Sarah,

I read your articles on the concept of surrendering. It is clearer now, they are well written and helpful. I can see how letting go and accepting what will become isn’t equal to giving up, and is a more relaxed approach than clinging tight and focusing ourselves on the uncertainty. It will be helpful, as I think I have many fears and uncertainties to face. I think I somehow practiced something similar once, but it was with mixed feelings. I am glad to see a positive outlook on this.

You did give me a lot to explore, thank you for sharing your resources and your experience. I’m am trying to balance this exploration and self-care with the new work routine I’m trying to gain back now I am out of my last depressive phase. I will go at my pace, but I’ll keep going.

I hope you are doing well,

Linarra

Dear Anita,

Thank you for your cautiousness. Your answer does not distress me. I have seen darker parts of myself than the one that might still care about my mother.

My relationship with my parents has always been a complex one. Once there was love, for sure, and if there are remains of it then so be it. My parents loved me and were insane/unhealthy enough to abuse me in spite of that. Even the few times it got physical, I never feared for my life. Only my mental health would be at risk.

I have been very frustrated by my parents, and it wasn’t even much about the abuse. They could have got away with that if they had healed themselves and stopped the abuse. Instead, my father went for self-destruction, and more aggressiveness. It was a disappointment, in the end, I could only accept what couldn’t change. I knew he would meet his death early enough, I was hoping it would be sooner than later when he made us suffer. His death was meet years later after I understood it’ll be coming for him, underwhelmingly. I wasn’t sad. It made sense, it was meant to be, it wasn’t a bad thing. My mother hit me for not being sad. It was one of the few times she actually hit. I wasn’t sorry.

Did I love my father? I did. He could be an awful person, but he had some interesting things about him. And he loved me. But I also know we would have had many exhausting arguments and fights between us if he lived, so I am not unhappy he is gone either. He actually took better care of us by dying than by staying alive. It sounds like an awful thing to say. But sometimes reality is awful.

I noticed the extent of my mother’s insanity and abuse way after I noticed my father’s. I had felt it before, but I didn’t understand it. The realization, when she became worse, felt like a betrayal. Interestingly enough, I felt less close and personal with my mother than with my father despite spending more time with her. The connection and betrayal were more about the fact she had protected us from our father to just… end up being like him, but more expressive, dramatic, and controlling? And lasting. She relied on us to survive. Her mental health wouldn’t allow her to be alone or without her children. So of course, she would not kill us. She would just break us then try to repair us as the savior she’s trying to play. Or break herself and accuse us of the crime if we weren’t playing along well. Once you understand how she works and protects yourself against her acting, well, she’s safe enough to be around. ONLY if she is under the illusion you are not escaping from her and she still holds you within her grasp.

Do I feel love for my mother? I can’t tell much, with the mixed feelings. I will be able to tell more after she’s gone. It is easier to acknowledge the love for an abusive parent when they are not a problem anymore.

I feel pity for her. I don’t think she’s very proud of what she is, and that shame makes her worse. But I can’t be in too much empathy when I am protecting myself. I really don’t want to repeat the story for myself. I will not fall into external abuse, I know better. But, bearing with household’s abuse? Sure it can be done, as long I gain something from it.

‘’On the other hand, in the outside world, people other than your mother (those strangers she claimed to have hurt you, protecting you against them before)- they may kill you’’

Here you have my brain who wants to make a lot of rational claims about the probability I could or not meet someone that could kill me. I will refrain from that, I guess, for now. Emotions and fears aren’t rational.

So, yeah… People from the outside world are less predictable than my parents, so I couldn’t protect myself as easily if they wanted to hurt me. In a deadly way or not. I am unsure of how to cope with this, if it is what is happening.

Maybe I can share an event that happened in my early childhood and that would fit the theme. I do not usually talk about it because I am over it and it already spread too much without my consent thanks to my parents, but it could hold helpful information.

I want to clarify: I do not particularly identify or feel emotional toward the event, but the aftermath can hint at how I shaped my mind around concrete, outsider aggression. After all, the first experiences are something that shapes the brain.

I guess I should make a trigger warning. If you’re very uncomfortable or distressed with mentions of child molesting you might want to skip the next paragraphs. Nothing graphic of course, but I don’t want to trigger anyone.

The story is short: I was between 6-7, playing with my sister outdoor alone in the neighborhood, and I was interrupted and molested by an unknown man who later was revealed to be living nearby. I got away with only a bit of molesting, he stopped because he was scared to get caught.

Personally, I felt lucky that this kind of assault didn’t end with me disappearing forever or being found dead in some strange place. My parents weren’t as happy. Understandable enough.

The guy was caught. I didn’t have much aftercare after the whole event, but I was mostly fine. I reassured myself by thinking : it happened once and I was lucky, it is like a lesson. And honestly, what are the odds it would happen again to me specifically? Probably it is a lifetime event. But let’s say it does happen again, if I’m unlucky. Now I know it’s a thing, maybe next time I’ll be able to react and fight back? Figure out a smart way out of this. And what if I am unable to make it safe? Well, I could die. If I die fast enough it’ll be over. End of existence would mean it isn’t my problem anymore. It wouldn’t like to die, especially in such unfortunate circumstances, but there are worse thing than death. Like, living in fear. I don’t want that. So I will stop worrying about the next time.

That was it for me. My parents needed more reassuring than me, so I showed them I was fine. I was even accused by my father of bragging because I expressed I was fine instead of showing trauma. That’s rude and insensitive of him, I think. I was confused and upset that my parents weren’t happy with me being fine. It was almost like they would have preferred for me to be traumatized. I chose to not follow their expectations because I didn’t want to suffer from any consequence. I really believed I was as fine as I could be and it was a good thing.

Too soon after the event, my father had contacted the press and made scandal over the affair, making the event public news in my village. I heard of it from a schoolmate I never talked to. The news was out. Now people that I didn’t know had thoughts and opinions of what happened to me. I had to live with that, and it was less comfortable than having to live with the memory of the event. It was in my power to cope with something happening to me. It wasn’t in my power to cope with everybody knowing it and having thoughts about it. It was upsetting. I thought they would forget, but it lasted. My mother reported to me about a stranger speaking of me about that event even ten years after it happens. I didn’t doubt her, as I myself heard people gossiping about it or had even been asked directly about it. I preferred the latter because at least I was given a chance to speak my mind, even if I wasn’t prepared to and was weirded out.

Silly enough, I was more able to find reassuring coping thoughts about the molestation event than I was about strangers talking about me behind my back.

Of course, I do not exclude the possibility that despite all my will to be strong alone and all my self-affirmations, I might have kept some unconscious fear in me from the initial event. I do not like the idea of that, because it would take back the power I gave myself and I’m unsure how to cope with the fact I cannot just decide to be strong, but I can intellectually acknowledge the possibility.

Whether the cause of my unsafety is the brainwashing of my mother about ‘’all the bad people’’ (that had started before the event, it’s her general mindset, my mother didn’t bring up the event as much as she could have surprisingly enough) or is the consequence of this event, or the bullying, or any other rational and irrational causes… I am unsure what strategy to adopt to deal with the outside world.

It is a complex issue. You do not have to bring solutions. I am good with just sharing thoughts and experiences. I’m alright with analyzes. My mind is strong and I don’t get distressed easily as you might have noticed. If anything, distress would probably not be so bad if it ever happened. As long it isn’t provoked by someone trying to harm me, I can deal with it. I wouldn’t avoid someone who isn’t bad for me. I do not shy away from difficult thoughts easily.

Linarra

Dear Anita,

I see… It makes sense. Caring for someone become a weakness if the person happens to be destructive. And it is even moreso for children, who are so dependent on their parents. Especially their mother.

I can feel the fear, or the ghosts of it. I remember the many times I cried when my mother threatened her own life before my eyes and I had to convince her not to. Or the anxiety of thos times she would disappear after one of those scenes, and I wondered if she’ll come back or she was suiciding herself somewhere. I also remember when I ceased to care after too many times she played the same suicide threats game, when I started to held her responsible for her own behavior and well-being, while fearing that by trying to make her realize she had to change, I might actually trigger the actual suicide. It didn’t, thankfully. In the end it was the same threats repeated on a loop without much change.

When I got older she stepped up the game. But in the end it wasn’t the real thing. She managed to get some reactions, but not that much. Some times, she would pull a scene and leave a note accusing us for her death. It was something. We had to get rid of it just in case it would get us in trouble. We knew intellectually we did nothing deserving this guilt tripping and accusations. We only were protecting ourselves and refusing to take the responsibility for her mental health. But we still felt the weight of what she was trying to make us bear.

I guess even after I decided to not care anymore, even when I released myself from this caretaking role she forced on me, the fear was still there. It is hard to process and be alright when someone goes very far to make everything feel unsafe.

She is a scary person. She’s made sure to make everything feeling scary. Herself. The world. Myself. She made me feel bad and like a harmful person so many times during the process of extracting myself from her mental control.

Fear is easy to nurture in kids. Fear is a powerful. Fear assured her we wouldn’t leave her I think.

“I hope that you are okay if I repeat what I asked you earlier: to not express empathy for me” 

It is okay to repeat yourself. I will try my best to keep it in mind. I want this conversation to be comfortable for both of us so I want to stand by your rules.

Do you think fighting the caring, fighting the the fear, is an hopeless fight? Once the “Caring = danger” formula has been feed by the parents to children, it seems like a tough belief to rewrite.

Probably no love exist without some kind of fear, there’s always a risk. But there’s a difference with a healthy/regular amount of fear coming with interpersonal relationships, and the terror of being possibly sucked into a living hell every time someone wants to get too close.

And when the person is actually one it is dark and unhealthy to care for, like ou mothers… We can only cope with it I guess? If caring wasn’t entirely killed by the repeated terror then probably nothing can get rid off this.

Linarra

Deat Anita,

I didn’t know about this similarity either before you mentioned the suicide threats. I thought back about whether or not I did mention my mother’s suicide threats in this thread, I guess I didn’t, or not explicitly. At a time, it would have been one of the first thing I told about her when I was able to open up. But I’ve grown tired of it.

Once, when I was sent to a worried school nurse in middle school, I had to reassure her, tell her the half truth that, yes, my mother was having hard times, but we were treated alright and everything would be fine eventually. Because I couldn’t risk me and my siblings to be sent away in an unknown place with strangers due to an unhealthy household. Our mother warned us about her own experience of being abused and exploited when she was sent away herself because her mother was too mentally sick to take care of her and her siblings. So we were cautious of that.

I guess I only started mentioning the suicide threats of her when passed majority and there wasn’t such a risk anymore. It was the first thing I told about her, because it was safer to tell about that than other things. Her suicide threats were more outstanding for me anyway. She wasn’t discreet about her depression and she liked to act publicly as a victim so she wouldn’t have minded as much.

The other things, like the verbal abuse, I didn’t dare for long. If I mentioned publicly something that might accuse her, she could have get back at me and tell publicly I was a bad person causing her intense distress. Telling people I was the reason why she was so mentally sick, and use my words as a proof of it.

I felt guilty for not feeling or acting compassionate towards her anymore, I felt guilty for the mean words I told her when she was hurting me, and I still felt a bit responsible for not being able to save her from herself too, so it was harder to mention anything that could hint into that. I was hiding a crime, almost, because I wasn’t able to tell if really I should have been sacrificing myself for her. I believed people outside would think I should have, because my mother was so confident about my responsibility in all of this. So I kept the most dirty parts of our relationship secret.

All my life, it was a choice between saving her or saving myself. I couldn’t do both. When I was young, I tried saving her and I noticed I was powerless, even when I prioritized her, because she was resisting and was out of reach. So I chose to save myself and bear with the guilt and accusations.

I was younger than you when my brain followed the thoughts of “so do it, do it already, just do it…“. Maybe middle school, maybe highschool. I tend to mix up my reaction to my father’s and my mother’s self destruction. Anyway, there are no doubts that I thought those things because I remember telling it out loud to my family. If it isn’t to my mother, it would be sharing my thoughts about the situation to my siblings. I was quite open about the fact the hurt needed to cease, one way or another. Even if it made me a bad girl for thinking life would be better without the self-destructive behavior of our parents, I had to speak up, because it felt true.

My mother told me she would die and I would have to replace her, to be my siblings’ caretaker in her stead. She told me she might die before I would reach majority (but I made her promise to wait until then, something along the way of “you can do whatever you want after I am 18, but if you do it before there’s no way I’ll be able to be legally chosen as a caretaker”). I don’t know how old I was when she started with that, but it was too young. It broke me. I couldn’t worry about her when I had to worry about me and my siblings. I couldn’t be both a parent and a child, she had to chose, I had to chose. Well, in the end, I was a child trying to parent her mother with hope I wouldn’t have to be the parent of my siblings, not alone. I couldn’t be an adult if nobody was teaching me how. And my mother couldn’t teach me, she was behaving like an adult child.

“much of the fear is gone, much of that fear. And the depression too. The more I see the truth, the healthier I get. But.. nothing can undo those early years, nothing can undo the betrayal.” “there is an amount of fear that I can endure and still be Alive= not shut down.”

It is a relief. I am glad it is something that can happen. I am glad it happened for you. The past and betrayal can’t be changed. But if the consequences of this can be diminished enough to be alive, it is hopeful enough.

“I am not clear about what you mean, but if you mean whether it’s too late to love-and-be-loved by our mothers, my answer is a definite-and-forevermore: No.”

I am not sure about what I meant either. About what I would want. Love with my mother is more often poisonous than not. I think the part of me that is able to love her is the part who sees the human, not the mother. And I also don’t feel good about her love, and I won’t be able to feel good about it for as long she sees the daughter, the object, the reflection of herself instead of the person I am. I am able to see her as a person now, but I am unsure she will ever see and love me as a person.

Either way, I can live without that. I have my siblings. She’s not the only family member I can bond with.

I do hope someday I’ll be able to find love on the outside. Intimate enough non-romantic non-sexual love. Something that would not be objectifying, something that would be respectful, with safe boundaries, with healthy enough minds to allow that. It feels like a silly fantasy, it feels childish. It hurts. It is dangerous for me to want that, because it hurts every time I notice someone want something from me, something I can’t give or feel unsafe to give. Loving fully is giving someone the opportunity to twist it against me, to use me, or to leave me.

When someone is reaching my heart, the first thing I do to protect myself and to protect them and the relationship, is to imagine the absence of it, and accepting it. It allows me to make sure I’ll survive it, and to make sure I wouldn’t disrespectfully cross a boundary if someone wanted to leave me and for me to take step back. For me it is the healthiest thing I can do.

I do it openly. I tell to the friend who’s getting too close I would be ok with either outcome. I think, most of the time, while I find it reassuring, the friend may find it cold and worrying. If they have some kind of internal wounds they can take it like a personal rejection. It isn’t like that to me, for me you can both love someone and build your resilience against the pain that could happen related to the relationship. So I try to explain where I’m coming from to make it clear there’s nothing personal. I don’t think it is enough reassurance for people with too much rejection fear though.

In the end, I wonder if I’ll be able to fully trust someone again. Especially when it comes to be loved. It is easier for me to love than be loved. Or maybe this statement is inaccurate, as it is not easy to actually express the love, since it could hurt someone, or give them the opportunity to hurt me. The feeling is there, the expression of it is passing a lot of control check in order to keep everyone safe.

I feel safe loving without being loved back. I feel uncomfortable/weird being loved and not loving back. I feel both dreadful and unspeakably joyful at the idea of loving and being loved back. I think it’s a good way to summarize.

Linarra

Dear Anita,

“Extreme childhood experiences can create extreme pathology.”

They really do. My mother experience’s with an abusive foster family was from early childhood, then she was taken back by her mother, who didn’t like her (and probably didn’t want her back but was pressured to).  My mother’s greatest pain was the absence of love and support from her mother. She was thrown out on her 18th birthday and had to deal with it. Yet, she kept loving her mother, she kept in touch and kept sending her gift. Her mother was rejecting her love and her desire to keep in touch. At some point, my mother gave up, but she wasn’t over it.

A year ago, after 15 years of silence with her mother, she had news of her : she committed suicide and was successful. We learned a lot about her when cleaning up and emptying her apartment after her death. She was alone (avoiding people just like she avoided my mother, probably shameful or anxious), sick physically and mentally, turned to alcohol and to a lot of medication… We learned every single person we know about from my grandmother’s family turned to alcohol and had severe psychological issues, among those a lot of them were depressive and suicidal. My mother thinks there were big family secrets that were taken to the grave. My mother had quite a pathological heritage.

“One time when she hit me with her arm, she said: you are hurting my arms, look what you did to me!”

So typical, abusing you then making a role reversal…

Mine was more active on verbal abuse than physical, but her speech and attacks were interestingly reflections of what she feared to be attacked upon. She would verbally attack us, we would be upset, and without even having to throw anything back at her she would react just as if the insults she threw at us were insults we threw at her.

It looked like she wanted to be abused, sometimes. Honestly, she gave us all the information, she showed all her weaknesses, we could have destroyed her psychologically by aiming at her fears. But, why for? Children need and want a functional healthy mother, not an abused one that would have to deal with her suffering before being able to take care of them…

When we were young, we did throw back at her some of the unfair verbal abuse, with the hope it would make her understand she was being hurtful. Ignorant thinking, of course, it wasn’t a lesson she could learn from. We noticed so we stopped. We weren’t all in the same stage of maturity, or same emotional state, so there was always some to play along with her little game, unfortunately.

Trying to solve that, make everyone more sensible, and having less of everyone hurting each other, was upon me because I was the first to realize it was messed up. Even after we stopped playing along, she didn’t need us to hurt herself by hurting us. And she was very paranoid at us, she didn’t understand we just wanted her healthy, and non-abusive.

” At that time, where I was, parents owned their children. What a parent did to her/ his child was the parent’s business. No child protective services existed, and no police involvement.”

I think that time and way of thinking is responsible for a lot of pathologies, unfortunately.

“After she did NOT jump under a truck, I had to hear her talk and talk emotionally for hours until she was tired. Then at night and  next few days she was eerily quiet.”

My mother did that too. Emotional talks for way too long, very incoherent, jumping to every misery she can think of. Repeating herself. Or, the extreme quietness, absence of response, silent treatment. Sometimes I had to check if she wasn’t dead.

“she gave you a job then, she .. sort of trusted you to do an important job, which fits with what I said before: that your sense of meaning and personal power is (still) in the household where you live with your mother and siblings, and not outside of it.”

Indeed, she did so. I refused it officially, yet I eventually integrated it despite not feeling ready. And well, I wasn’t very successful. Mostly, I failed. It was a mission I couldn’t succeed in.

You are right though, despite the failure there was some trust, even if it was misplaced it was there. She sometimes complimented me, even if it was on aspects she could make use of. She needed me to have power if she wanted to use me as a tool or a weapon. This power went right back at her when I decided I knew better than her and wouldn’t let her use me for unhealthy things anymore.

If my sense of meaning and my personal power is still in the household after all this time though… I don’t know how healthy it is supposed to be for me at this age and for my future.

“My mother was not… generous enough to entrust me with any job, to give me a meaning and a sense of personal power. She said that I can’t do anything, that I am a “Nothing”, and a “Big Zero”.”

How did you find your meaning and personal power? If you’re willing to share with me, of course. No obligation.

“and the part of you that is your mother’s little girl, who for a long time early on looked up to her mother, worshipping her.. what does that part feel for your mother (?)”

This was so long ago… I wonder. I think… I think the little girl is afraid. I find it scary how a person I needed to rely upon could behave like that. I feel betrayed by the parent I thought she could be reliable.

I am sad her good intentions were so messed up. Because my mother’s narrative was “You should be grateful, unlike my mother I didn’t abandon you, unlike my mother I loved you.” Indeed, my mother did the reverse, she possessed me like an object, refused me to grow as a person, wanted to keep me in her loving-yet-abusive prison so she wouldn’t be alone. She loved me as she would love a possession. I didn’t want this kind of love.

If she can’t love me the healthy way then I just need space from her. She’s sucking my oxygen and my ability to grow. Unless drastic changes happen, which I cannot hope for anymore, she’ll never love me the right way. So I don’t want her love and don’t feel comfortable loving her.

And I feel cruel for that, because she wants to love and be loved so bad. But she’s so sick in her way to do it, so destructive. While I do not agree with the abandonment my grandmother did to my mother, I understand how someone could reject love. I felt like abandoning my mother so many times, I gave up on helping her.

I do not want to reject the world and shutting myself down in isolation like my grandmother. But… better no love than messed up love. I am not one for abusive love, I am not one for codependency.

“fear and joy are both forms of neural/ chemical excitation. For the longest time I was very uncomfortable with both, and calm was my only objective.”

I might have been in this phase for the last few years. Might still be. I think I have mixed feelings between my need for love and my need for peace and calm. I used to reject love very strongly. Now I am mostly avoiding it very quietly.

Sometimes, I am secretly needing for love and comfort, but I keep it to myself, quiet it down. I don’t want to repeat my mother’s mistake. Until I learn how to love and be loved the right way I’m afraid to burden another human with my needs. I can’t afford to be needy. But at least I can give love and support to those I care about (and who I trust enough) without expecting anything in return. By doing that, I can at least feel some love without too many risks.

“Recently I am able to endure and enjoy… some joy here and there, like right now. It is a quiet, pleasant joy.”

I am glad you are able to feel more comfortable with those emotions. It is a sign of healthiness.

By right now, did you mean, while writing this message to me? Was it our discussion that made you feel pleasant joy, or am I interpreting it wrong? Either way, I am pleased you were able to feel a positive emotion while responding to me, as it probably means you aren’t uncomfortable with our talks.

Linarra