Dear Cali Chica:

1. January 2018 you wrote: “my baseline has always been suffering and anxiety”, and “It almost feels like excavating the inner deep fossil roots of the  ongoing chronic anxiety and patterns. Each Uncovering comes with its own emotional journey”- in this post my aim is to uncover more of these deep fossils roots so to (try and) help you further lessen that chronic anxiety and suffering. I hope that sooner than later, your experience of chronic anxiety will be a thing of the past.

2. Your mother was very dishonest with you (and with others in her life). I know that you are not aware of the extent of her dishonesty. It is very, very difficult for a child of any age to fully understand something as difficult as this and it is impossible to go back in time and re-hear all that she said and did.

Here is an example: you believed your whole life that your mother’s siblings treated her badly. Nov 2016: “her own siblings (all she had) shunned, ridiculed, and harassed her”. Jan 2018 you wrote: “My entire young childhood I recall feeling this and seeing with my own eyes My aunts and uncles leaving us out, Insulting us etc. When I was old enough to absorb it on my own I felt so bad that people would treat my parents this way”. But in Jan 2017 you shared about a recent event regarding your mother: “she then proceeded to say how she’s told all my aunts and uncles how horrible I’ve become and abandoned her own parents.. all aunts and uncles are on their side and are saying ‘wow what an ungrateful daughter'”- she told the same people who allegedly betrayed her about how you betrayed her, then using their disapproval of you as proof that indeed you are a bad person.

What I am saying is the mistreatment you observed on the part of your aunts and uncles against your mother/ family may very well have been a two sided mistreatment, back and forth. You only saw and remembered one side of it.

Nov 2016, you wrote: “I always recall feeling, wow how sad my mom’s life was.. why did  people do this to her?”- when she was a child, she was mistreat. Almost all of the mistreatment she complained to you about, I believe, was a lie: either a partial truth kind of lie (as in giving you only the information that supports her claim) or a complete lie.

Your mother lied to you many times, including a few years ago, suggesting that your father who  has a heart condition was having severe chest pain. You can’t tell now, looking back, how many times she lied to you in a day or in a week, in a year, and in every one of the three decades you heard her say things.

3. You wrote Jan 2018 regarding the thought of ending contact with her: “my mother made it her whole life that she ‘needs my help'”, “her focus then was me.. continued to be in adulthood”, that “cutting contact from her (will) lead to more damage to her”, that the idea of losing you will be “crippling to her”, that when she feared losing you to your in laws, “she was besides herself”, and you predicted that if you  do cut contact with her, “she would likely get our whole extended family involved, maybe even end up hospitalized due to deep despair, hysteria, and psychosis related to the idea of ‘losing me'”-

-none of that was true. You were not her focus (it was the other way around, she was your focus). She didn’t see you as capable of helping her (beyond making a call to a friend so  to get the attention of that girl’s parents, or venting to you so to get her relief and such things), she didn’t see you as Super and didn’t treat you as a Super. When at 22 you had your breakdown (“feeling lost overwhelmed, scattered, hopeless, sad”), their response was: “we don’t know what to tell you, ever since you were young you’ve always had a problem. You came  out of the womb crying and you continue still. We just don’t know what to do with you. This is too much you’re an adult now” – this is not how parents talk to a daughter they believe to be Super; this is not Super Treatment.

You heard and remembered hearing what your mother/ parents (“they morphed into one”, you wrote Nov 16) said to you and about you that fit the Super Cali Chica Role,

and closed your eyes/ears, or forgot what she said and did that didn’t fit the Super role.

You wrote regarding the breakdown of a decade earlier:  “I had totally forgot this until 2 weeks ago, something on TV reminded me”.

Regarding that breakdown, you wrote: “I usually went to my friends for the typical ups and downs- but I remember it was so bad I instantly called my parents”- it happened before that you reached out to them and they treated you as they did in this example (not Super), this is why you learned to reach out to friends and not to them. You reached out to them because you were feeling especially bad. You were desperate.

If your parents viewed you as Super, they would have treated you like Super, they would be ecstatic to be there for your in your ups and downs, to encourage and nourish their Super child. They wouldn’t have repeatedly kicked their super child when she was down (“I told my husband and he was horrified… to kick you when you’re down like that. Wow”)

Right after you told the breakdown story, in the same post, you wrote: “because my mom considers me this princess golden child.. she always had an expectation that I would marry the ‘best’ guy”-

– you didn’t compute her behavior of kicking you when you were down, or her endless harassing of you around your wedding, to mean that she didn’t consider you a princess/ a golden child.

One shows respect to a princess/ golden child, not disrespect and abuse!

In summary: you are a very intelligent woman and you were a very intelligent child, but any child needs to be valued, it is a fundamental need. So what the child does is close her eyes best she can to any and all evidence that she is not valued, and focus and magnify all evidence that she is valued. So your mother said things to indicate that she valued you, you remember her words; she applauded you and seemed happy and proud of you when you performed in a wedding, you remember that behavior. A child cannot afford to see the whole picture when the whole picture is one that shows the  child is not valued.

What happens though is that the picture is not a pretty picture, the child knows there is something very wrong. A significant denial of reality cannot be perfectly done, so the child is anxious.

Fast forward, you are now in your fourth decade, did a lot of work, lots of insight, you are in a healthy, solid relationship, you can now endure seeing the whole picture. Seeing the whole picture as it was, will reduce that chronic anxiety that accompanied that imperfect denial.

Reality: your mother/ parents didn’t value you as Super. I know it because their behavior with you, what I mentioned here, and much more (various other examples come to mind) clearly show a lack of value.

Look at all your predictions regarding what will happen to your mother if she lost contact with you- none of them came true, see, you were never this important to her! All she did when you ended contact with her was to make phone calls to your sister (and maybe to a few other people), that is all, and as far as I know, she continued traveling, Europe was one destination last summer, if I remember correctly.

No psychosis, no being institutionalized, no involving the whole family, nothing that took more effort than making phone calls.

This is what I believe to be reality. Let me know if you disagree with any part of it. The purpose of this is to deflate your false sense of value and give up the SCC Role, and instead see your value in a different way, a way that will dissolve your chronic anxiety and increase your energy and ability to focus on what will serve you well, instead of on what is a disservice for you.

I will wait for your reply before I work on the second part.

anita

Dear Cai Chica:

1. Jan 2018 when you were not considering ending contact with your parents, you wrote: “Since the wedding, in September, I have had a tremendously larger amount of distance from my parents. I have only seen them twice since then, and the talks we have- have been more superficial.. I just see this as some much needed space, breathing room, and focus away from them. I guess deep down inside I must feel that if it can be continued in this current way (no constant phone calls, accusations.. then I can SURVIVE. I am not foolish and I do know that this is just temporary- like waiting for the other shoe to drop. It will only a mater of time until there is another catastrophe again, and they’re back at the aggressive behavior (because that is who they are, this distance is just a phase- it is not indicative of anything)… Perhaps it is just hopeful to wish that this level of ‘distance’ can be maintained so that I man at least have some level of ‘self-healing.’ and that even if it is not full, it is better than the immense torture that was last year. I have noticed an ability to see things clearer since the wedding”-

– change the pronouns they to she (parents to sister), remove the word wedding, adjust the timeline to fit the distance in communication frequency you now have from your sister (following the frequent daily contact you had with her).. and the above quote is true in the context of your sister as it was in the context of your parents. A temporary distance is nice and will make it possible for you to see things clearer, but the fog will be back only too soon with the next catastrophe/ next renewal of communication frequency, and the torture re-experienced. When that happens, the “some level of ‘self healing'” – will be gone and you will be worse off than when you started because of added  disappointment, discouragement and hopelessness.

2. In your first Self Trust thread, Jan 2018, your sister participated there, communicating with me and with you, and so I feel comfortable to quote her words from there.

* “I need to live my own life. And sometimes.. my sister does not.. let me just live. Her response to this will be- well you need help, you have severe problems etc. She will say, ‘well I can’t just sit here when in the past this, this, and this has happened’.. she consistently gives me advice or tells me about my flaws.. I am not my mother. I am smart, strong, and kind. I will be ok.. It is hard for my sister to let people just breathe”-

– first, she made the request, give her what she asked for: let her breathe, let her live her life, do “just sit” there and let her “just live”.

Do withdraw your Super CC role completely from any and all interactions with her, make a 100% removal of that role.

How did your sister refer to that role? “crazy”: “When my sister is within contact of my mother, she regresses and essentially becomes ‘crazy’ again”.

And I agree, SCC is crazy, could stand for Super Crazy Chica.

“When my sister regresses she also hurts me.. let me just live”- let her just live, please.

All you have to do to remove Your Crazy is remove that SCC Role from your behavior with her and with anyone else. But what does she need to do to remove Her Crazy?

Let’s look at how you responded to these quotes I just gave, back in Jan 2019: “I agree completely with my sister’s recollection of my regressing… what about me and my relationship with my mother brings out these abusive qualities in me to whoever it may be, sister, husband. And how can I change that… like my sister said I will have to practice not regressing back into those behaviors. For myself and of course for my loved ones”.

Her next post following the above was: “There it is. That word- micromanage. I did not realize this is what my sister has been doing… sorry for butting in to your thread sister”-
– it was me who introduced the verb micromanage and that was what she responded to. Focusing on a new word to complain about how you are hurting her. She completely ignored the valuable things you wrote about, the insight you expressed and your intent to correct your behavior. She focused on a new word so to express what you do wrong and ignored completely all that you wrote about doing right.

Your next post following hers: “you did not butt into my thread! You gave me light! .. I now see that I micromanage as a form of control, and anxiety”- more insight, more expressed intent to correct your behavior, and  how gracious of you, to refer to her input as light. You referred to her criticism of you as light and you expressed understanding and intent to correct your behavior.

Problem/ her Crazy: she complains a whole lot about your behavior, some of it is understandable (the SCC Role) but I don’t remember ever reading from her about having done anything wrong to you, about her having to correct anything about her behavior. The finger of blame is pointing to you.

What all this means is that you can correct your Crazy but she has no understanding and no intent to correct her Crazy. But not only that, in her mind, there is no Crazy. I will explain: she is well aware of how anxious she is and she is well aware that her behavior is puzzling and .. not normal, in many contexts, so she has the suspicion that she is crazy, but it is a repressed suspicion, none that she will confront and consider and try to correct.

3. Fast forward, January 13, 2020, you wrote: “I continue to reach out to someone, my sister, with softness, and in turn I got bites. I got so many bites between my mother and her, I had no softness left.”-

– she will keep blaming you even when you eradicate the SCC Role. After all, she keeps biting even when you do give her the distance she asked for (recently, the MIA initiative).

She bites because this is what she does. No matter the circumstances, she’ll find something you will do wrong, or something that you did  not do exactly right or perfectly, or she will suspect something and she will bite you again.

Just like when you reached out to her two years ago, called her Light and validated her, and she ignored it all and chose to use my input (the micromanaging word) against you– she will continue to do the same. What happens to anyone exposed to her behavior, is that you get understandably angry, your anger expressed somehow, and she uses that against you as well. So you can never win.

Jan 2020: “My sister always says this thing: ‘well that’s on you, no one is asking for your help all the time.’ This would enrage me, I would think – yes yes you are!!! And seeing it now it is the ultimate slap in the face.  It is someone who is so unraveled and incapable of predictable stability that continues to bite the hand that feeds her.”-
– here is where you are wrong: because of the SCC Role, you think that she wants your help, that she sees you as capable and therefore she needs your help, but what you don’t see is that like your mother, she is already helping herself to you in the ways that she feels the needs to help herself.

I will explain: your mother needed you as an audience, so to act out to a captive audience. After you finally calmed her down and someone would come to visit, all her histrionics where back as she had new audience. What happened is that you didn’t help her the way you thought was helpful, and which she really needed (to calm down on an ongoing basis and stop the histrionics for good).  What happened is that she helped herself to you, had you as her audience for a while.

Your sister is helping herself to you by pointing the finger of blame at you: your fault! You are hurting me! Here, you did it again! And again! And as you understandably get angry, she has new ammunition to use against you. She is helping herself to you.

Jan 2020: “My sister and mother RELY on me for security and functionality… they are secretly jealous of that ability of mine. Neither would last half a second managing as much as I do… she NEEDS my SCC.. not only does she NEED it, she gets angry if it goes away for a mere few days!!”-
– no, neither one of them, not your mother, not your sister wanted your functionality or help so that they can function better. This is your make-believe which gave you that sense of being valued as a child (which I talked about in the previous post). It is true that the two of them need to function better, but this is not what they want. They had a more immediate need which was to satisfy their impulsive need, which in the case of your sister, it is the need to blame you.

Like you wrote this month: “It’s lies. And it’s hysteria and harassing”, exactly.

anita