Dear Delta:

You wrote, “I have a hard time staying friends with women because I don’t trust them”-

as harmful as your mother’s expressed attitude about femininity and sex, there is no betrayal of trust in it, is there? I mean you could trust her attitude to be consistent over time.

I am wondering then, if there was something about your mother that was not trustworthy?

anita

I would only say that there is expiry date to blaming people in your life for where you end up. At 31, you are way past that age. Look around you, people with way more challenges rise up. I would only say that instead of dissecting your mother’s and sister’s behavior minutely, accept it if you cannot change it. You can only work on yourself, so work on yourself and make yourself a great person to accept things as they are.

People live in different times which shape their worldview. Your mom has lived big chunk of her life without you being born, and a lot of her views come from a time you were not even present. Don’t beat her too much because she couldn’t change with time or didn’t had much intellect to do so. Its easier to whine, but its painful to walk in someone’s shoe and see why they are behaving the way they do.

V

Dear Delta:

I am glad your thread is still here and hope you will be reading my reply.

You shared that your friend is comfortable in her body, comfortable being a woman. She has a lovely relationship with her mother. On the other hand, you feel uncomfortable in your body, uncomfortable being a woman, uncomfortable with your “serious character”, and being “not fun enough”. Your relationship with your mother is  not lovely.

Your mother criticized you for these things, directly and indirectly: not being girly, being excited about boys’ adventures, behaving like a boy, showing leadership skills,  menstruating at puberty, having a female body (“she always whined about hers”), dating, sex.  You suffer from pms and pcos, “bad anxiety and obsessive negative thoughts”, and your boyfriend “is not the reassuring type”, you don’t trust women.

Your mother and your older sister were a clique, and you were the outsider, the one picked on, the immature one, the one not good enough. You were “the black sheep” (definition: a member of a family or group who is regarded as a disgrace to them/someone who does not fit in with the rest of the group and is often considered a troublemaker or an embarrassment)

My input: there are two things here: one is your mother’s (and older sister’s) views on all aspects of being a female/woman (the body, to facial expressions, behavior, dating, sex), the second thing is family bullying. I figure your mother can’t help her views. I wish she was insightful enough, understanding enough to not express her views, at least not so generously (I suppose she couldn’t help, let’s say, having a certain expression on her face at any one time).

But the second thing, the bullying, that is an intentional campaign of aggression against you, a war of sorts, they against you. Nothing of your doing, or being, none of it is your fault. Bullying you has been your mother’s way to relieve herself from her anger, anger at someone else (maybe her husband, maybe her own parents). Like any other abuse, the abuser relieves herself from distress by inflicting it on another. Often a parent relieves her distress by inflicting it on her own child.

No wonder you don’t trust women, you can’t (and shouldn’t) trust your own mother.

I had a similar experience to yours: my mother’s attitude regarding womanhood was very disturbed and disturbing. My mother also abused me, only she did it all on her own (not siding with another person). I also felt uncomfortable in my body and I didn’t trust women.

Back to you: if you are still interacting with your mother and sister, and still treated in any way, shape or form as the black sheep, I think you should end all contact with either one and with the two of them. If you are able to attend psychotherapy with a capable therapist, that would be best. The shame your mother instilled in you has to  be addressed and resolved as much as is possible.

Somehow, I hope you get to a place where you believe that the way you were treated is not an indication of you deserving that treatment, that you were a victim of family bullying.

I hope you post again. I like your assertiveness with the other member, by the way and hope there will not be another post in your thread of that kind, unsupportive and cruel, really.

anita

Dear Delta:

You are welcome and I am glad to read from you. You asked me how I am coping (with having been abused by my mother). Like you I moved far away from her, thousands of kilometers/ miles away. Unfortunately, I went back to visit her, weeks or more at a time, over the years, and she came to visit me. Those visits with her undid all progress I made when away from her. It took for me to cut all contact with her five years ago to make it possible for me to make progress and keep that progress going.

By progress I mean healing, healing from the consequences of the abuse. Away from my mother, her mental representative in my brain was still talking to me, of course. Our parents, particular the one most present and most powerful in our lives as children, has a mental representative in our brain, as adults. And we cannot put a single meter of distance in between us and that mental representative.

Healing takes being Mindful. Developing the skill of mindfulness has been a big part of my first quality psychotherapy 2011-2013. Being mindful of, or paying attention (in other words) to that mental representative, to what it says (thoughts) and the feelings involved with those thoughts is crucial to healing. This is a beginning. I will be glad to share more over time, during a back and forth communication, if you would like.

anita