Thank you, Jana ❤️

Can you tell me how or where she will be all right in the end?

* I will process my feelings further in the next post. I need to do so.

anita

Dear Alessa:

Your post right above is perfect, your understanding and advice are just perfect and you gave me something to think about: did she know I loved her? (I will explore this in my next post). Thank you, Alessa ❤️

anita

Dear Peter:

I am feeling that I have friends on this difficult day, that I am not alone, thank you, Peter.

Your poetic words about untangling and the resilience of the heart are giving my emotions space to be. The heart breaking, keeps beating, the way of an open heart- powerful, peter!

anita

* Trigger warning: strong emotions and childhood abuse to follow.

Her needs, her emotions, her presence were so overpowering that they left no space for me. In response to her taking so much space, I developed a strong element of self-denial, or self-minimization, as a way to survive. I suppressed my own thoughts, feelings, and identity to avoid conflict and to make her emotional storms just a little less overwhelming. I remained trapped in this prison of self-minimization for over half a century. As a result, I was a passive survivor of life, with little to no sense of agency or autonomy—adrift, like a broken ship on a stormy sea, at the mercy of the winds.

I am learning today that empathy, at its core, is meant to be a voluntary emotional response, a choice to connect with someone else’s feelings. In my relationship with my mother, however, empathy was something I had to feel, rather than something I freely chose to extend. Her histrionic expressions of pain, intense, and prolonged—acted like a gravitational pull on my emotional state, making it impossible for me to disengage. I was essentially trapped in her emotional orbit.

Every time she shared her pain, she forced me to absorb and internalize her struggles. No wonder I felt raped by her. I used to wonder why I felt that way. Now I understand: she forced me to take in her pain.

More about empathy, I am learning today: in healthy relationships it is reciprocal—it is given and received in balance, allowing both individuals to feel understood and supported. In my case, empathy was a one-way street: I was expected to feel for her, but she didn’t reciprocate by acknowledging or caring for my emotions. This imbalance turned empathy into a burden where her dramatic expressions of pain demanded my attention and emotional investment, leaving me drained and emotionally neglected.

My empathy was held hostage by her, emotionally trapped by her histrionics. Her emotional dominance overpowered my ability to step back, disengage, or prioritize my own emotional well-being.

Because her pain consumed so much emotional space, I was left with little to no room to process my own feelings independently. My emotional autonomy—the ability to separate her struggles from my own— was lost. Instead, her emotional world became my reality, forcing me to prioritize her needs over mine and leaving me with unresolved emotions of my own.

By constantly absorbing her emotions and being unable to process my own, my sense of self was fragmented and reduced. My emotional identity became entangled with hers, making it difficult to recognize, assert and develop my individuality and experience life on my own terms.

The anger I felt was about preserving the minimal “me” that managed to exist. That anger was my defense, a way of drawing a line in the sand and protecting the last remnants of myself from being completely consumed by her overpowering presence.

anita

Growing up with my mother, who was effectively a single parent, was deeply isolating and emotionally overwhelming. Her borderline personality made the environment unpredictable, with frequent emotional storms that kept me in a constant state of fight-or-flight. I felt trapped, unable to escape the tension and chaos that surrounded me. Over time, the unrelenting stress became embedded in my body, manifesting as anxiety, somatic tension, and tics. It felt as though my muscles, desperate to flee from her or, at times, to fight back—neither option being possible—were “running” within me as tics, with nowhere to go. It was as if I carried her volatility inside me. Even after all these years, I still do.

Her paranoia shaped the way I saw the world. She mistrusted everyone and actively discouraged me from confiding in others—whether peers or adults. Gradually, I internalized her distrust, coming to see people as inherently dangerous or insincere. This left me profoundly socially isolated, unable to form meaningful relationships or feel safe around others. With no alternative perspectives or sources of balance, her paranoid lens became my own, leaving me deeply lonely and disconnected.

Her histrionic tendencies, however, were the most emotionally draining. She would endlessly recount her pain in dramatic and overwhelming ways, leaving me emotionally exhausted and unable to process my own feelings. Her suffering consumed all the emotional space, forcing me to absorb it while neglecting my own needs. Over time, empathy became excruciatingly painful for me—an unrelenting burden I could not escape. This experience profoundly shaped the way I relate to others. As an adult, I found myself avoiding relationships and intimacy altogether, terrified of being consumed by someone else’s emotional needs, just as I had been consumed by hers.

Only recently have I begun to connect with others on an emotional level, and even now, it still feels unfamiliar to me. I often feel like a child, just beginning to learn how to build connections—figuring out the dos and don’ts of positive interactions and becoming more aware of how I come across. I lack experience in this area and am essentially starting from scratch, though part of the process involves unlearning deeply ingrained patterns of distorted thinking.

I am working to move past all-or-nothing and black-and-white thinking, learning to see the shades of color and nuance in situations. I’m practicing the rule of charity (Peter!)—choosing to interpret others’ motivations as neutral or positive—and challenging myself to view situations from multiple angles, rather than defaulting to the single, familiar entry point of suspicion and distrust.

As for the recent pain I’m feeling—the overwhelming empathy for her—I realize I need to make space for myself in this emotional dynamic. The sense of overwhelm stems from her emotions taking over completely. I need to see myself in the picture and extend empathy toward me as well. Perhaps doing so will ease the intensity of the overwhelm.

anita