Dear Stacy:

“Also, thank you“- you are welcome!

“I have the game plan of what will help make me feel like a capable woman, but shorter term goals need to happen and I need to see value in myself right now… I know I have to feel good with myself while I work towards those long term goals and it just feels impossible to go 30-ish years feeling so insignificant and like a burden to suddenly loving myself. It’s the biggest void I’m trying to fill.“-

– a severe lack of self-worth is a huge void, a vacuum, and a very painful one. Like any vacuum, it quickly gets filled with whatever is around it. In this case, it gets filled with self-doubts, self-judgment, guilt and shame, and you find yourself occupied with these painful negative feelings.

Like other animals, our first, instinctual, most urgent need is to survive, and therefore, we instinctually focus on pain for the purpose of confronting what’s causing it (ex., an injury), healing it and stopping the pain. When an animal is experiencing significant or severe pain, it is not motivated to eat or sleep or mate, pain is the singular focus. Similarly, when a person experiences significant to severe emotional pain, the person’s focus is on the pain and what’s causing it; the person is not able to focus on something positive, such as the goal of becoming a capable woman.

You have a game plan to become a capable woman, having long-term goals that depend on short-term goals.. but these painful negative feelings are in the way: how can you feel like, and become a capable woman, if you are filled with self-doubts, judgment, guilt and shame? (I’ll get to it in a moment).

“you mentioned earlier in one of your posts that even after you moved out and met your external goals, that you still struggled with negative feelings“-

– you are probably referring to my sharing that at the age of 24, I flew across the world by myself- far, far away from my torment-filled relationship with my mother- ending up in New York City during Christmas time (talking about Christmas!), feeling HAPPY perhaps for the first time in my life, positive and hopeful. It was a magical time, a thrilling time. But then.. seeing all the magic, I felt sorry for my poor mother who so often complained about having had a miserable life, never traveling, never seeing the world.. I was filled with empathy for her (I cared too much for her) and guilt, so I arranged for her to fly and stay in NYC. Once she arrived- and even before she arrived- gone was the Magic and back was the Torment.

Imagine that you move out of your loud, chaotic home (as you described it), and find yourself living in a quiet, calm and peaceful home. At first, you enjoy the newness so much, it’s magical!  But then, you think to yourself: my poor mother, my poor sister: they are living in a loud, chaotic home.. Oh, how they’d love living where I am now. And so, you invite them to live with you, and.. gone is the newness and back is the same old, same old loudness and chaos.

“If you don’t mind me asking, but did your work in therapy help build your self-worth and self-trust?“- (1) It helped having a person listen to me and talk to me respectfully. What a refreshing experience. (2) It helped having a person being curious about what I think and feel, a person caring about what’s happening in my heart and mind. Invisibility is what I was used to before. (It was like war was happening in my mind and heart day in and day out..  and no one noticed, or cared).

My mother used to conduct those Shaming Sessions against me, sessions she said I deserved: she would corner me and facing me, she would say out loud, very loudly,  the most shaming words, humiliating me in any and every possible way she could think of. She’d shame me in one way, then figure that there was a better, more effective way to shame me, so she did, and she’d go about it enthusiastically. She was very creative that way, and very motivated. She wouldn’t stop shaming and guilt-tripping me, and hitting me (telling me that the only thing she liked about me was that I silently looked down at the floor when she hit me) until she ran out of words and breath. “Look what you did to me”, she’d say, looking at her hands, “you made my hands hurt” she’d say, referring to having hit me to the point that she felt pain in her hands.

I believed her and proceeded to lived a life that a bad, shameful, guilty person deserves. I was filled with severe self-worth-void, a vacuum filled with shame and guilt. Dissociated much of the time, wishing to die.. and feeling sorry for her, overwhelmed by empathy for her, and none for me. She was still- throughout all this- “the best mother in the world”, her words=>  my words. She did buy me things, toys and clothes and my favorite cake, a chocolate marzipan cake.

Back to your question: “Did your work in therapy help build your self-worth and self-trust?“- it helped but it didn’t build my self-worth and self-trust. What helped me most has been better interactions with people in real-life and my daily participation in the forums of tiny buddha May 2015-Feb/March 2023, resumed recently, including my communication with you and this very post that I am about to submit to you, one I’ve been working on for 3-4 hours so far.

What I shared with you, those Shaming Sessions, I never shared about them the way I did with you this very morning. In the past, when I shared about my Torment with my mother, I was detached, dissociated and didn’t quite believe that it really happened and that it was that bad and I didn’t believe that.. she was the one at fault.

It took figuratively giving my mother the badness that belongs to her, so that I don’t carry  it anymore within me. Removing that badness that filled the void, made it possible for a measure of self-worth and self-trust to take the space previously occupied by shame and guilt. I still feel empathy for my mother (with whom I had no contact for ten years), but I also feel empathy for myself. My sister contacted me six months ago, suggesting that I reconnect with my mother, telling me that she’s getting old, that she has “a lot of good in her”, and that she and admits having  “made mistakes”. No elaboration on “mistakes”. I refused the suggestion.

The pain is still within me this morning, but it is my pain, not her pain. In other words, I now belong to myself and what is mine- is mine, not hers, not my mother’s. My life is not hers and it is not about her, not anymore.

You wrote in your most recent post: “it’s true that my mom and sister are struggling so much with their own issues that they are just incapable of giving me the energy and patience I need. I kind of feel like I’m not able to be a present daughter either right now, I’m struggling with my own issues“- their issues and your issues are not separate issues for as long as you are living with them and for as long as you care about them more than you care about yourself. Choose you over them, be number 1, own your life, make it your own.

anita