My T says I give my mother too much power over me, only I don't know how to stop doing that.
Tayana - Don't give up. Your are making extraordinary progress but you are not seeing the rewards. You will if you continue what you are doing.
I have made tremendous progress and in the past year I really got to the roots of my great disfunction. I have come very close to taking back my power. I don't believe there is only one way to do so. I am convinced that it is a different path for each of us but there may be many common paths and common turns along similar journeys. My path has been very convoluted. At times I have "divorced" myself and refused to have contact at other times I have needed her, needed someone to be there for me and have tried to get what I knew she would not, in fact, could not give. The pain of that grief is something I had to work through more than once and each time I found myself back to needing her I felt utter crushed, devasted. The failing was indescribably hopeless. But I have never given up.
Part of my process, for several years, has been working on forgiveness right along with distancing myself. The true gift of forgiveness is not "letting her off the hook" but it is letting me off the emotional hook. For me, forgiving my mother has NEVER been a one time, one sentence action but has been a lengthy, determined process. Determined because I saw that for me, it was precisely the way to get past needing her and precisely the way to get my power back from her. As long as I feel rage towards her for her utter lacking in the ways that every child needs from a mother, then I was bound to her. I can not say that I am completely free of that but I am very close, close enough to now see her as a child in need of mothering from me. I am not committing to doing ANYTHING for her because I just got out of that role. I am merely seeing her in my minds eye as a child who did not get what she needed and seeing her with compassion. The more distance I have the easier it is for me.
Without question the thing that clicked with me to make this possible is that finally after years of trying to get some connection with either of my brothers concerning our parents, this summer my oldest brother told me that I needed to extricate myself from her and then he helped me do that. I am eternally thankful.
I am absolutely not telling you how to get your power back but I am telling you to NEVER give up and I am saying that even if you cannot see where you are going keep taking one step after another. Often in hindsight you can see what works and what doesn't and just keep repeating what does. Most of all - believe - develop confidence that you will indeed get your power back, whether you know how or not - believe that you will. I believe you will. I am cheering for you.
One of the things that has made it difficult for me is that I got caught in a place of feeling sorry for myself. I was in a terrible place with parents and family who were not the least interested in helping me and I could not get myself out and could not find anyone to help. The problem for me in feeling sorry for myself is that I felt helpless without someone to help me, I felt incapable of helping myself. But that was not true. My biggest battle has been overcoming the shame and the sense of utter inadequacy and undeserving. Unfortunately much of those self-sabotaging feelings were powerfully unconscious and I had NO access to them to counter them - plus everything in my life seemed to confirm and magnify those aspects of my life. But I am learning to turn all of that around. A big part of that is addressing the anxiety, the overwhelming fear that I am a failure and will always be a failure and cannot turn my life around. And now I am addressing the falsehood of those lessons learned from my family in early, early childhood.
I needed them and they turned their backs to me and in some ways spit in my face. That is hard to get over and come back from but we can do it. Just keep believing you can do it and keep your eyes open for philosophies that you connect with and find others here or elsewhere that hold those same philosophies and don't stray from them unless you become certain that they are not for you. Never, ever give up. You can do it. You can get your power back from her. You can do it.
