Dear Paradoxy,

There wasn’t as much damage as we expected, especially since Jamaica has a lot of mountains so my campus was pretty much safe.

Happy to hear about that!

I am not saying that only Caribbean people are involved in immoral activities. But activities similar to cheating on their partner and other similar immoral activities appear to be higher among the Caribbean community. My community has its own set of corruption, usually religion-based or just plain politics of turning people against each other and stuff and financial cheating. One guy got murdered right in front of his kids cause he was a businessman who managed to steal a 20 million dollar diamond from another businessman.

Okay, so perhaps it can be said that the Caribbean community is more prone to sins of sexual nature (lust, adultery), while your community more to sins of financial nature: greed. And creating division among people (“turning people against each other”), which to me would be like sowing seeds of division and conflict, rather than love, mutual respect and understanding.

I am not as good as I wanted to be.

Your main problem is the belief that you are not good enough. Which affects your self-confidence and your communication skills, as well as the impression you make at interviews (The others managed to get into good colleges due to their interview skills and other test scores for the college).

You believe you are not good enough because your parents believe you are not good enough. In fact, your father sees you as an idiot and has seen you as such for a long time. You can never be good enough in the eyes of your cruel, strict, judgmental father.

When a child and a youth believes they are not good enough, all kind of learning difficulties can ensue, and even self-sabotaging behaviors like drug abuse and alcohol. If you are constantly under pressure to perform and are severely punished and criticized for not performing well enough, it naturally diminishes your capacity to perform, both at school and in what you actually like: music.

In this last post, you keep berating yourself, being stuck in the “woe is me”. And refusing to believe that change is possible.

I was trying to help you see that you don’t need to stay stuck, even if you physically still depend on your parents. That you don’t need to stay stuck mentally and emotionally in that bitter place. But you keep pitying yourself, defending your parents and staying stuck. And it’s a rather tight mental loop, almost a box, which cannot be opened.

Because you have an excuse for everything and you change your stance as needed: When you need to defend your parent’s parenting skills, you portray yourself as wise and mature – because that’s supposedly a proof of their successful parenting. But at other times, when you want to “prove” how inadequate you are, you portray yourself as stupid and immature.

The end result of our every discussion (i.e. the message you want to convey) is that you are bad, they are good. And there is nothing that can convince you of the opposite.

I wish I could help you open that airtight container. But I realize I can’t. And I don’t want to run around in circles, trying to help you, when you actually want to (at least for now) stay stuck in self-blame and self-pity, and are refusing to look at the real causes of your suffering.

I wish you well, Paradoxy, but most of all, I wish you real healing.

Hi Beni,

I want to correct something I said in my latest post:

It does seem to me that your attitude towards helping her is a defensive stance – you withdrawing into your protective shell and not wanting to be “used” by her, for fear of getting emotionally overwhelmed and overtaken by her. I think it’s a bit of an overreaction, but I understand where you are coming from.

I said it’s an overreaction. But if it is a freeze response (“I draw a line. My body draws a line”), it’s not conscious – it is what your body and your nervous system do automatically. When you are in the freeze response, your rational mind isn’t “online”, so you cannot really control your reactions. So I just wanted to clarify that, because I don’t want to sound as if I am blaming you for being overly reactive. The freeze response is not your fault – it’s an automatic reaction when we feel in danger.

There are techniques to get out of the freeze response, which include moving our body. I am sure you have looked into it already, but here are 3 really useful youtube videos, by psychotherapists that I respect a lot:

“This is what it’s like to be in freeze” and “Unfreeze yourself“, by The Holistic Psychologist channel, and

“Are you stuck in freeze mode? How to turn off the freeze response“, by Therapy in a Nutshell.

I hope it helps, if you’re not already familiar with it.

Have a nice day yourself!

Hello dear Beni,

Mhh, In the end I had pain and then I went on skate trip, expected it to get worse but it did not.

Good that skating didn’t make it worse. Which probably means that your spine has developed some resilience and it’s not that sensitive any more.

Juii, I love water sounds great.

Yeah me too!

What I wanna say is that some parents do not take there kid’s experience serious. They say it’s being manipulative. They do not understand that the child may feel very very different about this and that it feels real to the child. It’s an ignorant perspective.

Has your mother (or father) ever told you that you are making a big deal out of nothing and that you surely cannot be as hurt as you are claiming to be? Have they tried to deny your experience and tell you that you are too sensitive and/or faking being hurt?

I know it wouldn’t feel right. If I give her affection in a way I enable something I do not want to enable. I need affection from her first. It gives her allowance to be weak but I need a strong mother. I need an anchor.

Okay, that’s important: you need an anchor. You need a strong mother. You need a mother who is able to soothe you and protect you, not vice versa. It seems she wanted you to meet her emotional needs (e.g. to kiss her and hug her so she wouldn’t feel unlovable), and that’s not something a parent should expect from the child. And you couldn’t meet that need – your reaction was to freeze because it was overwhelming.

Because when a child is afraid, he needs his parent to be soothing and encouraging. He doesn’t need a parent who is equally fearful and insecure. Or a parent who is sad and preoccupied with their own issues and who doesn’t pay attention to the child’s needs. If the child needs soothing, and the mother is preoccupied with herself, or starts worrying instead of being able to soothe the child, the child feels threatened. And one possible reaction is to freeze.

Anyway, now you are an adult, and you’ll have to create that anchor, i.e. that strong “mother”, within yourself. You shouldn’t wait for your mother to change and become the source of that strength and support – you need to create it in yourself.

Give yourself encouragement, or seek encouragement (for the things you’d like to achieve) outside of your parents. You can seek it in coaches, therapists, support groups, people who are already doing what you want to do. You need to find an anchor elsewhere and stop expecting her to give you that strength and courage (or whatever quality you feel you are missing).

I do not know how, yes. It feels like there is no way other than going through manageable doses of pain to go on in that process. I express myself. I hear her pain, I tell my pain. I suffer and take distance.

It seems that when you tell her your pain, you are still hoping that she would be able to relieve it. But she isn’t. She can’t give you the strength/support/encouragement you are hoping for. So your every encounter is painful because you are seeking something she cannot give you. She is burdening you with her own pain, instead of relieving you of your pain. It’s like adding insult to injury.

That’s why it seems to me you’d need to stop hoping to have your emotional needs met by her. You’d need to start finding ways to meet your own needs and seeking people who can help you in that endeavor. Become emotionally “unhooked” from your mother, so to speak.

I would agree to her only being able to accept me if I meet her need.

It seems she doesn’t like it when you don’t show empathy for her. If you are cold and distant. If you don’t let her complain about her problems, right? She doesn’t like your protective shell. And you don’t want to get out of that shell, because it would hurt you even more (what I said earlier: her pain is added onto your own pain, and it is too much to bear).

Yes, I draw a line. My body draws a line. Yes, it’s very essential, it is to maintain my Identity and my will.

It seems you withdraw into your protective shell, so not to be overwhelmed by too much pain (both hers and yours). And maybe also not to lose focus from yourself, because if you start focusing on her and her problems, you tend to lose yourself, or forget what you want, or start feeling guilty for wanting those things? Perhaps you fear getting enmeshed with her, so you are hiding in that shell, to keep your own space and identity intact.

I try to tell my mother to find things I can do. Where I have no blockage but she is not there yet where she can do that. She get’s a fierce look. As if she’s made responsible for something which is my fault.

Ok, so you try to negotiate with her to give you tasks where you won’t feel misused? (because you said you’re only willing to help her if you feel that her requirement is “selfless”). She doesn’t like your conditions and she gives you a strict/angry look (you called it a “fierce” look).

Maybe she feels you are too demanding (or lazy/unhelpful), and not her? And that her requirement/plea for help is justified? While you are unjustly accusing her? (As if she’s made responsible for something which is my fault.)

Is this what is happening?

It does seem to me that your attitude towards helping her is a defensive stance – you withdrawing into your protective shell and not wanting to be “used” by her, for fear of getting emotionally overwhelmed and overtaken by her. I think it’s a bit of an overreaction, but I understand where you are coming from. You don’t want to give anything of yourself, because you feel so burdened already, that any additional pain of hers (and an expectation to be soothed by you) comes with a risk to overwhelm you. So when she needs help, even if it is as simple as cleaning up the kitchen – you feel it might deplete you even further and take you away from yourself and your own needs and desires.

So refusing to help in the kitchen becomes like a self-protection tool, albeit a misguided one, because if I am guessing right, you are still hoping to have your emotional needs met by her. So you are still kind of dependent on her, even if you are trying to protect yourself from her…

Let me know what you think?

Dear Paradoxy,

About your parents’ supposed love for you:

This love is similar to the love my parents have for each other. They constantly fight and never have any intimate moments or anything

My father and I are same on the fact that we never forget the times when we were hurt, especially by those close to us, and that is exactly what he feels toward my mother cause she has humiliated him multiple times and my mother doesn’t like apologizing so she never will.

But technically speaking they still spiritually love each other. … They know their roles as husband and wife and parent and so they choose to work things out for the sake of the greater good.

What you are describing is not love, but constant arguing, hostility and lack of respect for each other (as well as lack of tenderness and kindness towards each other). They were/are raising their children in that hostile, love- and tenderness-deprived environment, for the “greater good” of fulfilling the social norm of being married and having children. The norm and the form may be satisfied, and it may look good on the outside, but on the inside, there is so much suffering, and so much harm done to their children (or at least to one of their children: you).

But technically speaking they still spiritually love each other.

They don’t love each other “spiritually”. That’s not love. As I said, that’s fulfilling the social norm and looking good on the outside. But generating hell on the inside.

But this kind of life is not what I aspire for which is why I am trying my best to find a wife before they decide to marry me off to some stranger who is also doing what their parents told them to. I want a real bond, not a spiritual bond or a bond of responsibilities or a bond for the greater good.

I guess your father have taught you that what they have is a “spiritual bond”. Which I guess should mean to stay together even if they hate and disrespect each other. They have a bond of responsibilities, but it seems they felt very burdened by that responsibility (of raising children) because they believe you should thank them for giving you the bare minimum: for not leaving you to starve.

It seems that the burden of having children feels very heavy for them – they don’t do it gladly, maybe they even resent it. And maybe that’s why they made you feel like a burden –  because any other need beyond physical need was too much for them to handle.

In short, it seems they did their duty resentfully, with clenched teeth, not with love. And in that forced arrangement, there was no love for their children either.

I am trying my best to find a wife before they decide to marry me off to some stranger who is also doing what their parents told them to. I want a real bond, not a spiritual bond or a bond of responsibilities or a bond for the greater good.

You cannot find true love if you believe that what they have is love. They didn’t teach you what true love is – neither by education nor by their own example. It’s no wonder you fell for a narcissist, with zero amount of empathy for you, similar to your parents. You didn’t learn how to respect yourself and have empathy for yourself, and so you tolerated to be lied to, cheated on and manipulated.

And you also fought for hours/days/weeks on end, similarly to your parents. So this kind of toxicity in the relationship (constant arguing) was normal for you – because that’s what you were familiarized to.

So again, trying to find a loving wife while not healing your emotional wounds and false concepts of love will be impossible.

In my father’s words, he said that I should at least consider their opinion when deciding things cause it is the least I can do as a form of respect to them as my parent. In one way, thinking about their opinion does help me make some good choices but it is still a mental prison.

Your father exercises total dominance over you. He calls you daily and preaches to you for a full hour, he is telling you whom to talk to and be friends with, he knows your schedule to the slightest detail and controls your movement. He is not just giving you his opinion, which you should consider. He is telling you what to do. His approach is not parental advice, it’s total control.

You are lying to yourself (gaslighting yourself) that what he is doing is giving you advice. He is not. He doesn’t give you any freedom to decide differently. He demands obedience.

That’s why it feels like mental prison. Not because you are an unruly child who refuses to accept your father’s well-meaning advice, but because he wants you to be a robot who follows his commands.

The closest scenario to depict my situation is that of a balloon filled with helium, always held down by someone and when college came, the length of the balloon thread was extended, but still held down by someone. If that person had chosen to let the balloon fly, the balloon would have soared too high and popped due to the atmospheric pressure and heat.

Again, these are excuses for his tyrannical behavior. He is keeping you down – not to protect you from potential danger, but to keep you enslaved. He might have told you this is for your own good, but he is doing it to fulfill his need for control.

They may be toxic but that doesn’t make them stupid or unwise. Poor parenting doesn’t mean they don’t have wisdom. They were still able to shape me into someone good morality-wise even with the suffering. I am still grateful for that.

Again, you’re gaslighting yourself. A toxic person cannot be wise. They taught you the main commandments: not to lie, cheat, and steal. But they didn’t teach you how to recognize an emotionally abusive person (like themselves), or another kind of emotionally abusive person who unlike your parents does lie, cheat and steal (B). They didn’t impart on you true wisdom, because they’ve conditioned you to take abuse and find excuses for it. And you are still doing it, in this very post.

He also taught me self-observation and psychological analysis to read into the person better.

Well, he clearly didn’t do much self-observation, otherwise he might have noticed how tyrannical he is.

I’m not as good as him in reading people

You mean reading people to humiliate them? Because that’s what he did to you: he told you if you have emotional issues, you are an idiot.

Besides, they were right about B, so don’t u think I should still consider their opinion cause they could be right again?

Yes, you can “consider their opinion”. But as I said, you so far were not allowed to not listen to their opinion, i.e. to disobey. You didn’t tell them about B at all, right? So you couldn’t even ask for their advice. Because you know what would have followed if they had learned that you’re dating someone who is not approved by them.

What I am trying to say is that you can’t use their counsel and “consider their opinion” – you either do what they tell you, or you don’t share with them at all. Those are your only two options.

The suffering also taught me to care for others more deeply, even though all of them just take advantage of my love and care anyway.

Yeah, your parents’ upbringing made you to deny most of your needs and in a way, become a doormat for others. You believe your needs don’t matter. It seems you want to be loved by denying your own needs and instead helping others. But if we don’t love ourselves and don’t have empathy for ourselves, we will end up being like a doormat. People unfortunately won’t appreciate us, and this is what seems to be happening to you too. When that girl who complained a lot (the eldest of 3 sisters) didn’t appreciate your attempts to help her.

I have come to accept that no one will love me for who I am; to love me for my awkwardness and my cringe and my flaws etc. It will just be taken advantage of or looked at in disgust.

Unfortunately, your parents won’t love you for who you are. Their love is tyrannical and extremely conditional. And it is not even love. The sooner you realize it, the better.

You of course have flaws, like we all do. And you can work on those flaws. You’d need to do a lot of healing, due to all the emotional trauma that happened to you. But first, you’d need to stop being grateful for the non-love that you’ve received from your parents.

Technically speaking, they were right about B, so…. they did know what was best for me….

Have you ever introduced her to them? Because they judge women based on skin color, or a place they were born. So if according to them, most women, specially Caribbean, are gold-diggers, then sure, they were right. But not because they’ve met the girl or know anything about her, but because she happens to fit their prejudice.

He is still one of the respected men at his work and among our communities because they know they can rely on him to get a job done and that he is loyal and won’t do illogical things and etc. He is just poor when handling things that require emotional understanding.

Narcissists can be very capable workers, as well as respected members of community. And they are excellent in showing one face to the outside world and another behind closed doors. So if he acts kind and helpful with people in the community, while cruel and relentless with you, that’s how you know he is a narcissist.

I don’t have any motivation or anything to look towards to. I just feel stranded in an empty void in space, unable to move around.

Yeah, because you keep excusing your parents’ abuse and calling it love. You keep gaslighting yourself, like they were gaslighting you.

maybe my father was right about music too….

It seems it’s easier for you to slide into self-loathing (and accept your parents’ false view of you) than choose to wake up from your slumber and start helping yourself. I understand it, because standing against your parents probably seem like a fight between David and Goliath.

But if you want to achieve your proclaimed goal of finding true love: “I am trying my best to find a wife before they decide to marry me off to some stranger… I want a real bond“, you’d need to let go of your parents’ false notions of love and recognize that their treatment of you wasn’t really love. You’d need to learn what true love is.

Dear Paradoxy,

As a parent, they may have been obligated to take care of me, but they could have put me in an orphanage or something but they didn’t.

According to them, you should be grateful they didn’t leave you to starve, after choosing to have you. How kind and loving of them indeed.

I remember you talking about their “love”. Unfortunately, that wasn’t love, but they’ve brainwashed you to believe it was.

I know, I am not saying my parents are expecting me to pay them back or anything. I am saying that I will never really achieve true freedom cause the fact that they are my parents will overrule every desire that I have.

Yes, I understand. I didn’t even mean that they would expect you to pay them back financially, but by being obedient to them and doing whatever they require you to do.

Even if I become rich, they will still have some degree of control over me cause they have conditioned me to be obedient.

They’ve intimidated you into obedience by telling you that they want what’s best for you. While severely emotionally abusing  you and clipping your wings in the process.

Normally we would say that we shouldn’t care about other people’s opinion, but how can u ignore your own parents?

Well, you can start distancing yourself from their opinion if you realize they were/are toxic people who didn’t know how to raise a healthy child. That they don’t know what true love is. And that they don’t know what’s best for you.

I find that very difficult to do because at the end of the day, I only have them to turn to in the time of need any way. I have no real friends or anything. If there is anyone I can turn to for help, it would be God and my parents

I guess you can only turn to them if there is a financial/logistical/health problem. Any other problem is for them a non-issue. Emotional problem – God forbid. Your father tells you you are stupid for “whining” about some “non-issues”.

My parents are not intentionally chaining me. They just conditioned me into being an obedient dog without them even realizing it.

Your parents are and have been abusive. It doesn’t matter if they don’t understand how they are abusing you. What matters is that it is affecting you and has shaped your personality and your self-image as well. You have a very negative self-image, due to being raised by the people who are insensitive and lacking empathy.

They inadvertently created that mental prison in me and now I can’t do anything without fearing them, even though I am thousands of miles away from them.

You’d have to start changing your view of them. Because even if they were “well-meaning” and “loving” according to their own standards, they’ve harmed you. You’d need to realize they had wrong standards, and that their upbringing cannot be characterized as loving and caring. Meeting your physical needs – yes. But much more important needs – that are crucial for development of a healthy personality – no.

But in another way the chains suppressed most of my desires and now I am just a shell, a dog that just does what it is told.

Yes, their upbringing hasn’t nurtured the burgeoning spirit in you, i.e. your true self, but has crushed it instead. That’s why you now feel like a shell. The good news is that your true self still exists and can be restored. You can still heal from the consequences of their abuse. The question is – do you want to?

One time when my father was angry at me for playing video games, I asked him if he would rather expect me to work like a robot with no desires. And he said that is exactly what he wanted. Maybe he said it out of anger in the moment. But things like that have etched itself into my heart.

He didn’t even pretend to be kind and loving. He told you his real intention: to raise you like a robot who obeys his commands.

I was allowed to have my own goals and dreams, but the difference is that those goals and dreams were shaped by my parents’ wishes. So technically I am still fulfilling my goals and dreams, but they are based on the desires that my parents had for me.

They’ve intimidated you and manipulated you to into believing that their wishes are your own wishes. That they know what’s best for you, and you don’t. You’ve capitulated to that belief (and not surprisingly, after years of indoctrination).

I want to read your suggestions still. My soul is just tired of everything.

I am glad you are open to suggestions…

So my suggestion, or my assumption, is that your father might be narcissistic. Because I’ve come across a youtube video on self-righteous narcissists, and it describes how I imagine your father behaved or still behaves: hyper-moralistic and feeling superior to others due to upholding this “high moral standard”.

The title of the video is “The self-righteous narcissist“, and it can be found on the channel DoctorRamani.

Here are some excerpts from the video:

The self-righteous narcissist is a rigid personality who judges and sneers at everyone who is “imperfect” and doesn’t uphold the same perfectionist standard that they uphold. This type of person expects cold, robotic, military precision and compliance from other people. They devalue emotion, human frailty, mistakes and joy.

Self-righteous narcissists derive their narcissistic supply from being morally superior to other people and judging others for their supposed “imperfections”. They often live highly engineered, precise lives, with a strict routine. They pride themselves in being very disciplined and upholding a strict regimen (and judge others who don’t stick to such a regimen).

They can easily erupt in rage if their rules aren’t upheld to a tee.

They don’t talk to people – they “hold court”.

Living with such a person feels like living on a glacier: it’s cold, precarious, isolated and emotionless. But on the outside it appears fine, because everything seems to run smoothly.

Being in the presence of a self-righteous narcissist always feels like you are a scolded 10-yr old child.

They are very rigid and don’t believe they need to change. They sneer at the idea of therapy and view it as weakness and bad use of money.

(end of excerpts)

I believe the above fits very closely to how you’ve described your father. Let me know what you think?

Thankfully, there is a plenty of material out there about how to gradually free yourself from the legacy of such parenting. And I can point you at those too, if you are interested.

My soul is just tired of everything.

I understand you are tired – that your soul is tired – after having been raised like that. But things can change, although it won’t be easy. But still, there is a way out…

Dear Paradoxy,

I rejected them cause they are things that I have already considered and I have already tried so they are basically impractical at this point.

I agree that telling your father white lies might not work because he knows every detail about your schedule, so this might backfire. But you rejected other things as well, e.g. you rejected when I said that you should take into account your own trauma, not just B’s trauma.

I tried to make a point that you yourself were faced with trauma during your entire relationship with B, and especially after she told you about her prostitution. And that you had all right to confide in someone. To which you replied:

The primary trauma is still hers since she is the one who got taken advantage of. So people would only see that, they won’t see my pain and suffering.

You are completely dismissing your own trauma. You are still putting her in the center of your attention, completely disregarding yourself and your own needs. You have empathy for her, but you have no empathy for yourself.

I was trying to tell you that you and your needs matter.

I made a rhetorical question: “What were you supposed to do? Suffer in silence?” To which you replied: “Yes, that is what she expected me to do.”

Yes, that’s what she expected you to do. But frankly, I don’t care what she – who is a narcissist and doesn’t care about anyone else – expected you to do. I am asking what you needed at that moment. What was your need when faced with that trauma.

I know that nobody cared about your needs (except physical needs), neither in your childhood, nor now. So this is a strange concept for you. But if you want to heal, you’ll need to start thinking about your own needs too. You’ll need to start developing empathy for yourself, not just for others.

Specially not for your abusers.

Wth am I supposed to do when these persons have no respect for boundaries and all that stuff u suggested? We are talking about people who WON’T listen nor try to understand. It is like trying to stop a pig from jumping into mud. The best advice of urs I could take is to mentally block them.

Yes, mentally blocking B, i.e. not falling for her accusations and not trying to defend yourself – is a good strategy. However, you say that you still feel obliged to help her:

B may be narcissistic and a liar and etc, but if I ignore her when she actually needs my help and something happens, I have to live with that in my conscience.

She is using you (or rather, exploiting you) to meet her needs. And we are not talking about survival needs, but wanton needs, such as buying her expensive gifts. Or paying for her trading class – which is her investing in her own education. Why should you be responsible for that?

Or her “need” to go to the ATM late at night to deposit money. It’s not a real need, but a manipulation tactic to draw you in.

So those are fake and invented needs. And still, you feel obliged to help her, or should I say to fulfill her whims. Because those are not real needs, those are whims.

If you can reframe that what you are doing for her is not helping her, but fulfilling her whims – perhaps it would help you to say No to some of those whims?

As for your father, the situation is trickier, because you were raised to be obedient and to obey your parents’ wishes – without ever considering your own. It will need a lot more strength and self-awareness to be able to get back some of the autonomy that should belong to you.

I agree that telling white lies is not the best way to go. The real deal would be to realize that you are not your father’s property and that you have the right to some autonomy. I know that in the family and societal system you grew up in this is almost a taboo. But again, if you want to be your own man some day, you’ll need to find ways to free yourself from his complete dominance.

It is like my intentions are to make them happy, but they only laugh when they are entertained by a clown.

To make whom happy? Your father? Or those girls, whom he tells you to talk to? But who think of you as a clown?

Hi Beni,

happy to hear from you! Yeah it’s been a long time, but I am glad you’re fine, both your back and that you bought a new laptop 🙂

My back seems to be alright. I don’t really understand it sure it’s there I think i couldn’t do a full time construction job.

Really happy to hear this! That means you don’t even feel it for the most part, right? Are you still skating? And yeah, better not try full-time construction job, because that would for sure aggravate it.

My back is a little better too, thank God. But now my knee problem got reactivated, after having been dormant for 1.5 years (since my back injury). I hope it stays manageable and doesn’t escalate, specially now, before the summer holidays.

Wow, you make a big effort to put all the things together. … It touches me and at the same time feels far away from this moment.

I often felt like this is made up and I’m in a way justifying something I should rather confront. While I’m replying I had an encounter with my mom and I see it quite clear that it’s real.

Thank you, and you are welcome! It seems that at the time you started writing your reply, the explanation I offered sounded plausible, but you couldn’t feel it “in your bones”, so to speak. It felt emotionally distant, right? As if it didn’t affect you?

But then, as you were writing your reply, you had an encounter with your mother, and then you felt it emotionally? You felt the emotional dynamic between you and your mother, and that it is real. That it’s not just some theory that doesn’t apply to you. Am I guessing this right?

I think this pretty much hits the nail on the head. Thank you for writing it up.

You are welcome. And I am glad that you feel it’s more or less true for you.

By not expressing myself I protect my Mom from worrying or meet her need for control.

Can you give me an example of something you’d like to express to her, but you worry that she will worry and will try to talk you out of it? (and thus control you)?

If she makes a request and I’m not shure that it’s selfless I can’t do it.

Can you give me an example of a request she makes on you, which you deem as not selfless, and then you can’t do it?

Only if you’d like to share, of course…

Dear Paradoxy,

You’ve just rejected everything I suggested, even laughed some things off:

Hell no, not this dude. This is not the first time he has lied and it is not that hard for him cause he is used to it.

the primary trauma is hers

Lol do u think B or my parents care about boundaries??? LOL

Pretty sure she will find a way to make a fool out of me. I just have to be prepared.

My father will find some way to intervene,

Lol like that will work against him.

They know my schedule too well. That won’t work.

they will demand that I talk when I get home.

may be narcissistic and a liar and etc, but if I ignore her when she actually needs my help and something happens, I have to live with that in my conscience.

You came her looking for help, but refuse all help. I guess it’s not because you think I am dumb and my advice is bs, but you believe you cannot be helped?

If you believe you cannot be helped and that you are completely stuck in your current situation, with no chance to change it even for an inch, then unfortunately I cannot help you either. You also categorically refused to go to therapy as well.

As for Asperger’s, one of the symptoms you mention is “lack of bonding with parents”. No wonder about that, because your parents were and still are abusive. The way you were raised largely determines how you are now. It has an impact on your emotional health, including communication skills as well. Because how we communicate is greatly influenced by our self-esteem and in general our view of self and others.  If either is negative, our communication skills will be affected too.

But I would really prefer not having to wear clown makeup.

But you seem to believe you have to and have no other choice.