Dear joanna:

More accurately, I get tired every day. That is natural, to get tired. I used to feel exhausted, that is, very tired, extremely tired a whole lot in the past, especially when I was a child, a teenager, younger, because of the anxiety. The anxiety is exhausting. Because of the healing process, it has been many months that I feel less tired than I used to.

You asked: “Is this really so uncommon, accusing of bad intentions?” Yes, it is very uncommon for an individual to accuse others of bad intentions repeatedly “hundreds or thousands (of times) even, every day sometimes”. It probably seems natural and normal to you (words you used) because, like you wrote, you got so used to it. Your brain was formed with your mother being the main force in your life, with her accusations as.. the unfortunate normal.

By “This is why it is important…” I did not mean that I don’t want to advise you for some reason, not at all. I do want to keep communicating with you, absolutely. What I meant was to encourage you to take on your healing process with you being the one to decide, the one in power to decide what is true and what is not true. For example, I might get carried away with the similarities between your mother and mine and suggest to you that your mother is like mine in ways she is not. In that case, I hope you question what I wrote and decide for yourself that what I wrote is not true. Same in regard to what anyone says to you- do not accept it as the truth- evaluate and decide for yourself.

I am glad that you are not sorry anymore that you don’t have the kind of job your mother wanted you to have, looking like your mother wanted you to look, and so on. And I am glad you feel stronger, eyes opened, more confident.

You wrote: “I will never let go of the fact that my father is dead and that he didn’t save me from this life… so he (the man) is still my hope. I can’t let him go… I need so much for him to be my hero… I can’t help feeling it… (he) never was a hero I wanted him to be, he just has those features my father had, he is distant, cold like him so he seems like a safe place so much.”

We only know what we experience. We don’t know what we didn’t experience. You experienced your mother as aggressive, accusing, torturing, really. In comparison, your father was the safe place because he was not aggressive to you, he didn’t do to you the harmful things that she did. Now as an adult, you know the same you did as a child: safety is with the person who is not aggressive and is distant and cold, like your father.

The experience you didn’t have as a child is having a parent who is not aggressive and is attentive to you in loving ways. And so, you don’t expect this kind of experience. You… don’t know it exists.

You wrote that you may see this man again, “I don’t know what must happen so that I would finally be over him”- what must happen, I think, is that you experience what you haven’t experienced so far, and that is a non aggressive person who is attentive to you in loving ways. Then you will know it exists and once you know it exists, you will want to experience it.

Some people get this new experience in quality psychotherapy where for the first time they get treated non-aggressively and attentively in loving ways (professionally, of course). Following this experience, over time, they are able to detect such individuals who are also not aggressive and lovingly attentive and be drawn to such, forming a relationship with such an individual.

It is about somehow experiencing what you didn’t experience before.

anita

Dear joanna:

Regarding your first paragraph: you were waiting in line to go to the bathroom.   A woman who stood behind you in line went first while you were looking away. Next, your mother angrily and loudly blamed you for being short and therefore causing your mistreatment.

My understanding of the situation: maybe the woman had to go and chose to do one wrong thing (going before you) instead of let’s say urinating into her clothes right there and then. If that was the case, I would think she would apologize before or after the event, explaining her great emergency. If she didn’t apologize, reads to me that she did disrespect you and the social custom of waiting in line.

When your mother yelled, she may have intended for the woman to hear her. She was too scared to directly confront the woman (assuming she didn’t after the yelling) and indirectly expressed her anger at the woman. She was definitely angry at you, the offended.

Here are two terms, italicized: the outer critic is the audible voice you heard when your mother accused you of being short and causing our mistreatment. The inner critic is the silent voice in her head blaming herself, among other things, for being faulty this or that way and causing her mistreatment by others (from childhood to the present day).

Sometimes she gives herself a break from that inner critic by turning that critic outward, hence the outer critic.

Regarding your second paragraph: I will list what the outer critic said to you and in parenthesis what the inner critic may be saying to her at other times (it is a silent voice, don’t know what it says, she may not know herself, not being aware of it. It doesn’t necessarily saying the very same things as the outer critic  is saying):

“You are short!” (You are ugly). You lisp! (Your voice is too thick) “You are messy”! (Your own father doesn’t love you even though you were neat and organized. Something is very wrong with you!)”You are oversensitive! (I hate you when you feel hurt, you whiny baby!) “Your eyes are like your father’s! (Your eyes are too small!) etc.

Regarding your question: my mother often accused me of intending to hurt her emotionally, then planning how to achieve that. And then executing my sometimes elaborate plan over a period of time until my objective was achieved and she was indeed hurt by me. She would tell me what my alleged plan was, and how I allegedly went about it step by step.

She accused me of not able to endure seeing her happy and making sure she wasn’t happy for long.

anita

Dear joanna:

Regarding you being messy: it may be true, but not because you were born-to-be messy, not because you have a Mess Genetics or that you were born faulty that way, but because your mother severely discouraged you from being neat. She complained but discouraged you from doing anything about what she was complaining. When you had your stuff in the kitchen, she complained about the kitchen being messy but vehemently refused that you fix the mess by removing your things from the kitchen.

And so, other people see the mess and confirm, indeed you are messy. And they are correct, you are messy… because you were directed to be messy by the most powerful person in your life, your mother.

If your mother encouraged you to be neat, you would have been neat and people would say: how neat you are, joanna!

Regarding your second question in your post above: basically, your mother’s parents’ critical voice was directed at your mother when she was a child. As an adult, your mother is redirecting that voice toward you. This is the nature of abuse, every generation redirects that voice so to hit the next generation.

Your last two lines: “my mother perceives it as ‘other people criticize you too, they see how bad you are so I must be right about you being this and that”- how vicious your mother is, to drill her message into you repeatedly and relentlessly, employing the help of others in her drilling.

anita

Dear joanna:

You asked me to  be honest with you. I was always honest with you, always will be. It doesn’t take an effort on my part to be honest with you, or with anyone. Honesty is my passion. It allows me to see and learn. Honesty is not something I do for you. It is who I am.

I believe that seeing reality for what it is- helps us, never hurts us. And so, I will not say something to you for the purpose of you feeling better. Because I don’t believe it will be good for you. I say only what I believe is true to reality.

About your mother being right about you- imagine this: person A stabs person B and then complains: Person B is messy, blood everywhere! Is person A correct? yes. Person B is messy, blood everywhere, sticky, messy.

In a less dramatic way, yes, I suppose your mother is right about you being messy (I never observed your room, your living areas, so I don’t know, I am assuming you are).

You asked: “Am I the reason my mother complains about me?” Back to my bloody example, if person B wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be any blood, so if you ignore the fact that there was a stabbing, then you can say: if person B wasn’t there, there wouldn’t be any blood, any mess. So Person B brought about the mess.

You asked: “Will my mother magically stop complaining and bringing me down if I start being amazingly neat?”

Back to my example: person B cleans herself, cleans the wound, cleans the floor, gone is the sticky blood, the floor is smooth, better than before, no sign of mess. Person A still holds a knife, still driven to stab. So she stabs the newly recovered person B again, and there is blood all over again. “I told you that you are messy!” A neighbor comes over, and person A says to the neighbor: look how messy person B is! And the neighbor says: Person B sure is messy, why only an hour ago she was messy. Messy again, so soon, my goodness, she is so very messy!

Your grandmother abused your mother and she is abusing you. She is motivated to abuse you, so she keeps doing so.

anita

Dear joanna:

Maybe I felt offended for a very short moment, maybe. I am not offended now.  Regarding me being “harsh about this”- why would I be harsh when being harsh hurts you. I can be honest without being harsh. The people who have been harsh with you so far in your life, none of it was necessary, none that I can imagine, was necessary.

Yes, I used to talk about my mother to anyone who’d listen. Problem  is I didn’t believe what I was saying, similar to you: some times you believe that your mother mistreats you and at other times you believe that she is not, that she is only responding to a faulty person, the way anyone will respond to a faulty person. Isn’t it so?

anita

Dear joanna:

Worry not, if you can about me getting offended. I understand and in a similar way I offend people as well. No one is aware enough, attentive enough, all day long so to be able to perfectly express themselves. Funny thing, I worry too. A few posts ago I wrote “Dear Joanna”, using a capital J (I forgot to correct the automatic spell feature that capitalizes the J each time) and I worried that I offended you. It was an automatic worry, stemming from my core  belief that I am a bad, faulty person that is likely to offend another by any possible mistake, any.

Yes, joanna, of course you were and are abused, mistreated, clearly.

anita

Dear joanna:

About offending me, you have not. You did not use abusive words toward me, you did not display aggression toward me. You were repeatedly kind and gracious throughout our long communication here. You were kind and gracious to all members who replied to you.

You wrote: “is my mother right that I am almost ruining her life and making her life miserable with my leaving clothes on the floor etc. Please be honest with this.”

On my end: there was some discomfort about “be honest with this”- why the request to be honest, and why  on this? Is joanna suggesting that I was dishonest with her before, or that I was dishonest  about that?

On your end: you were emotional, the question you asked was very important to you, so you let me know how important it is for you that I tell you my true answer by adding: be honest, as in: don’t compromise the truth so to make me feel better, I really, really need to know the answer!

Following a moment of discomfort on my part, I realized what you meant and the very temporary discomfort was over. I understood that you did not suggest that I was dishonest before (a non-offense) but that my answer is very important to you. As a matter of fact it is a compliment to me that you trust me with a question that is so important to you.

You are safe with me, joanna. You can type what you want, don’t be afraid to offend me. I trust you to be the good person that you are. You are not… inclined to offend.

And to the answer of your question quoted above: no, your mother is not right. She was and is wrong. You did not and are not making her life miserable. I am sure of that.

Regarding self harm: part of you (thoughts and emotions) takes after your mother, believing that you are bad and deserve punishment, and like any person who is angry at another person and then punishes that other person, the punisher experiences relief, as in:  the bad one got what she deserved! Justice was done!

You wrote about your face: “I feel the need to destroy it… I don’t deserve to have a pretty face and when I see it, I want to look ugly again”-

back to the question you asked two days ago: “is my mother right that I am almost ruining her life and making her life miserable..?” if your mother is right, that means you are a bad person. Only a bad person will make her own mother miserable, intentionally and repeatedly and for years! And a bad person doesn’t deserve a pretty face!

If your mother is wrong, and you really did not and do not make her life miserable (other people did this job long before you were born to her), if your intent all along was to make your mother happy (the intent of all young children, naturally), then you were and you are a good person. A person deserving a pretty face.

An added complication when you harm your face is: what is wrong with me for doing this… Thing is, harming your face is a consequence of abuse you suffered and still suffer. Don’t blame yourself, if you can, for a consequence of someone else’s doing. As you increase your awareness that such behavior is a consequence of abuse, and as you continue to challenge what she told you, believe it less and less, the skin picking inclination will weaken and weaken and be more and be more and more under your control, a subject to your choosing.

anita

Dear joanna:

You are welcome. I am pleased to read that you believe me. Because I believe that I am indeed worthy of your trust. Your recent post is positive, more progress on your part. Post again anytime and remember, progress when continuous, is not linear, distress does return after times of calm. And when it does, it is an opportunity to make more progress.

anita