Dear SallyDaisy:

I am glad you are back to your thread. Here are a few points I want to bring back from page 1 of your thread:

1. You referred to your mother with a capital M, “my Mother”, “my Mum”- for a child her main caretaker, sometime her only caretaker, usually her mother, is God, capital G, capital M.

A young child does not listen to what her mother says and thinks: does my mother know what she is talking about? Maybe she is wrong.. A young child believes her mother automatically, immediately, and does not question what she says at all. The child believes what her mother says with words and behavior.

It is the same whether her mother is senseless woman, suffering from active psychosis or if she is mentally healthy and a successful professor or whatnot. In either case, what the mother says (and does) is.. the word of god, for the young child.

2. What did your mother say to you:

“She was extremely hostile towards me during those years”- her hostile behavior towards you said to you something like this: you, SallyDiasy are disgusting, repulsive, I wish you weren’t here, I wish you weren’t my daughter, I don’t like you! You deserve to be punished.

“She thinks I’m a b*** and I drive people away”- in her words and behavior she told you that you are a bad person, repulsive, worthy of being hated and rejected.

3. You told her about a man in your life, “she’s saying how much he probably misses me, regrets what he did etc. This is like a drug to me because that’s what I want to hear. It validates me. Makes me think she means well”-  this is what the child in you wishes that your mother told you: I regret what I did to you, underneath my hostile words and behavior against you, underneath that, I love you.

In April last year, I wrote to you: “So when your mother said you are a b***, what it means to me that she rejected your love for her. And your love for her is what is underneath your anxiety. Not a void, but love”. And your response to this sentence was: “This is a complete revelation to me”.

My input today: a child automatically loves her mother and believes everything she says and does to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The child grows up, is a teenager, an adult, she may hate her mother, she figures her mother was and is wrong in many respects-

but still, the child part of the adult, still believes what the mother said early on just the same.

Beliefs formed in early childhood, within the first decade of life, stay no matter what we figure later on. It takes a different kind of figuring, or learning, to change these deeply ingrained core beliefs. It takes a learning that heavily involves the emotions, a learning that is not academic or logical, but logical and emotional, and a lot of this kind of learning (aka healing) over a long time.

Let’s look at your recent post nine months later:

“Taking my mother off the pedestal was really difficult”- the process of taking her off the pedestal has just begun. It is when the core beliefs formed because of her change to fit reality, that the process is complete. It has taken me nine years of active healing to get to this point, (and I am not completely done).

You shared that you were bullied for two years in your old job, that your new co workers in your new job of three months already hate you and are bullying you.

You wrote: “It didn’t take long for my new co-workers to hate me.. now my new flat mates hate me.. I don’t know anyone who has had so many people turn against them everywhere they go, so I’m pretty sure I must be the toxic one… everyone seems to hate me… I don’t reach out and try to make friends as they always turn against me.. actively reject me.. they pretend to be my friend but they actually hate me.. I don’t know what I’m doing to  make everyone hate me?”

My answer taken from my own experience and learning is this- likely this is what is happening and has been happening throughout your adult life:

when you see other people and hear them, you see and hear them very little. Mostly what you see and hear is your mother. In other words, you are inaccurately projecting your mother into the people you meet, including your co workers and flat mates.

Whenever they truly do behave imperfectly, that is, forget to say hello  to you in the morning, or get distracted while you talk to them and their eyes are directed elsewhere, away from you. Whenever someone smiles at another but not at you, this continuous influx of information that goes from your eyes and ears to your brain, gets interpreted in your brain as: they hate me, they think I am less than others, not worthy of their attention, not likeable, they like others but not me, etc.

While in reality, the correct interpretation is: people are forgetful, they get distracted, they are not thinking about me, there are many thoughts running in their brains… when they seem to have a disgusted expression on their face, it doesn’t mean they think I am disgusting, they may be thinking of broccoli and disgusted by it, not by me.

What happens next, as you interpret their behavior as hateful toward you, you feel hurt, you withdraw, you get angry, and now your facial expressions and body language show hurt and  anger, and that is not inviting people to be friendly to you. They may get angry in return.

* This is not to say that there are no people in the world who are hateful, other than your mother, that all  other people are kind and loving and you are misinterpreting them all. No. What I am saying is that you see everyone this way, you see your mother in everyone.

I will stop here and hope to read back from you.

anita