Anita, Thank you and Good Night.

Have a nice walk today! (or tomorrow, depends when you are going)

Dear Joanna:

You are welcome.  “I feel like all those years I had her opinions, her assumptions“- notice when it happens that you just had a thought that was your own opinion, your own preference on this or that matter (clothes, food, etc.), and make a mental note of it (or have a paper list of such that you carry with you in your purse).

“I was rude because he did not make a good impression“- our mothers’ judgmental thoughts and feelings quickly and energetically flow into our first impressions of people because first impressions happen before we have a chance to .. entertain our own thoughts.

I asked you in regard to your mother: “she enjoyed venting her anger at people, didn’t she..?” (all of the boldfaced and italicized in this post are my addition).

You answered in regard to your mother’s anger, using the example of the cousin: “She even applauded me when I was sometimes angry at someone, trying to make me more angry, making up assumptions how this person was even more evil, because she or he said this or that… This one time I was angry at my cousin.. I got angry… I shouted something like ‘YOU get out of here!’…  My mother used to talk about this situation for years.  She was proud of me I lost my temper. She used to say ‘I really regret you did not hit her when you had the chance!‘. She loved how upset I was then. I cannot express this with words here how excited she was… My mother was excited and proud of me… She always used to say how my cousin was little and was not behaving sometimes and my mother would spank her and ‘it was so satisfying‘…”.

In regard to your anger at the cousin, you wrote: “my hands were shaking, my heart was beating fast and I could not move, I was terrified. I cried for days after this. Not only because of my cousin, I think overall I had a breakdown. I am ashamed of this”.

– What happens when we get ANGRY is that the hormone adrenaline aka epinephrine is rushed into our blood. Different people feel differently during an adrenaline rush: some people feel primarily excited and powerful, a positive emotional and physical experience (your mother, my mother); others feel primarily anxious, a negative emotional and physical experience.

web md. com/ what to know about an adrenaline rush: “Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, is a stress hormone. An adrenaline rush can feel like anxiousness, nervousness, or pure excitement as your body and mind are preparing for an event. There are certain activities like skydiving and bungee jumping that give you an adrenaline rush…This feeling either excites you or amps up your anxiety for whatever event you’re facing… An adrenaline rush can heighten your abilities, making you feel invincible. This process is meant to help you overcome the situation that is causing your extreme stress”.

Your mother and you experienced anger differently: it primarily excited her, made her feel powerful and proud; it primarily scared you, made you feel weak and ashamed. She enjoyed it; you did not.

Does this lead you to a better understanding of her anger vs yours?

anita

Dear Joanna:

“I already started this but those are small steps… I will start thinking of my opinions on things, even small things“- there is no such thing as small steps or small things when it comes to making progress, they are all BIG!

“She indeed celebrated and bragged when she ‘destroyed’ someone“- she felt powerful, and her felt-power intoxicated her!

“It amazed me how she was never sorry/ashamed when she did something bad, offended people, even if someone ‘deserved it’“- she felt good about offending people, how can something that feels so good.. be bad?, is the thought, I imagine.

“I saw so many rages, screaming, hitting that I developed nervous tics since I was 6 (shaking my knees, my head, blinking, moving my neck – all sorts. They change, come and go, some never came back, new ones occur)“- when I started reading this paragraph, I thought that you were quoting me (from someplace where I wrote this before), I couldn’t believe it: this is AMAZING! I too developed tics when I was 6, the same age as you. Our mothers are so similar, and our reactions to them, so very similar. I still have tics. I was diagnosed for having Tourette Syndrome (as an adult).

“I think this may be the reason why I cannot feel as excited as she is. She was angry (also powerful, excited – positive experience) but to me: it was scary, nothing more“- Exactly my experience. Feeling happily, or positively excited (about anything) ever since my mother’s rages, has been problematic to me. All excitements- positive and negative- are uncomfortable for me. All excitements trigger my tics!

“Part of my protection from her anger were those nervous tics. She encouraged it. I remember her screaming  “Child…child stop, what are you doing! please stop with the head, don’t do it” – with caring voice, but angry (at my dad? as if he caused it?) ‘Look what you are doing to the child!’ (said to my dad). I continued to have those tics, partly because I developed them and partly because she noticed them and was not angry at me but cared for me (so I thought..) Even though I was 6 or 7 at that time I knew it, I felt that she liked it, it was convenient. (And here I am, 30 years later, still having some nervous tics.)”-

– AMAZING! (I am not feeling excited by the way, when I type amazing in big print letters… wait, I feel a bit excited). I had this head moving tic, shaking it to the right and left, and when she was venting to me, I was doing this tic (maybe partly on purpose.. I don’t know) and hoping that seeing me tic, she will have mercy on me and stop venting, but she didn’t stop.

Wow, Joanna, amazing indeed! I hope you have a good night and I do plan to go for a walk in a couple of hours. It is sunny here but there is plenty of snow and ice that hasn’t melted yet.

anita

Dear Joanna:

You are welcome, and thank you for the quick note and for reciprocating my AMAZING! Take your time replying further any time tomorrow and have a good night!

anita

Dear Joanna:

I am fine, thank you. “‘She indeed celebrated and bragged when she ‘destroyed’ someone’- she felt powerful, and her felt-power intoxicated her!” That is scary. I can see it being true, sadly. Scary! I feel sorry for her“-

– scary indeed, particularly for the person being destroyed.. and how troubling it is, for the person being destroyed, to feel empathy for the destroyer (“I feel sorry for her“). I felt empathy for my mother for ages. Imagine a deer feeling empathy for the mountain lion: oh, poor lion he must be hungry, he needs to eat... Q: How would the deer express that empathy? A: By either offering itself as a meal, or by offering someone else for the lion to eat.

“I still recall your words Anita, (may be paraphrased) ‘We all make assumptions .. Paranoid believes it’s true‘. I wonder if it’s curable – from what I researched not really, because of….paranoid. That makes sense!“-

– when the only source of the feeling-of-power for a person is to attack and destroy another person, healing would mean… to no longer feel power: people are not motivated to give up their only source of the feeling-of-power (their only opportunity to take a break from otherwise feeling powerless). Add paranoia as a personality disorder, and the chances for healing are none or very close to none.

“All excitements- positive and negative- are uncomfortable for me. All excitements trigger my tics!” Exactly. Parties and celebrations make me nervous. I prefer meetings where I have something specific to do, like work meetings: I need to say particular things, present, submit, be official, have my part to play. Gatherings where I can ‘just’ be happy, loud, excited… make me uncomfortable. I used to go to parties though, I was just quiet“-

-Sticking to a daily routine is very important to me, having a new day that is the same as the day before, in regard to what I do, when and where. It keeps me calmer. This intolerance for excitement happened when my mother’s excitement (when attacking me) permanently over-excited my neurons (nerve cells), so much so, that they over-fire commands to the muscles to move (causing tics). Chronic neural over-excitability is very uncomfortable, so we need structure, predictability and routine to keep the excitement down.

When my mother attacked me, she lowered her neural excitability during the attack, releasing tension, which led her to  be relaxed for a few days… then her tension grew and she needed another release. When she repeatedly attacked me, she transferred her neural excitability to me, overly and permanently overly exciting my neurons.

“I have been thinking about this, what are the chances. Me, living through all my misery, and you, in a whole different part of the world, living through yours. Can I say it makes me feel less lonely now. I wish circumstances were happier though“- I was always a big believer of nurture over nature. Even though we don’t share familial genes (nature), we share a very similar mother (nurture) and so, we reacted to her similarly. If we were genetically sisters, even identical twins, but having two very different mothers, we would have been very different from each other.

“I also remember that story about my birth was similar to yours (leg issues), as well as our mothers’ stories about it and aftermath“- I think that you were a breech baby (?) and so was I. You were very (and are?) skinny as a child, and I was very skinny, the skinniest and smallest of my classmates in elementary and junior high.. at the least (I never had to think about gaining weight- no matter how much I ate- before I was close to 40 years old).

“I had this tic, where I used to shake my head (like in gesture of saying no, but much more quickly)“- it is like I wrote this sentence!

“I even thought I was faking it at first, but no, turned out I wasn’t, and it didn’t go away“- I thought that when I tic-ed in front of my mother, that I was faking it or exaggerating it (so to make her stop venting to me, or attacking me), and I felt guilty for it.

“…Now I struggle with blinking too much, moving my eyes but it might have been worsened by the fact that I needed glasses for years and did not have them“- through my decades-old history of tics, I performed all possible simple motor tics (I contracted all voluntary muscles over the years, in the form of tics). As far as vocal tics, I hummed… still do (no coprolalia though, which is saying profanities involuntarily, an infamous part of Tourette’s but not at all necessary for the diagnosis).

“I read those are changes in the brain and they cannot fully go away“- tics (although the types of tics change over the years, and they wax and wane) are a result of permanent, chronic neural over-excitability (I didn’t read this term, this is how I personally experience it and believe it to be)

“My..  (grandma) is narcissistic too but my mother admires her, wanted to be like her“- my mother admired her violent, abusive father.

“My mother was a victim too but grew up to be an abuser, very pleased of herself, living her life angry-excited. What I got is tics and trauma for life. She does not have tics“- my mother was a very good cook, she used to treat me with tasty foods. I would have easily given up the tasty, fancy food for… a tic-free life.

“Snow is coming here too. I look forward to it… it’s nice to wake up and see snow first time this season“- it’s nice to look at, even to walk in it, as long as it’s fresh. But when it freezes and creates those flat, slippery surfaces, it creates a serious danger for walking and driving, so many people around here slip and fall, I did too… it scares me.

anita

Dear Joanna:

You are welcome and thank you. I had my walk early today, took the mostly non-icy route from town back home, walking on paved roads.

“I was always told I was too sensitive“- all children are sensitive. For parents who regularly abuse their children, yet are inconvenienced by the long-term consequences of the long-term abuse they inflict on their children (ex., tics) blame their victims. Imagine someone stabbing another person and when the victim bleeds, the one stabbing says: you are too sensitive; if you weren’t too sensitive, you wouldn’t be bleeding!

“Yes, a breech baby and yes I was also and still am skinny“- growing up, I witnessed my mother forcing herself to throw up; being bulimic on one hand, and binge eating on the other. When she was pregnant with me, she was underweight and her pregnancy- at 9 months- did not show. For a baby to be born normally (head first, a cephalic position, or presentation), there needs to be adequate physical space within the uterus to make it possible for the baby to turn around before birth for a normal, cephalic presentation at birth. Seems to me that I was born breech and low-weight (and remained lower weight than my peers at least through elementary and middle school) because she was underweight during her pregnancy with me.

* Wikipedia/ breech birth: “breech presentation at delivery occurs when the fetus does not turn to a cephalic presentation. This failure to change presentation can result from..  insufficient intrauterine space available for fetal movements”, gutt matcher. org: “Underweight women are more likely than those of normal weight to have a preterm delivery or a low-birth-weight infant“.

“I hummed too, but only in my mother’s presence. Weirdly it did not start until 2017/18, around the time she moved back to the place I lived then. One time when she gave me the usual silent treatment I was sitting in the kitchen alone, (she was in her room but door open) and I just started humming“- I am thinking that the silent treatment she gave you must have been very loud, so you hummed to cover the loudness of her silence. My mother was silent toward me for days after each rage attack, deathly, loudly silent.

“I always thought of it as a kind of protection, shield from her“- yes, it makes sense to me, a shield from her loudness.

“My mother brags how she liked buying pretty clothes for me, how she enjoyed it, how cute they were. She would spend last money on pretty dress for me to look pretty, that’s how she cared for me!“- my mother bragged too. She worked hard to buy me expensive clothes, toys, school supplies, etc., I would have been very grateful if it wasn’t for the fact that… she hated me so much. What a shame, what a waste… there could have been love instead of hate. There could have been a loving relationship between me and her, a loving mother-daughter relationship, something I will never know. I wonder how it’d feel.

I got a glimpse of how it’d feel during my last teeth cleaning at the dentist. The dental technician, a large, friendly woman, politely said “please” and “thank you” when instructing me to move my head this way or that way, rinse, etc.. My head was a bit against her chest much of the time. I felt her warmth and listened to her gentle humming (she hummed to the pleasant, relaxing music playing in the background) and I thought to myself: this is probably how it feels.

anita

Anita,

I had my walk early today, took the mostly non-icy route from town back home, walking on paved roads.

I appreciate that you share those everyday-life details. Thank you for that. Makes me smile.

It inspires me to change my routine and incorporate daily walks.

 Imagine someone stabbing another person and when the victim bleeds, the one stabbing says: you are too sensitive; if you weren’t too sensitive, you wouldn’t be bleeding!

That is exactly what my mom was doing. Additionally when I tried to defend myself she came up with another term: that I was hormonal. She used it for years, to shame me, to humiliate me. Her partner shouted at me and I responded? – Hormonal. My hands were shaking after she yelled at me and I replied back to her? – Hormonal. Around high school I learnt to not reply – now still fighting to un-learn that.

She disgusts me.

 Seems to me that I was born breech and low-weight (and remained lower weight than my peers at least through elementary and middle school) because she was underweight during her pregnancy with me.

My mother used to be very skinny (grandma used to go with her to doctors to check what is wrong with her), also was skinny while pregnant, also wasn’t showing for huge part of the time. I believe she never cared for her pregnancy. She never expressed that. Being underweight and not caring enough would be a reason.

Underweight women are more likely than those of normal weight to have a preterm delivery or a low-birth-weight infant“.

I weighed 2 kilograms at the moment of birth. She always felt sorry for me but in a cute way.

I am thinking that the silent treatment she gave you must have been very loud, so you hummed to cover the loudness of her silence.

I took a moment to remember her silence. It has been 3 years, I think, since she last gave me silent treatment. Her face, her angry face.. No, angry does not describe it, it was more than that: contempt, hatred, disgust, repulsion combined with anger.  At some point she almost entirely stopped yelling at me and used only silent treatment, only her face expression, it was so powerful, all she needed to do is give me the look.

My mother was silent toward me for days after each rage attack, deathly, loudly silent.

Anita, there are times I confuse your memories with mine. I will repeat after you: “as if I wrote this”.

She used to tell me how grandma was giving her silent treatment and my mother would “wake up at night, feeling like she was going crazy”. I had the same feeling. That’s why I took Xanax as a drug for years. It was too much for me to have this feeling at night – I refused to feel it, for years.

Earlier, when I was a young child I had this weird feeling.. I can’t describe it exactly because I still do not know what it was. Something like a dream, but I wasn’t sleeping, maybe half a dream. Imagining something, like a fantasy. I apologize if this is not clear. I read about dissociation many times but it does not quite fit.

I would have been very grateful if it wasn’t for the fact that… she hated me so much. What a shame, what a waste… there could have been love instead of hate. There could have been a loving relationship between me and her, a loving mother-daughter relationship, something I will never know. I wonder how it’d feel.

How simple and perfectly said. Yesterday after we talked about tics I was lying in bed calmly and thought about how would it be like, if those ticks just disappeared.. There were couple of seconds I did not move my eyes, I thought “what if I magically make those ticks disappear forever, right here, right now”.. no sudden movements, no being tired of doing it every day all the time. I felt it to be true for a moment, it felt so powerful.

It would be delightful to know how life would be.

I felt her warmth and listened to her gentle humming (she hummed to the pleasant, relaxing music playing in the background) and I thought to myself: this is probably how it feels.

This must have been nice. I was in a bus today and saw this girl and a mother. The girl (around 9/10yo) was sick, I think, was not feeling well. Mother was checking on her again and again, could not do much about it I assume, but hugged her a couple of times. Did not even say much. It looked so selfless, she was not looking around to see if anyone saw that, to be praised for that. So nice. Costs nothing.

Anita,

I have read some beautiful responses here from you. Your posts are always kind and wise.

Because of what happened to me, my biggest goal has always been “to not be like my mother”. With time it is changing to: I want to be a kind, good person, respectful, having my boundaries. I see it more and more clearly and I am happy I can see it.

Our conversations inspire me to be better person, nature around my place inspires me,  moments of calmness inspire me and give me hope for the future.

The snow is continuing to melt. Seems like I will be taking my regular walk, 5.6 km (3.5 miles) in a couple of hours. I usually take bear spray with me because there are plenty of mountain lions (in addition to bears) around here. Good thing mountain lions don’t seek human prey… if they did, I wouldn’t be walking outside!

Very nice of you to share it. That is a surprise! Did you ever see one there? (bear or lion). Funny thing I only recently found out that bear sprays exist. I would buy one too, for sure!

I hope you have a good day, Anita, with your usual routine.

I will respond tomorrow morning to the rest of your post.