. Fast forward, as an adult, I did/ do have real-life power, but in my mind, I didn’t. In my mind, I was still powerless, and therefore I focused on others.. mistakenly believing that everyone else has the power that I don’t.

My advice: (1) Exercise power over your life every day, in small ways and in big ways, gradually, patiently. it can be in as small a way as in how you choose to fold your laundry: do it your own way, the way that makes sense to you. (2) Expect distress in the process: your compulsion (habit of the mind) is to focus on others. When you practice otherwise, it will feel uncomfortable. You will have to talk to yourself when uncomfortable, telling yourself that discomfort is expectable. Then calm down and persist in practicing the new behaviors that are about practicing as much (ethical) power over your life as is possible for you.

anita

Dear Milda:

You are very welcome.  “It will be hard now to start living, thinking, talking differently..“- it will be a struggle but you can succeed, one day at a time. Most likely you will find yourself, again and again, doing for others, or agreeing to do for others because the behavior you are trying to change is an old habit. Changing a habit like this requires time and patience with yourself because the progress you make cannot be  linear, as in: from now on, I behave differently all the time. It will be a stop and go process, going reverse and then forward. Over time and practice, your new behavior will be a new habit.

“Anita, as you seem a very intelligent and wise person, maybe you know some good books/podcasts/youtube videos regarding this topic that I am struggling with? Setting boundaries, how to stop being the care-giver to others,  start to live my own life?“-

–  (1) I repeated your words about me seeming very intelligent and wise because it makes me feel nice to read these words.. hmm, I hardly ever read or hear such words said about me (I suffer from significant case of ADD, and in-person, when talking to people, I am less intelligent than most), so,  thank you for this experience of reading your words this morning.

(2) One reason I do not read books or listen to podcasts etc., is my ADD, it is difficult for me to remain focused on what I read/ hear, especially when what I read/ hear is not articulated in the simplest, clearest, most direct way. I didn’t read a single book, including self-help books for more than a decade, and I never listened to podcasts or You tubes on mental health issues. (The format of these forums allows me all the time I need to rearrange what I read and process the information, so it works well for me).

(3) About how to be “Setting boundaries, how to stop being the care-giver to others,  start to live my own life?“-here is what I suggest: next time you find yourself automatically saying or doing (or thinking about) something in accordance to the old habit, apply the following strategy which I termed NPARR:

Notice (that you are thinking about doing for others, or you just offered someone to do for them, then Pause: let’s say you just told someone on the phone that you will help her with X. To pause would mean to tell that someone that you need to get off the phone right there and then, and will call her back in ten minutes or so.

Next, Address the situation: is X reasonable for you to offer (sometimes you will want to help other, and maybe this is one of these times that helping another makes sense). Or is X not reasonable to offer, and offering it was driven by the habit you want to change.

Next, Respond-or-not: say and/ or do something or not. Let’s say you thought about offering help (you didn’t offer it yet), you Paused, Addressed the situation and decided to not offer help. In this case you do not respond (you don’t offer help, you don’t help). Let’s say you offered help already, on the phone, you Paused (got off the phone), Addressed the situation and decided that X is not reasonable. Next, you Respond: you call her back and tell her that you take back the offer. You can tell her why (that you are trying to change your habit, etc.) or give her another reason.

Lastly, Redirect: think or do something else, move on to another topic.

What do you think about this strategy?

anita

Dear Milda:

You are very welcome and thank you for being as nice and as kind as you are! I want you to keep feeling comfortable, heard and understood by me, and so, at any time that I misunderstand something you are trying to communicate to me, please let me know what it is.

* To let you know, I usually reply to posts by reading, copying and pasting a part of a post, then I respond to that part before I read the next part. Then, I read, copy etc., the next part before reading the next, etc. This helps me to develop my thoughts along the way.

“This situation caused my natural reaction of helping my family, and I want to know how do you think I should have responded to that. I was text messaging with my mother. Started with random topics and (as always) at one point when I asked mother what are the plans for weekend, she replied: well, father is again not talking to me, built a silence wall, so I will be doing my own things, and he his. After reading this message, I physically felt a stress reaction: my heart was racing, head spinning, felt nervous, scared and had an immediate thoughts of “I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING, I HAVE TO SOLVE IT, HOW CAN I COMFORT MY MOTHER, HOW TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM FOR HER, WHY IS FATHER NOT TALKING, I HAVE TO MAKE THEIR RELATIONSHIP RIGHT, I HAVE TO KNOW THE DETAILS, MAYBE KNOWING THE DETAILS WILL HELP ME SOLVE IT”. It was a true reaction of stress, tension, fear.”-

– I am quoting all this because it is so very meaningful. On the 24th when you shared about your childhood, you wrote: “I had a need inside to always solve their problems, so that maybe then I can live in a happy, stable and calm family“- you needed and wanted a calm family because as a child, you were too often, very scared, as is indicated by your scared  reaction earlier today. In all capital letters are the thoughts you had as a child, resurfacing.

Notice what triggered this fear reaction: your mother saying, “well, father is again not talking to me, built a silence wall, so I will be doing my own things, and he his“. In your adult life circumstances, there is no danger in what she said, no danger to you, no danger to her (she survived that silence wall for many years). But in the child’s mind, in a child’s world, that silence wall was danger because you didn’t know what will happen next, and what you feared will happen next was something as final and catastrophic as death.

The child that you were is still very much a part of you (true to me as well). The known term for this child is Inner Child. For the inner child (who was traumatized as a child) there is no Past vs Present: there is only Present. She is still living at home with her parents and she still gets scared for the same reasons she was scared back then.

“But I paused. I didn’t write anything, I just put my phone away. Tried to challenge those thoughts and said to myself that I do not have to comfort her, solve her and father’s relationship problems, cheer her etc. But then I started facing new thoughts, which were: ‘How dare you not helping her, comforting her, she is lonely, go do something, say something, you are not taking care of your mother, which is your duty. Doesn’t matter that you do not think that it is your responsibility to do that, JUST DO IT AND DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HELP HER AND MAKE HER HAPPY!!’. Those thoughts were the ones that made me really sad and stressed out. I didn’t know what to do”-

– Evident here is Role Reversal which started in your childhood: the child-daughter feeling that it is her duty to take care (to parent) her adult mother. The daughter took on that role because… no one else did. Someone had to be the adult, solve problems, create and maintain peace/ safety in the home! Of course, it is mission impossible for a child to be an adult, but the child tries her best.

Part of her, of the child, becomes a pre-mature adult/ parent to her parents. Being still a child herself, living in a home that feels unsafe, she doesn’t have the emotional (or other) resources to parent her parents, but she is driven to do it anyway.

“I wrote to my mom: ‘Oh ok, get it‘. That’s it. No comforting thoughts, no questions, solutions, nothing. After writing that I felt very bad, as the worst daughter ever”-… as the worst.. parent (to your mother).

“And I feel till this moment that I made a wrong decision, that I had to help her, that she is poor and sad, with no one around to help her, I am the only one that can do it. A huge guilt inside of me. I would appreciate a lot your insights on this situation, maybe this could help me reshape the way I think and see situation.”-

– the child-parent (you) is feeling guilty for not helping her “daughter” (your mother). Talking about role reversal.

If your mother really was a child and you really were her mother, you would have had the opportunity to make her a happy child because she would be in her Formative Years when under your care, her brain developing/ being in the process of being formed- with your input, your care in it.

As a child, you unknowingly took on an impossible task: to change a sad brain that is already formed into a happy brain. Mission impossible. But someone had to make the home safe and no adult took on the task, so you did. And you did the best a child can do to accomplish mission impossible.

As you can see by reading your mother’s words, you failed all these years to.. silence that very loud silence wall in her home. You failed because any child/ daughter would fail.

We will talk more about this, for as long as you want to.

anita

Dear Milda:

You are welcome!

“I am as scared, with fear and in danger as a little child…  I feel the same and I let those thoughts and emotions control me the exact same way that it did when I was a child- keeping mom’s company, cheering her up, comforting her and doing everything I can to fix the situation and how mom is feeling“-

-your healing will take removing your focus from how your mother is feeling to how you are feeling, and it will take lessening your fear (via emotion regulation skills).

Because as a child you needed to look up to an adult for safety, and the adult available to you was your mother.. she was your hope for safety. So, you focused on her, and you tried the best you could to fix her (and the situation) so that she can become the adult that you needed her to be. Focusing on her became a mental-emotional habit. This habit needs to change, but like any kind of habit, it is not easy to change.. but it is possible.

“Actually another problem there is that I have an older sister…  I decided not to talk with her and just delete her from my life as she was giving only negative emotions to me“- it was possible for you to delete your older sister from your life because while you were growing up, you didn’t look up to her as your hope for safety, or as a significant hope for safety. On the other hand, it will be very, very difficult, if not impossible, for you to delete your mother from your life because (to the child within you), she is still your primary hope for safety (this is why you still focus on her).

“But mother used to say to me, that I have to talk to sister, I have to fix this, I never understood why. I never understood why do I have to fix deep family problems“- because your mother (and father) didn’t feel capable of fixing deep family problems.. and didn’t.. and someone had to.

“because none of the parents were/are in adult role, they always step back and do nothing, waiting for me to fix family problems. I feel a huge guilt inside of me that I am not trying to fix anything, because living without my sister in my life is all good to me, I never miss her, but seeing that my mother is devastated because of that makes me want to comfort her and get back with my sister JUST BECAUSE OF HER, not because I WANT IT. This constant feeling that I have to  shape my life somehow in order for my mother to feel good is exhausting me”-

– it is exhausting to regularly FOCUS on someone else’s feelings and function instead of focusing on your own. Imagine you are on the driver seat of your car: You know your destination. You want to turn right=> you turn right. You want to turn left=> you turn left. You want to avoid a collision=> you avoid it. You want to park=> you park.

Now, imagine that you are on the passenger seat of your car and your mother is on the driver seat. She doesn’t know where she wants to go, so you try to help her figure it out: do you want to go shopping? Do you want to go to the doctor’s?, etc. Let’s say she says she wants to go shopping, but she doesn’t know where to shop, so you try to help her figure it out: do you want to shop for food? For clothes?, etc. She looks tired as she drives and you watch her anxiously: you are afraid that she’ll get into a collision with another car, so you try to warn her, maybe you hand her a bottle of cold water to keep her awake, or turn on the air conditioning to make her more alert…

It is all very exhausting, isn’t it, to have someone else in the driver seat of  your car. It’d be so much easier to take the driver’s seat of your own car/ your own life.

“I do not want to feel the guilt“- it will take you taking the driver seat of your car/ focusing primarily on your life while feeling guilty. (Practicing emotion regulation skills will help ease up the guilt a bit).

“I try to understand that family problems are not for me to fix, and because I was doing that for so long from a very young age (comforting everyone in the family), my parents got used to that and they are always waiting for me to care for them and help them”-

– you got used to trying to fix family problems and comfort everyone in the family, a habit still fueled by guilt, a long-term habit, from a very young age… a habit that will be difficult to change.

“I feel so sad for that, always scared when I see my mother calling me“- there is an association, in your brain, between your mother calling you and fear.

“(I) just want to be in peace. But I do not feel the peace as I never felt it in my childhood. What are your thoughts on that?”- all your efforts as a child to bring peace to yourself failed (understandably, as it was mission impossible).

“What is the deeper work you think I should do on myself?”- start with committing to no longer do what has proven- long term- to fail.

“I see myself as a highly sensitive, emphatic person, being in a reverse role in my family and it is draining me completely. Is there an way of changing this role reverse?”-

– it will be easier to change it in the context of your parents if you no longer had contact with your then because they are still fueling your old, long-term habit of trying (and failing) to fix their problems. But of course, Guilt (with a capital G) is in the way.

“Do I have a chance of living my life as a child and not as parents’ (more mother’s) emotional support?”- when you say “living your life as a child”, you mean while having contact and interacting with your mother? Can you elaborate on this question?

anita