Mothers Day is closing in...

[rosencrantz]

http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/SEASONS/rebel-mother.html

This also relates to an earlier post about card and gift-giving which I can't find just now.  Click on the link above to find a short article written by a mother who realised that it would have been easy to become a martyred mom when her children grew up and 'forgot' her.  But she found a different way...

She found a way of meeting her own needs...by giving!  

I have chosen this kind of solution in the recent past - and if we are capable of doing this, then so can our own mothers.  (I'm clearly still trying to establish what makes 'appropriate' behaviour and what we have a 'right' to expect.  'They' seem to expect so much of us and so little of themselves.)

Perhaps they never thought of it this way - but I wonder if they would be open enough to the lesson if exposed to it?  I know that, if I have tried to share any of the solutions I have found in life, I have been met with scorn and spite.  Good grief!  

There are other ways of relating than through the creation of guilt!  And, yes, my mother should be capable of better and, yes, I deserve better. (I know, I wobbled for a bit, back there a few posts ago!!!)

R

PS Mother's Day is in March in the UK

[Portia]

...........

[rosencrantz]

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.

Our mothers were totally the opposite, Portia - she wanted too much of me - I was her, she was me.  She was in my face, in my relationships and noone was ever good enough.  She destroyed friendships before they even began.  I was hers and hers alone - although she believed she gave me my freedom to do whatever I wanted.  I guess I knew not to want!!! (And actually, it's not true anyway - I would often suggest a 'compromise' but it always had to be entirely her own way)

But the result is exactly the same.  Your description (quoted above) is exactly me to a T - I could have written that today.  I was thinking about exactly that last night.

To respond further to your post...

By saying 'If I can do this, then they can do it too', I meant that I (we) have a right to expect better and not be told (or tell myself) that I'm being demanding or expecting too much or in other ways allow myself to be belittled, made to feel guilty and put my mother's needs and feelings before my own.  I'm still not sure I've explained that right - but it's important to remember the heroics WE go through on their behalf and compare them to the little they do for US.  It means WE DON'T HAVE TO ANY MORE

The phone line waited a beat and I continued to talk

The word 'Why?' burns into me here. I guess you've said that you didn't want to hurt her but I hope that from now on you will never let anything like that go past you again.  At least ask 'why'!!!  Confront the reality of her being the adult, the parent, the mother and demand your right to be loved!!!

repeatedly tells you “my mother didn’t love me?”

Maybe she's telling you that's why she doesn't know how to do it herself - ???  

I do understand that she won't be able to in any 'normal' way - but challenge her to behave herself and act in a civilised way towards you!  We ALL deserve that, at least.

Not recognise you, indeed.  How very unclever!!!  (R exits left, muttering under her breath)

[rosencrantz]

Sorry Portia - I wanted to reply to your post and wanted to express my own news and made a complete muddle!!  So now I've split my reply and added some more thoughts to the post above in reply to your own...     Phew!  

BTW - I learnt from my husband to throw money at things you don't want to have to deal with.  No emotion needed!!  I send a £30 bunch of flowers via Tesco - it always goes down a treat!!!  Well, there was never any point sending anything that had my heart in it - and I often didn't send things cos I knew nothing would be good enough, perfect enough and so I just got stuck (rabbit in the headlights) until after the day had gone.  Just as pointless.  Plus someone delivers the flowers in a special van so the neighbours get to see!!!  

R

[Portia]

Dear Rosencrantz, sorry I'm deleting, it's like clearing clutter..

[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.

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

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

but that’s not normal, that’s not how reasonable, sane, thinking people behave

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!!!  

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.

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.

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.   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?

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.

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.  

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

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.
R

[Portia]

.........

[DesolateFox]

Hi, all!  Thanks for your kind responses.  It has taken me so long to realize what has been going on all these years.  I had 10 years of therapy, but we never really got to this issue.  It was mostly just re-hash, without insight on this deeper, core issue.  

Rosen, I actually am intending to go to therapy again.  I really don't think I am ever going to get any healing of any kind- physical or emotional- if I don't have someone to talk about this with.  I am quite literally fighting for my life.  I am in training to be a psychologist, but I wouldn't even work with clients right now if I was physically able (I am out of school right now) because I'm too much of a mess.  My own messy head could mess up a client real bad.  I think that was a problem in my last bout with therapy.  Ultimately, the countertransference from my therapist got in the way of my working.  I really, really need more counseling.  It is money and physical health that have kept me out of it for a few years.

Portia, my mom is very scary.  My ex-husband and my current husband all think she is really scary, so did an ex-boyfriend who was himself awful scary.  I told my mom in October that I could be considered terminally ill now.  Her response- "Well, we're all terminal!"  When I told her that I didn't want to talk about it with her then, because I don't want to keep having discussions where I am hurt, she said, "Okay" and hung up on me!  We didn't talk again until Christmas Eve, when I phoned my Aunt's and she was there.  I moved to the East Coast from Illinois at the end of 2002, so I have some distance from her physically.  But all these years we lived pretty far apart anyway.  I didn't realize it, but I have been desperately trying to get her to love me for years, and that made me continue to call her and take her abuse.  I did all that- lying about myself really, letting her hurt me without saying a word.  And I am trying not to right now.  We talked once in January because my car had been stolen and was recovered and quite frankly, I was weak in that moment because I was happy about my car.  I have done that a lot.  Talked to her when I felt okay, and let her hurt me because I don't want to confront her and ruin my mood or start something.  She only works during tax season right now.  Then comes Mother's Day and her birthday.  There is always some reason that I have been using to excuse not setting my boundaries higher, and letting her trample me.  I keep getting afraid that she will fall apart if I really just disconnect.  It is so hard for me.

Right now, we are occasionally in touch by email.  She just emailed me and asked me to go on a trip with her.  It isn't even that she knows that I am too ill to accomodate what she wants to do whenever we go on trips (which has been so cruel that I think my husband, when we were engaged, wanted to hit her for what she did).  I just can't be around her.  One more minute of stuffing myself into a box so her needs are met, and I will explode for good and end up in a straight jacket.  And my life is too much on the line right now for me to pretend.  So I've just ignored her.  I don't seem to have the strength to do anything else.  I always imagine what I think she'll feel, and I get too "compassionate."  Really, though, I know it is all about me feeling deep inside that it is only her that counts.  Not me.  

As for my mom and dad both being N's, my dad was a severe, violent alcoholic.  They divorced when I was 6.  My mother always told me she had me to save her marriage.  Instead, my father gave me more attention (not good, either, but in her eyes anything was good).  I obviously failed to save the marriage, and I "took him from her," so that made me a failure from day one!   My father has tried to kill my mother, me, my step mother, and two of my step brothers.  He is truly evil, and we only keep in touch occasionally by email- and it probably wasn't in my best interests to get back in touch with him.  I cut him off for 5 years, and he never once tried to contact me.  You know, I was really glad that he left me alone- though quite frankly, I also hid from him, so he never knew where I was.  Though my grandparents did.  It wasn't until I had a client who had cut off his father, and his father had tried a few times to re-contact him and make amends, that it occured to me how abnormal it was for a father who claimed to so love his daughter to not bother trying to contact her.  When it was starting, he just got enraged by me not taking his calls.  Then- silence.  But this was a man who wrote me a letter once telling me that anyone who had ever loved me had wasted it.  And then some.  

Right now, I am comfortable with my father.  Though he denies a lot of things, he treats me okay and he has always believed that I was ill.  In fact, he seems to be the only person who has really seen what has become of my life with this illness.  I am tortured by my mother.  I have all those imaginary fights in my mind, which is awful, because I have no peace again.  I have a severe serum magnesium deficiency, and severe insomnia with my illness, and since WNV it has been worse, and the mag deficiency makes my nervous system "hyper," so I barely, barely ever sleep.  But lately, when I do, I dream about fighting with my mother and she is so cruel and enjoying the cruelty.  Eventually, I started to dream about physically beating the daylights out of her.  I really have to get back to a place of peace with all this, but I know that right now it is ready to come out, and it must.  It's like a bad infection.  If I don't get all the bad stuff out of me, it will fester and kill all of me.  

Thanks so much for being here.  I wasn't able to reply for a few days because I was having a rough time physically, but I really appreciated seeing your replies.  I hope to get to know all of you better, and look forward to hearing about your struggles with these "nutty" parents and how you deal with them.  I say nutty, but I really think they are at least a little sociopathic.  But, I'm trying to be "nice."   I really have to stop that to the extent that my own life suffers!

Take care, all!

[surf14]

HI Desolate Fox;
  I was saddened by your post and am sorry about your illnesss.  You have much in common with others here in the forum and am glad you are here.  
I can really relate tothe feeling of not being able to tolerate being around your mother or you will feel ike you will explode;  a very familiar feeling.  Take care.  Surf