A Safe Place To Be Visible

[Snowdrop]

Love to you, Bach.

[sanmagic7]

i can relate, bach.  before going nc with my D, i had the same kinds of reactions when she wouldn't respond to me or acknowledge me.  it felt like torture. and, i would get sick about it as well.  as with your mother, it was all about power.  i'm sorry you're going through this.  it really isn't fair.  unfortunately, it is reality.  not one that i would ever choose, but it's reality anyway.  ugh!

we love you right back, sweetie - all the parts.  i don't doubt that as your healing continues, they will find the strength and enough safety to come out and do what they love, what they want to do.  in their time.  just keep going, ok?  here's a hug filled with the strength you need to continue one step and another and another . . . 

[Not Alone]

Bach,  . I hear your anger at your mother. Ugh!

Middle B, I'm sad that you are feeling so scared. When you feel like it, I hope you can do some art. You are creative. You are special.

Lizzy B, I understand about complicated relationships. If you ever want to tell about it, I want to hear. If you decide not to share, that's okay too.

To all your Littles from all mine.

[Bach]

Dear friends, I have a huge problem and I don't know what to do about it.  You know how you hear stories about people who regret that they didn't tell their parent they loved them before the parent died, or people who feel better/more resolved/whatever because they did tell the parent they loved them etc?  Like, you're supposed to somehow get to a point with the miserable abusive parent where you've "healed" enough or "put it behind you" or "forgiven" and can find some kind of love for the person who is responsible for your being here in this world.  Well, I realised a long time ago that I was never going to find any love for my mother, and was never going to regret not telling her, but I realised today that I will regret it if I never tell her that I hate her.  Telling her I hate her seems like an idea as unwise as it is utterly compelling.  I'm distressed by the fact that I'm having muscle spasms on the left side of my body that seem to be connected to my emotional turmoil over my mother's recent active intrusion into my life. 

[sanmagic7]

of course, i can't tell you what to do.  you'll have to find your way to that decision on your own.  what i can say is that if you are true to yourself, taking care of yourself, that, in my opinion, is the best thing you can do for your world and those in it who are important to you.

these kinds of decisions are some of the most difficult we face.  i support you in whatever you have to do, and i hope you can be as kind as possible to yourself.  sending love and hugs

[saylor]

Dear friends, I have a huge problem and I don't know what to do about it.  You know how you hear stories about people who regret that they didn't tell their parent they loved them before the parent died, or people who feel better/more resolved/whatever because they did tell the parent they loved them etc?  Like, you're supposed to somehow get to a point with the miserable abusive parent where you've "healed" enough or "put it behind you" or "forgiven" and can find some kind of love for the person who is responsible for your being here in this world.  Well, I realised a long time ago that I was never going to find any love for my mother, and was never going to regret not telling her, but I realised today that I will regret it if I never tell her that I hate her.  Telling her I hate her seems like an idea as unwise as it is utterly compelling.  I'm distressed by the fact that I'm having muscle spasms on the left side of my body that seem to be connected to my emotional turmoil over my mother's recent active intrusion into my life.

Hi Bach,
I can totally understand where you're coming from. I didn't love my father, so there's no way I could have told him that I did. It would not have felt genuine and thus would not have been healing. I did hate him, but fell short of telling him that. I just didn't feel the need to, I guess. What I did do was give him a letter explaining why I was leaving him and not making any commitments toward a future relationship (effectively going NC, but not explicitly closing the door forever). It helped me tremendously to tell him how I really felt, and how I was affected by his actions (though he never apologized or even acknowledged what I had written, and that's how things were left when he kicked the bucket). I don't regret how I handled things, and he's been dead for years. I think that letter helped me reclaim myself a bit, and it was highly therapeutic. Just figured I'd share what worked well in my case, FWIW. 

[woodsgnome]

What you might want to consider is to do something powerfully symbolic to you that indicates your true feelings. This is something I tried recently, for my long-deceased m, who amongst a 'gallery' of abusers, caused me by far the most far-ranging damage which has often played havoc with my attempts to 'heal' etc. from or make sense of senseless acts which I can't forgive, understand, or tolerate.

What I ended up doing recently was writing a letter in the 'recovery letters' section of this forum, but deleting it shortly after when I realized it would still bug me by its being archived  where I might run into it again. As no one had responded to it anyway, I took this as a 'message from the universe' to destroy it. I've done this with other letters, notes, and even pictures by just burning them in a fire ring I have in the yard.

So that may or may not be something you'd want to consider -- creating a symbolic way to part company but still express your anger. When I took the action to remove my letter, it felt good to have had at least that symbolic release.

My hope is that you will find a way to bring you some measure of peace. 

[Bach]

Snowdrop, notalone, san, saylor and woodsgnome, thank you so much for your replies in these past several days about this subject.  I've been processing, processing, processing, and it's very difficult and painful, but I've also still been continuing to function and take care of myself, which is amazing because I used to have to be in a pit of self-destruction for weeks or even months after a Mom-related trauma before I could do that. 

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, but I've identified a few key points that I'd have to put in any potential letter I'd write to her or personal manifesto that I'd write to myself to try to sick out some of the massive dose of poison that spewed out at me from my answering machine the day before my birthday after being trapped in the recording chip unheard and gathering weight for four days before that.  One is that I need to acknowledge her damage and her pain, and express the empathy I do have for the suffering child she once was, and then explain why none of that excuses, absolves or even particularly mitigates her abuse of me, and I need to do that without angry or passive-aggressive language.  Another is that I realise that no matter what I say or do, she will still find a way to absolve herself and make it my fault, but that none of the things she needs to believe to be able to live with herself take anything away from what I know is true. 

Another thing I need to do is write to my old therapist, the one I saw for 17 years who was only a little younger than my mother, who allowed a possibly somewhat overly attached relationship to develop between us that made it extremely difficult for me to deal with when she retired.  I need to tell her that I'm not angry at her anymore.  That I now understand she let the relationship develop that way even though she was mostly aware of the transference (and countertransference) because she knew she wouldn't have been able to help me otherwise, and that even though it made the end of things rough I know it was for the best and I deeply appreciate it.  Also that she did a good job helping me find another therapist to work with, and that I was right when I speculated that a change of perspectives in therapy might benefit me.

[Bach]

I am so tired of being so fragile and messed up, and being unable to control my reaction to triggers.  So tired of having pointless conflicts with people I care about because I'm so busy trying not to freak out that things I would at other times be able to shrug off make me freak out even worse, and losing whole afternoons to being physically ill as a result of these conflicts.  So tired of guilt and shame and fear, and having to convince myself that it was no big deal to them and I don't have to be afraid to face them tomorrow.  So deeply, mortally tired of all of it.

[sanmagic7]

i hear you - am dealing with the same, and it sucks!  love and hugs, bach

[Not Alone]

Such a weight you are carrying. I wish I could take it away for you. 

[Bach]

Hello, my friends    I hope you are all holding up okay through the current madness.  I'm having an absolutely terrible time with it.  It started on Monday when I got into a weird little altercation about someone who was probably hiding anxiety behind bravado about not being scared, and who laughed at me when I asked if we could please not talk about it.  That's what prompted my post on Monday about not being able to control my reaction to triggers. 

I've been an absolute mess all week.  On some days I've been so anxious I can barely even eat.  I've lost some weight (which by itself isn't a terrible thing, but this is definitely not a good way to do it).  I've been doing a lot of nail-biting, skin-picking and medicating.  I'm trying really hard to hide this from everyone, so no one laughs at me or gets angry or taunts me.  This morning I realised that I'm basically in a state of emotional flashback to when I was a little kid and my mother would get alarmist about stuff on the news and talk in front of me about the awful things that were going to happen.  Everything was terrifying and every bit of bad news was going to turn out to be a horrible disaster that would kill us all.  I remember in particular when President Nixon resigned.  I was about 9, and my mother talked about how Gerald Ford was going to get us into a nuclear war "by tomorrow."  I don't even know how long it took before I stopped waking up in a panic every morning wondering whether we were in a nuclear war yet and if I was going to die that day.  That's exactly how I feel now, filled with terror and having nowhere to turn for reassurance.  I guess my mother must have felt that way, too.  That makes me feel guilty about being angry with her, and that makes my anxiety even worse.  I'm hoping that all this won't last too long, but if it does, I'm hoping that I will be able to stop panicking every time I'm faced with the slightest little thing about what's going on.  It doesn't help that the weather has been way too warm for the time of year, and everything is growing like it's spring already.  That unsettles me at the best of times.  I feel like a tiny frightened woodland creature who has suddenly found herself in the middle of a sea of hot asphalt with nowhere to hide.  I'm still more-or-less functioning, which is good, but it's very difficult and exhausting, and I have many intrusive thoughts about wishing that I could just go to sleep and not wake up.  And I can't even watch baseball because that's cancelled too!

[Not Alone]

Bach, I am sorry that you are feeling this so intensely and that it is so triggering. Amazing that you are functioning. Exhausting for sure. 

[Snowdrop]

You're doing well to keep functioning, Bach. I completely get how all of this chimes in with past fears.

Is there anything you can do to self-soothe during this time? Maybe make more use of animal buddies? I know that over the past week I've found EFT (tapping) tremendously useful for dealing with the fear and anxiety over all this. I don't know if that's something that might help you.

Take care of yourself, Bach. Know that I care about you, and that I'm here. Sending you love and big hugs.

[Bach]

Thank you for the replies, notalone and Snowdrop.

I'm trying really hard not to be a total basket case, but it's hard.  I just replied in another thread about medical trauma, and it occurred to me that those childhood experiences are also probably echoing and making this situation even harder to deal with.  I know that everyone else is struggling too and I'm sorry to keep whining but I feel completely broken and not fit to live.

Snowdrop, I got a tapping app, and tried it out.  I wasn't sure if I was doing it right, tapping the right places and all, but the feeling of trying to help myself instead of just sinking further and further into anxiety and depression is a plus, so I'm going to try it some more.

Best wishes to everyone and please, please, please, may this pass soon and life go back to normal...whatever that is.