Posted by littleone on August 6, 2006, at 21:15:29
In reply to Re: Confronting my mum (another long one) » littleone, posted by ElaineM on August 5, 2006, at 23:51:22
> Hi littleone, I haven't met you before :-)
<< Nice to meet you.
> I think issues about parents are really hard. Hard to realize, hard to bring up and work on, hard to have to let go of.
<< You’ve got that right.
> I know what that feels like -- the rejection.<< :( I wish you didn’t know this.
> But no matter how much my parents hurt me, how many times, I still can't walk away completely either. I think I sometimes feel that if I only try one more time, hold on another month, I'll trigger some magic change in them, and they will love me like they were supposed to -- just cause I was their child.<< I watched a show on TV last night that talked about two or three instances where children were horrifically neglected for the first 12 or so years of their lives and the effects that has had on them. In each case, when the girls got older, despite the horrific neglect, each one of them still wanted to go back and connect with their parent again. I think that the whole attachment idea is great when it works well, but so terribly sad when it doesn’t.
> Do you think that your hesitation is similar? Or do you think that you really do want to move on, but fear her reaction? Or maybe the reaction within youself. (sorry, trying to understand better)
<< I think my T is looking at this as an opportunity to educate her a little about emotional needs. After all, the whole reason she can’t do this is because she never had it has a child herself. So I think he’s of the belief that if we try and educate her a little and she takes a bit of it on board, then that’s fantastic. And if she doesn’t then we’re no worse off than we were before.
<< I think when I say I don’t want her anymore, that’s my way of doing a runner. Run away and hide and avoid. That’s how I handle things. I have dreams where I drop my whole life and change my name and start all over again and don’t tell my family about my new identity. The only connection I keep to my old life is my T. Sometimes I yearn for this.
<< I don’t really have much hope at all that she will take in any of the “education”. Maybe a very small part is hoping it will all work and wishes for a closer relationship with her, but I just can’t believe there’s a real chance of that happening. I just can’t see her taking the risks necessary for this (ie risking reaching out to me, risking just hearing me without standing behind the defence of the defend and blame cycle, risking talking to me). She divorced my dad rather than take the risk of talking to him. Why should I expect anything different?
<< And her disapproving ignoring me just terrifies me. It’s a lot of pain and upset to go through for something you don’t really have much hope in. I think that if I do just get ignored, then my T sees that as an opportunity to try an work through feeling ignored.
> If you're comfortable writing out stuff then what if you and your T worked on writing out possible phone dialogues. So if your mom did call you could even have a little "cheat sheet" of sorts infront of you.
<< The phone script is a good idea. My T and I did something similar for a conversation I had to have with my dad and it helped a lot. I guess I’m just avoiding that with my mum because I really have no idea what to expect if she calls up. I’m just so scared of confronting her. I would much rather do it in my T’s office where I feel safer and where the power imbalance would be evened up a bit. But she won’t have a bar of that.
> It's hard to not have a mother, even when you do (I hope you know what I mean)
<< Yeah, I do know what you mean :(
> Sorry if I said something dumb, it's really late and my brain is fried.
<< You didn’t say anything dumb. I really liked reading your thoughts.
poster:littleone
thread:674145
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060721/msgs/674407.html