Dear Zenith:

You make a good distinction, that between being a good person and a good manager. A good manager has to be good at delegating tasks, it’s a vital part of managing people. Too bad your manager is not good at his job. No worries about ranting, Zenith- it’s your thread, and you are welcome to rant as much as you need to!

anita

Dear Beni:

I studied your first thread this morning (well, night really, slept very little) because I realized lately that you and I have a lot in common in regard to our relationships with our mothers. In my almost 10 years in these forums, I don’t remember reading from any other member who experienced something so similar to what I experienced in content, intensity and consequences, so understanding you better leads me to understanding me better.

These are your words from your thread “How can I do what I want with joy”, July 18, 2023- Sept 15, 2024: “it’s something like my space. She was too close. There was not enough space for me… By not expressing myself I protect my Mom from worrying, or meet her need for control. If she makes a request and I’m not sure that it’s selfless I can’t do it… It sometimes feels like that I am my mom”-

– In the early stages of life, babies are naturally enmeshed with their primary caregiver, often the mother. This means that babies rely entirely on their mother for their physical and emotional needs. This close bond is crucial for the baby’s survival and development.

As children grow, they go through a process called separation-individuation. This is when they begin to recognize themselves as separate individuals from their mother. This process typically starts in infancy and continues through early childhood. It’s a gradual journey of gaining independence and developing a unique sense of self.

In a healthy developmental environment, the mother (if she is the primary or sole caretaker) supports the child’s growing independence while providing a secure base. This means the child feels safe to explore and express their individuality, knowing they have support to return to. This balance helps the child develop a strong, independent sense of self while maintaining a healthy attachment to the mother.

If the mother is too controlling and makes everything about her, this process is disrupted and the child struggle to separate and individuate, as they constantly feel pressured to meet the mother’s needs or expectations.

In such cases, the child may remain enmeshed, finding it challenging to develop their own identity and autonomy. This can lead to difficulties in establishing healthy boundaries and self-confidence later in life.

In summary, while all babies start with a natural enmeshment with their primary caregiver, a healthy development involves gradual separation and individuation. If the mother is overly controlling, it hinders this process, leading to ongoing enmeshment and challenges in forming an independent sense of self.

More of what you shared in that thread: “When I’m with people with different dialect I adopt it. I can easily be with a group and agree to every activity. I might lose my autonomy with time. Yes, I tend to tell people what they want to hear… I’d like to learn how to set healthy boundaries… I’d like to set boundaries with my mother.. I have some memories of self destructive behavior. Where I destroy things I like or a window or hit myself on the head to find some exit for how I feel… Empathy and the ability to express how you feel, really listen with the heart. I do not remember my parents doing that. Telling me how they feel or having these moments of connection much… when I think at my childhood I get maybe straight away 2-3 situations. In 4 Minutes I get like 8 situations, I remember… By not expressing myself I protect my Mom from worrying or meet her need for control… I do not wish to be controlled. I want to be asked what I would like to do… I’ve been thinking that I am dependent on her (subconscious). Cause I noticed that the things which stress her out like traveling, working a regular job, not misusing drugs, having a girlfriend are things I struggle(d) creating for myself…It sometimes feels like that I am my mom and my self is this thing I can’t control”-

– Like you, I struggled with autonomy. I was mostly unable to make decisions and act independently, without being controlled by others. I was unable to form and pursue my own goals and values. Essentially, I didn’t have the power to make choices and take actions that were in line with my own desires and principles. Like you, my tendency has been to tell people what they want to hear and people-please in other ways.

Growing up and into adulthood, on one hand I felt too close to my mother, so close that I felt suffocated. There was little to no emotional space for me. She took all the space, none left for me. I was unable to distinguish my own emotional state from hers: if she was anxious, I was anxious. If she felt hurt by a person, I was hurt by the same person. If she was angry at whomever, I was angry at him or her. When she felt good, it was my opportunity (as rare as it was) to feel good. It’s like I didn’t have my own feelings. I experienced her feelings.

But I did have my own feelings, it’s just that there was no space for my feelings. Her feelings took all the space.

On the other hand, the relationship severely lacked genuine emotional intimacy and understanding. This created a paradox where I was physically and emotionally close to my mother but psychologically distant and isolated, a confusing mix of being too close and too far.

Like you, my memories of my childhood last (if I replay them in my mind) only a few minutes. My mother’s dominant presence dominated my own experiences away from her (like when in school).

In general terms, severe enmeshment is traumatic and it therefore affects mempry.

in an enmeshed relationship, the child is continually exposed to the parent’s intense emotions and needs. This is overwhelming, causing chronic stress and anxiety. The child’s emotional system is constantly on high alert, trying to manage and respond to the parent’s emotional state, which leads to emotional exhaustion and trauma. The constant suppression of self is traumatic, as the child’s needs and desires are persistently overshadowed by the parent’s. The undue burden of feeling responsible for the parent’s emotional states creates intense feelings of guilt and shame and prevents the child from developing healthy, age-appropriate relationships, leading to long-term psychological distress.

When the child faces an ongoing internal conflict between their need for independence and the parent’s controlling behavior, it is deeply distressing and traumatic as the child feels torn between loyalty to the parent and the desire to assert their own identity. The inability to resolve this conflict leads to feelings of helplessness, frustration, and emotional pain.

The emotional trauma from enmeshment has lasting effects into adulthood, including difficulties in forming healthy relationships, feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth, anxiety and depression caused by chronic stress, and a weak or fragmented sense of self, making it challenging to make independent decisions and pursue personal goals.

Moving to this thread, you shared on Dec 15, 2024: “I wonder if someone want’s to share his insight to the following: I noticed that when I meet someone with the glassy alienated look in their eyes. It affects me very much… I have stomach pain… It’s hard to move my body. It’s hard to speak even to myself. I feel alienated too and I worry big for the person even if I don’t know her”-

– This heightened sensitivity to others’ emotions is an extgension of the traumatic enmeshment experience of childhood. The child is continuously exposed to the mother’s intense emotions, creating a constant emotional overload. Unlike in healthy relationships where the child has space to process his/ her own emotions, an enmeshed child is perpetually entangled in the mother’s emotional state without relief. The child often feels responsible for managing the mother’s emotions, which is an overwhelming burden for a young mind. Failing to meet her emotional needs leads to feelings of guilt and shame, further compounding the emotional distress. The mother’s intense emotions are, in effect, traumatic to the child and trauma can indeed manifest physically, with symptoms such as stomach pain, headaches, or other stress-related ailments.

In summary, the intense and continuous exposure to a controlling and emotionally overwhelming parent, coupled with the burden of emotional caretaking, can indeed make the mother’s feelings traumatic for an enmeshed child. Fast forward, the enmeshed child is now an adult… and other people’s strong emotions, like the stranger with glassy alienated look in hia/ hwe eyes, are experienced as traumatic.

Back to something you wrote in your first thread: “I feel disconnected when I set boundaries. It’s like one or the other extreme: only you or only me”- You experienced boundary-setting as an extreme, feeling that it has to be either “only you” (completely giving in to the other person’s needs) or “only me” (focusing solely on your own needs).

This all-or-nothing thinking (as in it’s me OR you) is common in enmeshed individuals. Setting boundaries can feel like an act of self-betrayal (if you satisfy the other person’s needs) or betrayal of the other person (if you satisfy your own needs), creating significant emotional discomfort. Healing is about finding a balance, and since you are way into your healing journey, you will put balance more and more into practice with people who are not controlling and dominanting (better avoid and stay away from controlling and dominating people, family or otherwise).

anita

Dear Peter:

“So, this topic thread isn’t about looking for help or trying to fix something, but about journals. Wondering if anyone else has old journals and were surprised but what they wrote back when. Feel free to add thoughts or your own meanderings from any old journal entries you might have”-

– Inspired by your invitation I just accessed one of a few very, very thick folders I have, full of printed pages that I typed or copied and pasted. I’ll start with a poem that was presented to me in 2011 by the therapist (a CBT + Mindfulness therapist) I was seeing at the time, my first quality psychotherapy, as I refer to it. This poem started me on my healing path which continues to this day, mostly in the context of these tiny buddha forums, on a daily basis, ever since May 2015. When I deleted my account on Feb 2023 and did not post through Aug 2023, I still read and studied posts on the forums.

* The separation of the poem into paragraphs as follows (the format) is my doing. The words are Roger Start Keyes’s words, an art historian and a York Zen (a Zen Buddhist meditation group based in York, Northern England) who studied Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), a Japanese artist. Here is the poem that started me on the healing part close to 14 years ago:

“Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. He says look forward to getting old. He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient, every one of us has a body.

“He says every one of us is frightened. He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

“He says everything is alive– shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees, wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you.

“He says it doesn’t matter if you draw or write books. It doesn’t matter if you saw wood or catch fish. It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your veranda or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden. It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you.

“Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength is life living through you. Peace is life living through you.

“He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.”

As I was rereading the above poem today, I was thinking about you, Peter. In my mind, it’s as if it was written just for you. But then, it’s as if it was written just for me, and it’s very relevant to every moment, every day of my life still.

I am now looking for something to share from my massive journal entries in one of the folders (difficult because it’s in small print… looking for some old reading glasses) … To my surprise I see a page I typed sometime in the summer of 2008. There, I summarized information I read in a self-help book. Here’s part of it: “Harsh self-criticism lowers one’s motivation, increases anger, guilt and limitation”. What amazes me about these words is that at the time, more than 16 years ago, I wasn’t even close to a significant measure of understanding these words. Now I see that it was a strictly intellectual understanding, nothing that penetrated any deeper than the surface. It is only recently that I understand and practice self- compassion in the place of harsh self- criticism. This shift is a new practice for me.

Turning the pages, I fast forward to Jan 2013. I can see that I was deep into an eating disorder (binge eating) at the time, tortured, obsessed… Here’s something from Jan 2, 2013: “(My therapist’s name) said it has been THE FIGHT OF MY LIFE to BE SEEN”. Here is a part of what I wrote on Jan 28, 2013 (in hand- writing, a sort of a poem in the language I grew up with, translated here): “I waited for a long, long time- I waited and waited for her (my mother) to hear me… Why don’t you hear me?… You (my mother) placed me in a prison of anger- a prison of fear- and I can’t get out…”.

My notes today: going over the (many, so many) pages was sometimes stressful to read, feeling that same-old, same old deep emotional pain that I don’t want to feel again.

I mentioned above having been imprisoned in fear and anger. I didn’t mention, in that poem, having been imprisoned in Guilt. I felt too guilty to become an autonomous entity, too guilty to exist outside of my mother. Under her disturbing dominance, I was psychologically dead, or very much dying on a regular basis (outside moments of forgetting, daydreaming). Now, I can call it emotional enmeshment, a psychological entrapment. I craved freedom from her for more than half a century.

She was my jailer, no doubt. Through her histrionics, protracted self-pity episodes, expressing her suicidal ideation to me, at length, blaming me, at length, many, many times, while there was no seeing ME, no hearing ME, I was unfree to be. Me. There in the home I grew up in, there was no ME. There was ONLY her. No autonomy for me, no self-agency; no empowered, self-directed existence for me. Enmeshment was indeed suffocating to the extreme. I was suffocated but still physically alive.

Feeling disconnected from myself and from others was my brand of living- dying. It was an incredibly isolating and disorienting experience: I didn’t really know what I wanted, what I believed, couldn’t therefore make decisions or set goals because of this not-knowing. Had a sense of aimlessness, as if I was drifting through life without direction or meaning. Growing up, joy and excitement were muted, absent except for when daydreaming while listening to music when I was alone, without her being there in-person. I felt like an observer, detached from my actions or inactions, disconnected from my body and experiences. I felt profoundly lonely, emotionally cut off from the inside and from the outside, not fitting in or belonging anywhere.

This persistent sense of disconnection led to my experience of chronic anxiety, hopelessness, helplessness, physical fatigue and exhaustion on a regular basis.

Thank you, Peter, for the opportunity to find a pair of reading glasses that makes it possible for me to read these old pages. I hope you are doing well and would like to read more about your experiences without trying to fix anything you share, as you requested.

* Trying to fix others by excessive intellectual analysis has been an ineffective habit of mine for the longest time. People need to be given space for their emotions to breathe, so to speak, a quiet space that’s not afforded when being the recipients of … noisy analyses.

anita

Dear Peter:

Thank you for sharing your journal reflections and the profound quotes from John Eldredge’s “The Sacred Romance.”

I wrote a whole lot of hand-written journal entries since I can remember myself, threw away all, then about 14 years ago, I started typing lots and lots of journal entries and I still have those printed journals, but I can’t read them without great difficulty because to comfortably read them I’d need new reading glasses. I get by without because I can easily magnify the computer screen. I no longer read books. My only reading is at the computer.

The passage you shared about beauty and affliction piercing the human heart is incredibly powerful and resonates with me very much:

“Our deepest convictions are formed without conscious effort, but the effect is a shift deep in our soul”- this means that I didn’t choose to be who I became. I became who I was (before recent healing) due to automatic, human responses to what I was born into (the people and circumstances of my childhood). In other words, I was a complex set of reactions.

“To choose to shut your heart to love – so that you won’t be hurt – is to deny the very thing you are made for”- profound! Indeed, I denied myself. I was a stranger to myself, a stranger that I didn’t like, a stranger that no one liked. Alone A Lot. A whole lot of Alone. An Eternity of Alone.

Early in childhood, maybe I was six, maybe younger, don’t remember, I placed myself on hold so to accommodate my mother’s needs, as I perceived those to be. My needs became strangers to myself.

“We must renounce our childhood vows. They trap our hearts… we believe the lie and make the vow. It is important to break the vow so it may not have a strong hold on our hearts.”- the first vow I made was to be a good girl, a good daughter, so that my mother will like me. This means (I realize as I am typing) that the premise of this vow was that I was a bad girl, a bad daughter, a bad person. This core belief was the foundational premise of my life for longer than half a century.

It is only recently that I feel (really, feel) that I am sometimes, here and there, liked by other people. I didn’t even know how it feels until recently. I feel like a little girl now, the girl that was put on hold for so long, too long. The denied little girl is here, typing these words: “Here I Am!”

anita

Dear anonymous:

Last you posted was on July 30, 2024- over 4 months ago. How are you?

Here are quotes from my advice to you in these 2 pages of your thread: “Express yourself… let out your emotions, type them out on the computer screen… find new life within you and attend to it… there is indeed a huge void in this world, a void of peace, of mildness, of kindness. And we are all (the hating and the hated, the deceiving and the deceived) on the same boat of destruction…

“Replace the shame and guilt with empathy for the scared boy within you. Once you do that, the scared boy within you will be less scared, and courage will be the new life within you… Courage will replace helplessness…

“It is scary and depressing to feel powerless, no wonder you are anxious and depressed. I see the hope for your healing in changing your attitude from that of personal helplessness to that of personal empowerment, in you believing that you have some… power over what happens in your life… it is time for you to do more than to survive a harsh world…

“Every day, beginning in the morning, shift from despair to hope, bit by bit, in spite of and through expected regressions…

“Your brain is in the habit of getting engulfed by fear, anxiety, guilt and shame. It is difficult to break habits. It takes persistence and patience. It’s about extending the moments of calm over time”.

Today, I want to respond to what you shared on page 1: “There is one side of me which tells me that I should not overthink. But I get carried away when I try to make a decision. I mentally picture all the negative outcomes and feel them as real. I reflected on this behaviour and found that in my childhood I was not allowed to make any mistakes either at home or at school. Whenever I made one it was not well taken. I was scolded and judged. Never was I taught that mistake happens, and you need to learn from it. All I was said was how can a studious student like you make such mistakes and it was a shame. In the adulthood, there were few decisions I took, that did not result nicely. I think the fear of taking decisions started from these events and has been inculcated”-

– Shifting from self-judgment to self-compassion is a transformative process that leads to emotional well-being: (1) Recognize when you are being self-critical. Pay attention to your inner dialogue and notice when negative thoughts arise, (2) Challenge negative Thoughts: question the validity of your self-judgmental thoughts. Are they based on facts or assumptions? Would you say these things to someone you love and care about? (3) Replace negative thoughts with more compassionate ones. Speak to yourself as you would to someone you love and care about, (4) Practice mindfulness: stay present and accept your emotions without judgment. Mindfulness helps in acknowledging your feelings without letting them control and overwhelm you, (5) Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer to other people you care about. Be gentle and forgiving towards yourself, (6) Acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and that imperfection is part of being human. Let go of past regrets and focus on learning and growth, (7) Establish healthy boundaries to protect your mental and emotional well-being. This includes saying no when necessary and prioritizing self-care, (8) Reach out to friends, family, tiny buddha members (here), or a therapist for support. Sharing your struggles with others can help you gain perspective and feel less isolated, (9) Celebrate progress: acknowledge and celebrate your efforts and achievements, no matter how small. Recognize that growth is a gradual process.

Self-compassion helps in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression by fostering a positive and supportive inner dialogue. Being compassionate towards yourself helps you bounce back from setbacks more easily. It builds resilience and the ability to cope with adversity. When you are kinder to yourself, you are more likely to extend kindness to others, improving your relationships and social connections. Self-compassion promotes a growth mindset, encouraging you to take on challenges and learn from mistakes without fear of harsh self-criticism. By treating yourself with kindness and respect, you build a healthier self-esteem and a more positive self-image. Practicing self-compassion leads to emotional well-being, life satisfaction, and overall happiness.

In short, shifting from self-judgment to self-compassion a journey worth embarking on, and every small step counts. 🌟

anita

I hope you are well and building your own life this new year, Nichole!

anita

Dear TE:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings so openly. It’s clear that you deeply care about your wife and your marriage. Navigating changes in physical health and attraction over time can be challenging.

It’s important to approach this situation with empathy and understanding. Your wife’s weight gain might be influenced by various factors, including medical, emotional, and psychological aspects. Here are a few suggestions that might help:

* If you haven’t so far, have an open, compassionate conversation with your wife about your concerns. Focus on health and well-being rather than appearance. Express your love and support for her in every aspect.

* Encourage her to visit a healthcare professional for a thorough check-up. There could be underlying health issues that contribute to weight gain and difficulty with exercise.

* Find activities you both enjoy that promote physical activity but feel less like exercise. This could include dancing, gardening, or even exploring new hobbies together.

* Support her emotionally and help her identify any stressors or emotional challenges that might be affecting her motivation and health. Consider counseling or therapy if needed.

* Understand that changes won’t happen overnight. Show patience and continue to express your love and support. Small, consistent efforts can lead to positive changes over time.

Your dedication to your marriage and love for your wife are evident. Balancing support with empathy and understanding can help you both navigate this together.

Wishing you both the best-

anita