Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
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Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: lighter on April 07, 2024, 10:42:40 AM ---Hi, Tupp. I'm so glad you're releasing the fear around your mother and what you'd do/will do if she's ill.
Nobody can sustain that "poor me, all my kids and grandkids abandoned me after I did everything perfect."
There'll be cracks in mum's facade and all will become clear, IME.
It's interesting what washes up in the subconscious shore when left to be what it is. Releasing what I thought it could be or would be it , God forbid, should be leaves space to relax into clarity, come what may.
I do like the idea of leaving room for just not knowing. Simple. It takes up space I usually fill with connecting old dots or fearing into future and I've noticed my intuition is sharper, wiser, quicker. That part's a very happy shift in how I move in the moment and what I leave behind.....so much of the past just keeps falling away, like a crust, heavy and old.
I'm hoping all your rain means trees, flowers and shrubs are about to explode into joyful color. My sister and I are intensely engaged in saving Hemlocks from the forest and we got so many planted the last 3 days! Joyfully making and covering ourselves in mud so you're in a good group!!!
Maybe all the negative battling thoughts will become familiar friends you notice, comfort and calm into silence? Seizing all the little joys of cooking and being in nature can be just those things, IME.
The negative thoughts, protective and wounded parts, can't be banished, but they can be noticed and tended to, IME.
Everything belongs, but it's lovely to grow the healthy and uplifting things while letting the other parts know they've done their jobs.... it's ok to rest.
((((Tupp)))) I'm so happy to see you're back! Even if it's a little visit.
Lighter
--- End quote ---
(((Lighter)))))) It is/has been interesting to be able to take a more detached view on a lot of things just lately. My social media/online embargo has been helpful for that. I did a karmic cord cutting meditation yesterday, in which you visualise the person you want to detach from and go through a ritual of doing so. I see my mum standing before me and I hate her, and then watch her transform into a terribly sad and lonely little girl, desperate to be loved and aching for someone to hold her. I know that's the bit that troubles me with any troubled soul that crosses my path - what I see and feel is that terrible loss children bear alone and how it creates these terribly hostile and aggressive adults. That's the bit I'm working on at the minute - seeing the current reality and dealing with that in real terms. I feel so sad for the broken children part but I made a deal with myself that I'd only step in to fix that if asked - no unsolicited advice, no offering to do things in case it helps, no sucking it up in the hope they'll see it for themselves. That said, at this stage if my mum did ring and ask for help, I think the only thing I'd be willing to do is find information and send it to her. Something that involves no contact and direct communication. Not that she would but it's a position I found for myself that feels comfortable should the need occur.
Yes to relaxing into outcomes and leaving unknowns as they are. I still find that very difficult. Decades of having to shore up against every possible attack from every possible angle in every way imaginable. It's hard work rewiring the processes and I do fall back into my old habits a lot. But, two steps forward and all that :) xx
lighter:
You're a very kind person, Tupp. Letting your mum's wounded child go is all you can do, IME. Her protective parts won't allow anyone to help....most of all you, so You're off the hook. Ready or not. She would never let you in, imo.
I'd be likely to research and forward through third parties, myself. Action would help me get back to normal.....the act of doing what I could, then turning back to self care joy is a sort of meditation, I find. Maybe it's a life skill or healthy coping strategy I never learned, but needed desperately as an empathic child not allowed boundaries.
I limit t screen time too, Tupp or I'd tap out SHE LET GO once again for the board. I have taped in the bathroom and it's always a comfort and relief.....a touchstone of sorts.
Lighter
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: lighter on April 09, 2024, 03:43:38 PM ---You're a very kind person, Tupp. Letting your mum's wounded child go is all you can do, IME. Her protective parts won't allow anyone to help....most of all you, so You're off the hook. Ready or not. She would never let you in, imo.
I'd be likely to research and forward through third parties, myself. Action would help me get back to normal.....the act of doing what I could, then turning back to self care joy is a sort of meditation, I find. Maybe it's a life skill or healthy coping strategy I never learned, but needed desperately as an empathic child not allowed boundaries.
I limit t screen time too, Tupp or I'd tap out SHE LET GO once again for the board. I have taped in the bathroom and it's always a comfort and relief.....a touchstone of sorts.
Lighter
--- End quote ---
Lighter, this thing you said - "her protective parts won't allow anyone to help" has rattled around in my brain since I read it. Not just because it's absolutely true of my mum, she actively destroys anyone who has a healthy kind of love for her (like her own adult children) but because I think it applies to me as well. I've been trying to puzzle out the 'help' situation for myself, largely because I don't find a lot of what is offered as help, helpful. Sometimes that is just practicality (a friend saying they're happy to listen when what I really need is someone to sort the garden out) but it's also that vulnerability that goes with needing and/or accepting help. It was always something that was mocked when I was a child, a way of someone demonstrating their superiority over me, showing me how stupid I was, how pathetic (usually attached to being female as simply being less physically strong than my step-father was used as an example of how superior men are to women), another way of tying me to someone (i did this for you, you must do this for me), and so on. And it's something I've noticed in my own reactions towards others now, I do feel a sense of contempt? not sure if that's too strong a word, but I've noticed lately that I really lack compassion for others and find myself tutting at people not knowing how to deal with situations that seem obvious to me. It's weird, isn't it, how much we internalise and how long it can take us to realise that?
I'm still trying to follow a routine of yoga, meditation, writing down fears and so on. It has transpired that my mum's cancer does seem to be real this time. I have still kept my distance. My sister has also kept contact to a minimum (in fact, the whole family seem to circling round one another waiting to see what happens next). I think we all know the lack of contact will have made her furious and it's a case now of waiting to see who she goes after this time. I'm grateful we live so far away.
I've focused on meditations that involve visualising cutting chords, it seems to be helpful at the moment. I did more with my mum and that seemed to settle things down after a while. I've done several with my step-dad, it was odd to realise how terrified I still am of him. But that, too, seems to have settled a bit. Most recently I felt I needed to cut ties with that version of myself that was created as a way of coping with everything over the years. That was an odd one, it did feel like I was abandoning a child somewhere. I cried a lot. It's odd how these things/people/versions of who we are don't really exist yet seem more real and have taken up more space in the world than we have ourselves. Onwards and upwards and all that. I hope all is well with you xx
Twoapenny:
I'm in a verbal vomiting phase at the minute :)
I've been thinking a lot about my situation with my son. I don't have concerns that there's enabling going on; I'm very aware of what he can and can't do and spend a lot of time supporting him to do as much as he can for himself, only stepping in when it's absolutely necessary. But I have been thinking a lot about my own co-dependency issues, and I do think for a long time my son's situation has meant I have had many situations where I could be the best at something, when compared to others. I haven't done it for that reason, I genuinely want what's best for him and that is him being able to do as much as possible for himself, and having a good network of decent people around him, personally and professionally. I'm also very aware (as I think we all are) of the damage parents can do, intentionally or otherwise, and I very desperately did not ever want him to feel the way I've always felt when my mother's around. But I do feel he's my only success in life. Take him away and I'm just another mediocre person bumbling through, and having never had a sense of being good enough, simply by existing, mediocrity has never been a comfortable option for me.
I've thought about this in connection with my public sector experiences, having had just another dreadful one and come away shaking my head at how clueless and ineffective they are. I was looking at the many boxes of paperwork I'm steadily scanning my way through and at how many times they've done a terrible job, how many times I've thought, quite rightly, that if I did paid work instead of fighting them I could pay for what he needs myself, and looked at how ineffective the whole situation has been throughout his life. And I realised that public sector staff are probably the only people I can feel superior to. I don't mean in a snobby way, but we are on a low income, in local authority housing and as such, we are the dregs of society. We have no value and I have found that really hard to live with over the years. If I compare myself to people who earn, there is no comparison, even a part time minimum wage job pays more than we receive in benefits. People are automatically afforded more status by going out to work. When it comes to knowledge and lived experience, I can beat public sector staff hands down. They're so badly trained, and so hampered by ineffective systems and incompetent management that anyone with an ounce of common sense and some mild experience of managing a health problem can trump them. And I got to thinking, is that why I keep going back to them for help? Even though I know they will never provide what he needs (or me, for that matter), is it some perverse way of making myself feel I'm better than someone else? Getting a bit dark, maybe I'm not on the right track with this but it feels like something I should think about some more.
I've also noticed that I do a lot of silly stuff around my son - songs and jokes, silly dances and walks, things that are better suited to a younger child. It annoys him, and he tells me so, but still I find myself doing it, almost without realising it. I'm not sure I know how to relate to him as an adult, and that's something I need to figure out. Part of it is I do feel I get unconditional love from him and I've never had that from anyone else. I think it might trigger something in me. But I don't want to end up with a dysfunctional relationship because I haven't been able to change as he has.
With that in mind I've been doing more cord cutting meditations, not because I want him out of my life, but because I don't want to become something or someone that holds him back or keeps him pinned in one place. Equally I don't want my existence to revolve around him, or his around me. It isn't healthy for either of us. Interestingly in the meditations I can't visualise him as an adult, only as a little boy. He's half a human taller than me and considerably stronger and heavier so something is off there! Lol.
Anyway, just rambling and spilling it out somewhere, it's observations rather than concerns. Things are pretty good, we've had some dry weather so the garden is looking lush rather than swampy now. Finances are easier thanks to some very kind people helping us out on that front a while back so there's less pressure on that front as well. Hope all is good with everyone else :)
Twoapenny:
Well this is weird! I've got three big boxes of paperwork to sort out so I tackled one this morning. Eight years of paperwork in there, all relating to health, education or social care. I have always thought of this paperwork as being related to my son. But going through it this morning, I realised almost all of it is actually about the battles I've had with my mum. Most of it focuses on the complaints I've put in after my mum's claims (most of which I didn't know about until much later) created child protection investigations or refusals from professionals to carry out assessments my son needed. Almost all of this crap we've been through relates back to my mum, indirectly, to a certain extent, but it definitely represents her and the way she behaves more than it represents me or my boy. The assessments that are just about him are relatively straightforward and don't take up a lot of space. Mental health reports about me before she started her terror campaign are straightforward and quite complimentary. You can see there's a definite change in attitude from staff once she started sticking her oar in. Silly bint should have found herself a hobby.
I've had very little in the way of emotional reactions to it all other than irritation or frustration at the futility of it all, and incredulity at how easily she pulled the wool over so many people eyes. It was all so easy to check, with me, and with other professionals, yet no-one bothered. They took her 'opinion' over the factual input of probably a dozen other professionals. How weird is that?
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