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Crushed. Battered. Exhausted. Confused.

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Viewing 6 posts - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)
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  • #351420
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear anonymous03:

    Your mother and mine have lots in common, and so do you and I, as a result. But our mothers are not identical, of course, and therefore I am keeping it in mind, so to not project my mother into yours.

    Who was your mother before you came into her life/ who she is with no connection to who you are: “this angry and anxious person.. an ultra- introvert, has barely any friends, doesn’t speak to relatives much”-

    – anxious and angry, non-assertive at work and elsewhere outside her own home, she feels powerless, a victim of people and circumstances. She keeps her anger in while at work because she is afraid to confront people at work; she may get angry at the post office or at the supermarket, etc., feeling that she was not treated well,  but she keeps the hurt and anger in, because she is afraid to confront the people  in the post office and supermarket etc., she is afraid of people.

    And then she goes home (“Something happened at work, she’d come home”). At home she is no longer afraid because she is not afraid of you, not when you were a child, and not now; she was not afraid to yell at you then, and she is not afraid to yell at you now (“I always got yelled at. As a child.. As I grew older, the yelling continued”).

    Angry at work, she controls her anger until she gets home; at home she feels comfortable to finally express her anger and feel better for having done so:  “she’d come home and scream at me for something as silly as my bag being on the couch. After she’d scream, her mood would drastically flip onto a positive one”.

    You wrote: “Don’t get me wrong: she loves me and takes care of me in every way she can”- I am sure she sometimes feels affection for you, but that affection doesn’t stop her from hurting you repeatedly and knowingly. This occasional affection is a compartmentalized kind of affection– it doesn’t interrupt her hateful behavior toward you (“I always got the full force of her anger… she screams a lot…She scolds for the same thing again and again… She comments on my body, how I am too skinny, how my hair is too thin… She’d also give me the cold treatment: not looking at me, not answering me, behaving like I don’t even exist, if she would look at me, it would only be to look at me with absolute hatred”).

    She is not afraid of you, and she doesn’t value you as a person with your own hurt feelings and fears, as a person who loves her so much, or as a person with rights  (“She’s breached my privacy too, reading my diaries”).

    She feels that you are her own to do  with as she pleases, her belonging, a someone or something with no one to turn to and complain about her (she will not yell at a child outside home for fear of the child’s parent).

    “She tells me I am her only source of happiness”- you are her only belonging, outside of furniture and other inanimate objects, that is an interactive kind of belonging, one that is useful in ways others belongings are not.

    I will be glad to continue to communicate with you further. I will be back to the computer in a few hours from now.

    anita

     

     

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by .
    #351528
    anonymous03
    Participant

    Hi Sofioula,

    Your virtual hug made me feel so much better. I have nobody to hug me right now.

    I’m sorry for replying late: it takes me a while to articulate what all I really wanna say.

    Thank you for sharing your story with me. I could have read your other threads, but it didn’t cross my mind, I’m sorry. You seem to have gone through such a hard time. You’re so brave for having overcome all of that. You deserve the best for yourself.

    I could tell you my thoughts. I have so many… I don’t know if it counts as OCD though…

    Some of them are…

    When I was with my ex…

    He’s not that smart. (If I read anything smart on the net, I’d think nope, he will never be able to write such a thing)

    He’s dull.

    His hair is weird.

    Why he gotta slouch like that? Why can’t he sit straight?

    His dressing sense sucks.

    I don’t think I really love him.

    I don’t think we have a good connection.

    I think I can do better.

    After the breakup, I realized all of that was bullshit. After the breakup, I got these thoughts…

    If I would have been a better girlfriend, more supportive, less critical, less… like my mom… He would have opened up to me.

    If I would have given him the space he’d asked for, he would have stayed.

    If I wouldn’t have freaked out when he asked for a break, he would have stayed.

    I drove him away with my negative vibes.

    Everything is my fault.

    What if he is “the one”?

    What if I can never feel for somebody the way I felt for him?

    I am liar.

    I lied to B. I never felt anything. All those feelings are a lie.

    You should never have gotten with B. That was a mistake.

    I don’t want this life. I’m trapped in it.

    I am hurting people.

    Everything is my fault.

    Why did I get with B?

    I’m very ashamed of all these thoughts. But it feels good to get them out.

    Do any of these make sense to you?

     

    #351530
    anonymous03
    Participant

    Hi Anita,

    I await the rest of your response.

    Another thing I have noticed about my mom is that she talks in a depressive manner many times. For eg, I’d say, “What are you watching on TV?” and she’d say, “Something. I just want to pass time till it’s bedtime. So it doesn’t matter.” Or today, she said she always had to visit Nepal. I said well we could visit it. She said no I don’t feel like it now. Life is over. Or I asked something about her work, and she said, “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have any aspirations now at this age. Just need money to survive”.

    I feel really guilty and bad when she says that too.

    Waiting for your response…

    #351538
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear anonymous03:

    Your mother is at times very anxious, at other times, she is very depressed, goes from anxiety to depression and from time to time she feels better for a short time, isn’t this the case?

    And she’s been this way before you came into her life- you didn’t cause her anxiety and depression: it’s not your fault. You didn’t cause it and you can’t fix it.

    It is possible for a person to be anxious and depressed, and yet, to not be abusive: to not take her anxiety, depression and anger out on another person, but your mother does take it all out on you, using you as a “punching bag” (your words).

    Thing is, as you allow her to use you as a punching bag, for example: allowing her to scream at you- she doesn’t get better. If screaming made her feel better, she would be happy by now!

    Stand up to her when she screams at you (like I suggested on your other thread), and don’t try to make her feel better. It is not in your power and it will result in you feeling worse.

    You have your own anxiety to deal with, your own anger, your own depression: focus on yourself. If you can help anyone, it is you who you can help. So help yourself.

    anita

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by .
    #351544
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear  anonymous03:

    I want to elaborate on what I wrote above: when your mother screams at you, she temporarily feels better, but she doesn’t feel better long term. Screaming is not helping her mental health; it makes her mental health worse. So if you stand up for yourself every time she screams at you,  you will not only be helping yourself, but you will possibly help her by taking away her .. addiction-to-screaming, which keeps her, and you, stuck.

    When she talks to you in the depressive manner that she does, if you try to say things to make her feel better, it also keeps her stuck in her addiction-to-complaining to you in that depressive manner. When she complains, say nothing. That way, she may figure out a different way to deal with her depression.

    It will be good not only for you, but for her, if you no longer respond in the same ways to her abusive and depressing  behaviors.

    * But what is best for you, by far, no doubt, is to live far, far away from your mother.

    anita

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by .
    #353144
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Dear anonymous03,

    I’m terribly sorry for replying so so late. I’m dealing with walking my own path, finding myself and treating me like a human being that I am hehe ;P

    Listen, all these thoughts could potentially be ocd related. The factors that would actually categorize it is ocd are: frequency of occurrence (ruminating constantly on a loop), levels of distress being created by those thoughts and behavioral patterns of doing or avoiding doing certain things in order to insure that the thougts in your mind won’t actualize in reality. I.e. If I drink from the mug A gifted me, I will forever lose him. Or, A was right about that thing so that means he is right about us and I was wrong so I have to search youtube for “10 signs he truly loves you” to confirm because if I don’t my anxiety will kill me…. I hope I make sense.

    I would like to point out to you that you don’t have to think those things and this YOU HAVE TO POINT OUT TO YOURSELF whenever a thought occurs. If you have ocd, I know who bs this sounds but with us ocd people, ACCEPTANCE is our real struggle. And you have to move on. For the time being focus on, well, just being. You don’t have to make any plans, decisions or even get closure, or get to know what really happened in the past. You are not a fly on the wall of the past. It is done. Please, also consider that A might have been gaslighting you, since I can read a complete surrendering to being the sole cause of all this on your part.

    I’ll be waiting your reply!

    Much support,

    Sofioula

     

    P. S. Check out Gangaji on YouTube. She really helped me refocus my mind.

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