Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

Mothers Day is closing in...

<< < (2/3) > >>

rosencrantz:
Hi Portia - I promised you a reply when I'd sorted through the issues I was grappling with last week - tho I haven't got any real answers, only some experiences and thoughts to share. :-)


--- Quote ---Is it a fine line between being true to your own needs and then, by that process, finding yourself helping Nmom with hers instead?
--- End quote ---


That reminded me of my own 'thing' of supporting other people so they will be strong enough to support me.  It doesn't work!  You spend your life helping others be strong and gain a certain strength through that - but not through what they do back for you because we never trust them enough.  

When you say you love your mother, I always wonder what 'love' means in this context.  Genuine question : how can you 'love' someone who does the dirty on you all the time?  I just wonder if that 'love' has another name.  I don't think I love my mother.  What is there TO love?  

Why on earth should I love her or strive to love her or overcome feelings that simply tell me to keep well away.  Who ever said a daughter should/could/must love a mother?  I don't even like her!!!  And we are so alike, it's terrifying!!!!!!!

I think 'little contact and lying' is a healthy way of handling it.  But I think the 'Aha' moment is just recognising the truth that
--- Quote ---but that’s not normal, that’s not how reasonable, sane, thinking people behave
--- End quote ---
is 'accurate' in your terms (and mine!) but this is how she is.  It's the moment you quit the 'but mothers ARE x, y and z and MY mother  SHOULD BE x, y, z' that things will change.  It's when you stop expecting, hoping that she will express her love in a way which would have meaning for you that you can move on.

BTW - re needy : I couldn't hear anything 'needy' in what you said!!!  And yes she expressed emotion in her 'shock' at seeing you.  Great to get a hug out of it.  'Hug' it to you.  A genuine 'hug' isn't to be sneezed at.  I remember my aunt giving me a hug when I was going through the trauma with my mother at age 19.  It felt very 'clean' and made me realise how nauseating were my mother's hugs.  

I know I've spent months having imaginery conversations with my mother in my head knowing that every which way I'd try to start the conversation that it would slide immediately down a path of recrimination - so I recognise myself in your PS.

I think you're right that if you say 'I love you anyway' that it's a bit of a 'red rag' And if you say 'I know you don't love me' it'll only make her feel guilty.  'maybe you can't' will make her feel panic. (It would with my mother, anyway)

I think the thing that helps is expressing the fact that you understand how badly their childhood affected them (which is different to 'yes, you've told me that'), that they can feel safe, and that they don't have to feel guilty but nevertheless...and then set some standards for behaviour towards you from now on and 'hold up the mirror' every time - EVERY time - they overstep the boundaries you have set.  At which point don't get hooked in to their defensiveness (effective reply is : uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh etc). And just repeat the exercise ad infinitum until you feel like a cracked record and it starts to get across.  It takes time to break the habits of a lifetime!  Theirs AND yours!!!  :wink:

A week is a long time on the forum - so you've probably moved on a million miles since this post.

Take care
R

Anonymous:
P-  I am new here, and was compelled to join when I read your comments.


--- Quote --- What can you say when your mother repeatedly tells you “my mother didn’t love me?”. Am I therefore supposed to be grateful for any crumb of pseudo-affection that comes my way? Or am I supposed to supply the love she never got? Aha.
--- End quote ---


This was what my mother always told me, as well.  My father's father definitely did not love him, and frankly, my mother's mother was brutal to her as well.  Both my father's father and mother's mother adored me.  Unfortunately, both of my parents were extremely abusive to me and absolute narcissists- my father a violent alcoholic and my mother an emotionally violent almost alcoholic.  Nothing about me has ever mattered at all to my mother, except what I have done to her. :roll:   I spent several years not speaking to my father, and now we have a mostly online relationship and he treats me okay (except for of course denying his abuse, but I have current issues that he is supportive about- a severe neuro-immune disease that has really messed my life).  I am kind of "in hiding" from my mother.  Why?


--- Quote --- For me right now and for ever so far, it’s been easier to ignore than have the fight, be true, accurate! I’ve believed that she couldn’t take it, that I would hurt her, but now I know that’s not true – it’s me that would be hurt most. My mother is a ‘tough cookie’. And I’m not. I’ve been pretending, because I was told, am told now, how strong I am.
--- End quote ---


That's why!  All this time, through repeated attempts to detach from her, I have been unable to because of my empathy for her- which I have in abundance.  It has finally really started to get through to me that it's really empathy for what I would feel- and have felt- when she attacks me or repeatedly has told me she was going to stop speaking to me like when I was going through a very hard divorce.  I became ill at 17, while living in her home, and it has only been in the past 2-3 years that she has begun to believe that I am ill, because my body has finally become so broken down that even she could not ignore it or continue to act like I got sick (or pretended to) just to inconvenience her.  I have been ill for 20 years, so if you can imagine the pure torture she has put me through by not believing me, refusing any financial help when I nearly became homeless and quite frankly entered a marriage that I knew would never last partly because I needed financial support (I did love him, but there were many problems).  

I do believe that I am very strong emotionally.  I would never have survived through some of the physical torture I've had to get through, nor would I have made it through the many years- and many dishers-out- of emotional abuse.  However, I realize now that my mother actually doesn't feel a thing when I try to detach from her but rage that I would really accomplish no longer being there for her to discharge her insanity on.  It's me who imagines the pain of a daughter who "turns" on her mother.  Which isn't what it is about at all.  But I am terrified that if I tell her how I feel, that if I really "go there," she will die.  Some of that comes from my father telling me when I was a child that if I returned to my mother's custody, he would die.  But I am so not living for myself anymore that my fears and guilt over expressing the true depth of my anger have kept me from really doing what I need to do to free myself emotionally, and free up psychic energy that my body really needs.  


--- Quote ---This is the woman who never recognises me amongst other people, and is quite happy to tell people that she never recognises me.  Christ, is it ever about us? Can we have a Daughter’s Day?? There’s a thought! :)  P
--- End quote ---


My mother enjoys telling me, and others, how she wouldn't like me at all if she met me on the street.  I guess she suffers me because I'm her daughter (though she did appear to be trying to talk me into suicide a year + ago when I had West Nile Virus and came close- but not close enough, I guess, to death).  And right now I sound like a complete mess...  I did ten years of therapy that ended a while back, but something was never really adequately addressed.  It was through a psych professionals book service that I finally saw a title that grabbed me, and made me suddenly realize that yes, both my parents are narcissists, and I have completely acquiesced to my mother's need to absorb me or repel me at whim (I am slowly working towards a Ph.D. in psych, but of course, I cannot be a counselor right now because I am in too much psychic agony- even if the flesh was willing- so I've had to stop short of my Master's to work on myself some more).   I now feel that I addressing this is key to my very survival, and I have read through some of these posts and found that many of you have been living my life (thank God someone understands what this is all about, I was really starting to think I'd wasted all that time and energy in therapy and was going insane- though I need more, $ won't allow it right now).  

Anyway, thanks for listening.  I am very glad I found this website/board.  I am starting another journey towards healing, and it is so good to know there are others out there who can relate!  Take care all-
DFox

DesolateFox:
Oops!  I messed up my first post.  I didn't realize the login hadn't worked when I thought it had.  That last message, signed "DFox" and listed as "guest" is me- DesolateFox.  Anyway...  Thanks for listening, all!  Have a nice day.

rosencrantz:
Hi DFox - You are so very welcome here.  I identified with a lot of what you wrote.  The illness, the therapy, the starting and stopping of - life, of living!

But don't waste any more moolah on talk therapy. You're right - it is a waste.  We can talk, and intellectualise, and do 'cathartic' emotional stuff until the cows come home and it doesn't make a jot of difference.

We don't exist, we never existed IN THEIR EYES and you can't talk that out of your system. It just 'is'.

Plus our greatest gift is also our fundamental flaw - we understand, we 'feel', we are 'affected' by others - and, as a result, we are so easily manipulated into chaotic thinking which serves their purpose so well.

BTW If you tick the check box that says 'log me on automatically' you won't get 'thrown off' while you're posting. :wink:
R

Portia:
.........

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page