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Mother Stuff

Posted by Daisym on January 16, 2007, at 23:04:51

The topic of today's session was "Mothers and the daughters who fail them."

No matter where we go with the subject of suicide, it keeps coming back to this huge need I have to live up to my mother's expectations. Disappointing her is worse than death. I am who she wants and needs me to be. One of her favorite stories is about how she "forced" me to stop being shy and make friends. :( I'm not completely like her - I've managed to hang on to my need to be a great mom, while this is not a high priority for her. And I work in human services, not in corporate America. She says she knows the work I do is important but she frequently reminds me that I could make triple the amount of money if I ever was interested in getting a "real" job. She means well, she loves me, I really do know that. Underneath it all is the need to hide from her how bad I am. Intellectually I can say that I know kids can't make their parents abuse them. But inside myself I'm terrified that if my mother ever finds out, she will be very ashamed of me and completely appalled by what I've done. No amount of "it wasn't your fault" gets through.

My therapist keeps asking me why is it so important for me to live up to her expectations. How can I answer that? Sometimes I can feel the little girl inside me waiting for her mommy to come and rescue her. Sometimes I feel so desperate -- if I don't have her then who do I have? He says I'm not getting my own needs met by trying to be perfect for her. He also pointed out that I seem to do this with (almost) everyone I care about - I change to be who they need/want me to be, I try to be perfect. Even in therapy, I try to be perfect. I wanted to scream at him, "What do you want from me?!! I don't know who I am, or even who I was supposed to be. How can I not be whoever people expect me to be?" Why is trying to be perfect such a bad thing to be?!

I finally said that I was afraid people won't like me if I don't meet their needs. And they really, really won't like me if I have needs of my own. He already knew that. He said I'm more than afraid they won't like me, I'm terrified they will leave me. Well, duh. Hasn't that been the core issue since I started this horrific process?

It was so much easier to not know I had any needs at all. He knew he pushed (too?) hard -- he tried to soften things at the end. It was too late. I made several sarcastic comments about failing at relationships and I said that he had no idea what it was like to just want your mom to love you enough to save you. I would do anything to be worth saving...to be worth loving. But I think it is too late.


 

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Psycho-Babble Psychology | Framed

poster:Daisym thread:723052
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070103/msgs/723052.html