I can to an extent relate to what you’re saying. I used to feel similar to the point if I was flying on a plane I would feel bad for those on the plane because there was a high chance we would crash as I deserved to die. Which I now realise is absurd.
In a way this sounds less absurd than the usual thought process people have which is just “the plane will fall because I’m on it” which doesn’t take the other people into account at all… but I guess taking the other people into account can help illustrate the absurdity of the idea.
Either way I’m glad to hear that you were able to overcome that feeling. It’s funny but these things can somehow be difficult to overcome even when we can see how irrational they are.
My baby book is filled out with my mother's impression of me. I wasn't a nice baby to her. I recall as a teen asking my father " is mother this way because she had a difficult time with me as a baby? " As if a baby is somehow responsible for causing their mother's mental issues. I can see now how completely irrational this kind of thinking is.
I’m so sorry to hear that she had that attitude towards you to the point that you felt guilty for the way you supposedly “behaved” as a baby. I don’t remember my mother having an attitude like that towards me (though I do remember being haunted for years by deep shame over every single immature thing I ever said and did as a child because I used to see it as “stupid”), but I do remember her talking that way about one of my half brothers (it’s a long story but we weren’t raised together) who was definitely her scapegoat child. From the time I was little she would tell me about how horrible he was as a baby and from the way she talked about him she somehow managed to make him out to sound like a villain even though she left him when he was 4 years old. Even though I’m sure he was scarred by being abandoned by his mother, in a way I’m glad he didn’t spend most of his childhood being ridiculed and vilified by her to his face in the way she did behind his back. For my part, I didn’t understand when I was little how utterly messed up it was for an adult to mock and
PLEASE READ-talk a literal baby like that and even though I knew it was directed at him and not at me… I always had a sense that someday that could be me if I ever pissed her off enough.
My mother- and your mother- had a mental illness long before we were their children. You did not cause this. Part of this journey is "reparenting ourselves". I don't know if you have done any of this kind of work with your T but it is worth asking about. Little you didn't receive the nurturing you needed, not because of you but because your mother was not able to do that for her. We can't become children again but you can love that person, and that "child" through self care. Be good to yourself. Every human is valuable and unique. I hope you can believe that.
Thank you, same to you.
And yeah, I have tried (and continue to try) self parenting and self care in general. It’s a work in progress but I think I might be getting better at it. I used to not even have the energy or inclination to cook and clean for myself but eventually I started imagining myself as two people: me and myself and realized that myself is completely and utterly dependent on me and that it’s completely unfair and even inhumane for me to neglect myself considering that myself has nowhere else to turn and no one else in the world to take care of her but me.
I know how I felt as an adult when my mom told me (in a way I felt was manipulative) about her suicidal thoughts and attempt. It was a very hard thing to bear, and has made it difficult for me to open up about my own fantasies of suicide when I have them, for fear of being perceived as using it as leverage.
I’m so sorry to hear that… I know suicidal thoughts can sometimes come and go if they’re mild enough but please take them seriously whenever they arise and don’t be afraid of talking to people at least on a hotline (or in person if you know anyone you can trust with that).
As for a new therapist, I was told in no uncertain terms that I won’t even be able to apply for a waiting list for at least a couple of years however there is a case worker of sorts whom I see once every two weeks and I talked to her recently and she might be able to arrange for me to be able to talk to a social worker once a week, right now it’s still a bit uncertain though. Despite the breakdown from the other day I am still a bit ambivalent over whether I want a new one T of any kind at the moment anyway and not just learn to be more “self reliant” in that sense… but right now it’s all a bit up in the air anyway so I’ll just play it by ear and see how it goes.
So this is going to sound like a strange suggestion, but here it is... perhaps consider looking into charity work if your personal life and free time allow.
Thanks for the suggestion and I understand where you’re coming from… I used to do volunteer work of sorts and at the time it did, temporarily, improve my sense of self worth and gave me a sense that my life was worth something… but eventually I learned, in a rather harsh way, that it wasn’t really a good idea to base my self worth on that. One reason is because it’s heavily dependent on the outside world and other people but that’s not the only reason. The other reason is that I had spent many years battling between “am I a good person” vs. “am I a bad person” and recently I started thinking that maybe I should start thinking outside that box… because in reality, that inner sense that I keep grappling with of being “good” or “bad” isn’t really about universal standards of morality but rather about being “good” or “bad” - by my
mother’s standards and whether or not I was a “good” or “bad” daughter/servant/slave to her. Also, the inner demon that keeps accusing me of being “bad” itself probably isn’t even really concerned with “being bad” but in reality - being
rejected “for being bad”. I think this recent “I’m so bad” onslaught is just this part’s way of trying to cope with my therapists apparent rejection of me because to admit to myself that my therapist didn’t behave the way she did because of anything *I* did wrong - is to admit to myself that the world is chaotic and I have no control over it or the people in it (… and also that I’m a bad judge of character…).
I think some of the ways I should probably be dealing with this way of thinking is probably: A. understand that the “you’re a bad person” accusation isn’t really about universal morality (because objectively I know that if I don’t DO anything bad to anyone then I’m not a bad person) but rather about “didn’t do enough to prevent this person from rejecting me”, B. come to terms with the fact that the world is chaotic and that I can’t control other people, C. understand that endless pandering to people not only doesn’t necessarily prevent rejection - in most cases it’s not even
required to prevent rejection, D. even if I do something “wrong” (in the sense of not pandering enough etc’) and this results in rejection - not all rejection means that I need to now punish myself to change my bad ways, sometimes (very often even) it just means that the person isn’t right for me or even an asshole and I really ought to be standing up for myself and who I really am instead of constantly trying to adjust to everybody else’s will… and E. even if it turns out that I really did to something bad… well too bad, I’m the only me I’ll ever be, my mind is the only mind I’ll ever have and I have to stick to my own team whether I like it or not (and.. something, something “learn to forgive myself”…)
I read through your other recent thread I think I've reached my breaking point and am so glad you are through the roughest part of this crisis. And I am happy you came here to talk with us. We've got you.
Thank you very much. I think the crisis might actually be behind me at this point but I guess I’ll only really know for sure in the coming days. I suspect the work stress won’t go away for a while but at least I don’t wanna kill myself now and I think I feel mostly back to normal.
She put a lot of responsibility on you and so did others and then when she failed to make healthy choices and instead involved you in keeping her stable, and she inevitably became unstable, of course you felt responsible. As unhealthy and as dysfunctional as it was, the fact that you feel soo responsible and afraid to make mistakes that might affect others makes perfect sense and I think it is great you were able to put all that together. That you feel they may also die, also, makes sense. But none of it is true. It only makes sense in the context of emotional abuse and conditioned behaviors and thought patterns.
Yeah… actually yesterday I consulted with Google about this (silly as it may sound, I found out a few years ago that just typing an abstract of what I’m thinking and feeling in Google Search can often result in me finding the actual term for what I’m feeling and this makes it possible to then do better research into that thing) and it turns out that there is actually a term for “excessive responsibility” and I managed to find several articles about it. I didn’t read all of them yet (but plan to later) but from what I’ve read it’s something that appears in people with OCD but not just people with OCD and it’s often something that happens with children who either had too much responsibility deliberately placed on them and/or with children with dysfunctional parents who weren’t able to cope (and thus the child felt a need to take over because the household would collapse otherwise). In my mother’s case I think it might have been both.
One of the suggestions I found, in two of the articles, was to have more faith in other people and their abilities and that they won’t necessarily be unable to cope if you mess up or don’t constantly hold their hand.
I can relate very much to this. I isolated myself quite a bit because of that belief and it also had a big part in why I kept going back to my mom for the sexual abuse even as an adult. Being bad was not the hard part, it was the consequences on others that I found crippling.
I’m very sorry you had to go through that… and I’m glad you don’t have to deal with your mother and that belief system anymore.
Another thing I want to mention to you is that if you ever want to talk about how some of your moms abuse was "sexual in nature" (referring to a comment made in your other thread I linked above) I am willing to walk there with you. All I can say is me too. We have had others here too who have experienced similar.
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. I actually did talk about it here a few years ago… tbh it’s not even something I talked about all that much even in therapy…
Anyway, again I’m really, really sorry to hear about what your mother put you through and I hope you managed (or are managing) to recover.
I think posting here and talking with us, working through your thoughts and seeing if they are twisted a bit and then working to untwist them are steps in the right direction.
Ten forms of twisted thinking <---- just in case you haven't seen this before.
BTW, you do very good work unraveling all of this on your own too. VERY good work. You don't have to do it alone though.
Thank you, this forum does help me a lot, ironically I probably would have posted a lot more in recent weeks except that most of the time I’m either too worn out from work-related stress or too busy with R&R in order to combat the stress. Mind you the rest of the time I’m just being inconsistent, avoidant, unmotivated to deal with these issues and so on……. but that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the support you guys give me every time I do post because it really means a lot to me so thank you all for this very, very much!
