Briefly, because, among other factors, my mother only received the loving attention from her alcoholic parents when she was sick or outperformed others, she incorporated a similar method of parenting, but with a twist. She is able to relate more to her children when we are sick or helpless, and to that regard, she tries to make sure we stay that way. Like a co-dependence through illness. At the same time, she is angry when we are overly helpless, for that does not boost her self image to have non functioning children. In other words, her children had to outperform our peers exactly the way our mother did, or we would have to be ill as an excuse for not outperforming. We just had to grow up to be and do what she was or would do. No differentiation accecpted.
One of the methods used is what I refer to as passive agressive emotional abuse. Very sneaky and quiet type of things said. For instance, she would say over and over, "are you depressed?" when you are obviously not, or is your thyroid working well, or are you mood swinging, or is you liver finally functioning right? Or more obvios things like, your look a little strange today, are you well? These things are said also when her children tend to go their own way or make their own decisions. Harmless enough statements, but with the tone of voice, and said over and over and over and over in childhood, taking us to a doctor all the time, demonstating love only when we are ill, well you get the idea. No touching at all unless you were ill.
Yesterday she said out of the blue, in the middle of a conversation we were having, "Are you sure you are all right?" It was a simple converstation, and for the life of me I cannot figure out what brought this on except that I was giving my own opinion about the color of the walls in my house...I like white and open and she likes Victorian clutter.
What I hate is my inability to simply say something other than yes, I am doing just fine! But, in all honesty, it would do no good to give her any speeches as to why hert tone of voice and method of behavior survival is non-optimal. However, it has taken me a long long long time to even get to this point of speaking my truth.
And I am healthy, living my life as I wish, and finally I am not my mother. Finally.
But, I do wish, just once, I could have gotten a hug just for being me, a strong, independent, self secure me, instead of growing up playing those if-you-need-a-hug-from-mother-please-be-the-best-for-her-or-be-ill games.
