Hi anita

I wrote the closeness you feel to her, not the closeness you experience with her. By feeling close to her, I mean that there is, within your mind and heart, a desire for closeness with her. This is a tricky distinction to make, and I will try to explain it best I can: – I understand the difference now. I certainly had and continue to have a desire for closeness. I agree with that. Probably this post originates from a lack of closeness and love. If I had my mother, I wouldn’t wish for someone else, a man to love me and marry me and worry about whether I am good enough for a man. I wouldn’t feel so tortured about myself. The chaotic one inside. If she felt like she was fine and safe to be herself, I could have subdued that with my mother’s support. I might not even have had this chaos inside me. I have, however, shared more with you than her. But I know, she knows. I never presented “normal”. She did not care to get close and help me. Just like you’ve written, the desire or yearning for support and love has robbed me of my confidence and motivation.

Does this mean that if you were able to pay for an in-home care, someone to live with your mother, do all the housework and drive your mother to the hospital in case of emergency, etc., then you will no longer feel scared of causing her harm, and you will be able to live peacefully away from your mother and father? – Yes, absolutely. But usually the people here come from smaller villages and are very careless. We saw that with my grand mother, even with us in the house. If I could find a service of good quality, I will vanish from this house in a second.

Girija

Hi anita

Hope you are doing well. How are you?

Thank you for your kindness. I missed talking to you. I had gone through your last post. I needed some time to respond. I was triggered by my own promotion which was confirmed yesterday and have been struggling since I found out I got it. All the gaps I have in my career and skills presented themselves to me. Add to that I am leading another person and we are both new to the project. It makes me feel like I am not doing my job properly. I am afraid of leading and letting others down.

I used my questions to ascertain action items that I had to do irrespective of whether my fears would come true. It eliminated noise like getting fired. “Am I doing something for each of the fears?” was what I went with. It then didn’t matter if they came true. That helped me write a checklist for things to follow up on or do, to help unblock my teammate. So I feel better. A huge problem for me is asking others for help, afraid the question is dumb. I pushed myself to reach out. It may sound silly but I am exhausted after that. Makes me feel good that I did it though.

I am not way ahead of my teammate despite being senior and that has me fear that he is judging me. I am always afraid of being judged as a loser. I had to calm myself down and tell myself that it’s ok and I will do my best. I also bought a lavendar and rose tea. And it is incredibly soothing. The fragrance brought a smile on my face and it calmed my body.

Tomorrow is a national holiday for us. I will use it to rest my mind. I will respond to your other message in a couple of hours or a day. Thank you for reaching out.

Girija

Hi anita

Thank you for the wishes and the compliments – you have the courage to address and consider personal, emotional topics that most people automatically reject. Add to these your intelligence and genuine kindness, and … I think that your work colleagues are fortunate to have you and I know that you are not a loser – Feels really nice to hear good things about myself from you. I am glad to hear you say I am kind and honest. I need to overcome those fears. I want to be okay with who and what I am. I think one of the main causes of this inner turmoil is constantly worrying about what I am coming across as to people.

I think I’ve discovered something, adding to what we discussed about what I meant to my mother. I am worried about appearing useless at work. That might be because of the fear of getting fired, like my father. But also, there has always been fear of not doing enough for my mother. At home, I find myself constantly checking in with my mother to see if she needs help with anything. It is strange that even after close to 3 decades, I don’t trust my mother to come to me if she needs help. She has never hidden her suffering yet she carries the image of a silent sufferer. I may come across as rude, but if she was keen on hiding her suffering, we wouldn’t be aware at all. I think it was a game, doing everything herself and complaining about having done everything. Instead of communicating up front, we were expected to guage her burden. So, it naturally instilled this guilt that we weren’t good daughters for not looking for ways to ease her burden with house work. But now I also realize the same principle applies to emotions as well. I see this with my sister too, no one does this. It is not normal. You either feel like doing some work or someone asks you to do it, so you do it. This constant worry that my mom might be doing too much house work is really strange. Today, if I asked her if she needs any help, she’ll say no. But, where does this worry that she needs help come from? It is from feedback in the past. She used to look so done with everything. That now we want to pre-empt that mental/physical exhaustion. Sometimes it looked like she was done with life.

We had already re-hired the lady who washed dishes a few months back, there’s still other work to do, but any of us could do it. I don’t know why it’s a burden when she does it. Why is it a burden. You either do it or you don’t. Why act like we’ve imprisoned her.  There’s also the angle of – they don’t have a lot of retirement money and she doesn’t want us to spend money on them. But I can afford it so instead of doing it myself, I hired someone. Again, if it is on me to find a solution, I’ll find something that is convenient for me. But I feel guilty. So, coming back to appearing useless, instead of thinking if they have some work for me, they’ll tell me. I am constantly worried about looking useless to my seniors and boss.

Talking about a prison, I think our culture contributes to this – we are expected to look at her being miserable and complaining, but not doing anything about it, and be grateful for that. And in turn are expected to be okay with us feeling like we are imprisoned but stay, to be good children.I once expressed wanting to move to a paid accomodation and I can’t describe the anger on my mother’s face. It was going to be in the same city, but she didn’t like that. Why would any parent want their child to continue living in their hell. Sometimes I wonder if my mother is actually as hurt as us. She gets upset when I pick fights with my father now. Almost like a general upset his soldier got into a fight without being commanded to. She never directly pushed me to fight, but I used to fight a lot when I was younger. Now I am expected to stop, like a robot.

As for what you mentioned in you last post, you’re right, she tried to turn us against our father so she could control us and she succeeded. My fear and worry benefit her immensly. She positioned herself as good and constantly threatened to oust us from her side. I wasn’t even rebellious, I was genuinely unwell mentally and she dealt with it with being cold and self-centred. I feel broken. I don’t know how to fix this. You are asking me not to feel guilt, but I honestly don’t know where the boundary of a healthy mother-daughter relationship lies. I don’t know how to take care of her without the worry or guilt.

Girija

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by samy.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by samy.

Hi anita

I will respond to your post at length tomorrow. But my first thought on reading histronics is what if I am also exaggerating my experience. Who my mother is now, I don’t know if she still that person. She has said to me not to worry about her and take care of myself. But I am wondering if I am being very negative towards her.

Girija

Hi anita

I understand what histronics means now. I am frustrated at having had to soak up all that stress over the years. Just today, someone at work said something our team is responsible for isn’t working as expected and this is my old project that I know in and out, something I can fix, yet the prospect of something being broken and my having to fix it triggers me. I think having to take care of things has me averse to fixing problems at work. As I mentioned earlier, the situation at work is not as dark but still pretty pathetic in terms of support.

you come across very well to me, and I wish that sooner than later, you will be okay with who you are! it is odd but I am fine with myself when I am not around others. But once there are other people around, I just feel weird. Like I want to get away from them. That if I stay too long, they’ll judge me. Thank you for accepting me for who I am. You do that for everyone here and it’s very nice of you.

children don’t determine culture, mothers do; in the context of family, mothers have great power over their children, lots of power available to misuse, or abuse. So, many do, and… they are not going to point to other mothers being in the wrong for doing the same as they do, so… they make a culture out of the abuse of power. – This is very true. My mother and grandmother’s relationship is worse in terms of support. So the latter had no issues expecting, me as the daughter to look after my mother. My mother told us that she never felt important to her and that she probably doesn’t know which sweet my mom likes. When I see that, I know that’s where my mother gets her parenting skills. If anything she overcame that to some extent to be better than her mother. They did not face the circumstance we faced as children so there is no major falling out. But I know my mother wanted to confront her for putting her last. Her illness triggered my grandmother’s caretaking muscle though. Their love comes through in physical illness. The care they give makes you feel loved.

She is not asking for help with housework not for the purpose of not bothering you (with work), but for the purpose of bothering you with worry. – My family feels fake for this reason. None of us feel secure but at the same time the elders are super confident that they can get away with anything.

Your mental health is a price she is willing for you to pay, so that she feels like she has some power, like she is not completely powerless. – I feel like both my parents had to compete with me to prove they were better than me. So many instances where their mistakes didn’t matter but mine were magnified. Same with flaws.

The fear of my mother being hurt and her losing hope on life drove my thoughts throughout my childhood. It made me feel hopeless. There was no joy. We’d celebrate festivals, joke even, but out of the blue, my mom would get upset. But we’d still go on like it was ok. I would always be the one to apologize. Both my mother and sister get upset very easily. I’ve been trained to pacify upset people irrespective of whether it is justified or not. Always restore harmony. Maybe this is where the fear of judgement comes from. If they judge me, they will not be nice to me, and I can’t bear that.

I understand that a healthy relationship is unlikely between my mother and I. But my conscience will not allow me to leave completely. I’d want to take care of her. So that from a distance seems like the way to go.

Girija

Hi anita

The fear of judgement that gets reactivated around people, how do I win over that? Both in the moment and long-term to ultimately not have it at all.

meaning your mother knows what sweet you like… but she keeps offering you bitterness? – are you speaking metaphorically? I think you are but I sometimes can’t tell if people are speaking literally or not.

– is this a new strategy, or did we already cover this one: keeping you on your toes/ controlling you by any expression of upset in facial expressions or tone of voice? I don’t know if it’s new but it just happened a moment ago. My mother brings up something about a cousin and what she is doing wrong, and I agree with her on some things and not others and my sister has to constantly interject like she is my mother’s attorney. We weren’t arguing, just talking. I feel misunderstood. Why does she feel the need to do that? It’s so stupid. They’ll have a conversation over me. My mom sometimes pretends I didn’t say the sentence I did and move on like I never spoke.  Why does my mom need backup, she is the strongest of the 3? ( These are all rhetorical, I know it is conditioning that has my sister like that, and this dynamic comes from our childhood).

I am going to reduce my interactions with them over time without catching their attention that I’m pulling away. It will help me see if I feel better away from them. I have trouble being by myself, the depression comes back but I’ll see what I can do to change that.

Girija