Whew... ladies, this discussion really hits home! Sandi, I'm realizing so much of my dysfunction goes back to my Mom/older sister (who were coping with their own crisis when I was small). Working on M is involving working on sell-parenting and boundary issues with ALL of my relationships as part of my self-care plan.
I just wanted to share this with you both from Susan Peabody's book:
Forgiving others – In his book, Alcoholic Anonymous, author Bill Wilson, discusses forgiveness, and say it’s not done to please others, but in the interest of self. – In Toxic Parents, Susan Forward says this, “You may be asking yourself, “ Isn’t the first step to forgive my parent?” My answer is no…It is not necessary to forgive your parents in order to feel better about yourself and to change your life…Why in the world should you “Pardon” a father who terrorized and battered you, who made your childhood a living hell? Early in my professional career I too believed to forgive people who had injured you, especially your parents, was an important part of the healing process….The more I thought about it, I realize this absolution was another form of denial….One of the most dangerous thing about forgiveness is that it undercuts your ability to let go of your pent-up emotions. How can you acknowledge your anger against a a parent whom you’ve already forgiven? – The question is this : Is it possible that both Bill Wilson and Susan Forward are both right? Yes, Susan Forward is correct when she says we must own our anger. Anger is honest. Anger in the right setting is therapeutic. Anger can lead to justice. Anger can free us from tyranny. And by coming out against forgiveness, Forward allows us to take our time without shame. Bill Wilson in my opinion is also right. If we stop resenting people, we feel better about ourselves and others. This changes us and our lives. This is why I believe forgiveness is the ultimate goal no matter how long it takes. – If you decide that forgiveness if for you, it might be helpful to realize that letting go off anger does not mean that you have to like the person or continue to let that person to persecute you. Actually, you don’t even have to be around the person who hurt you if you don’t want to. – “You know, God asks us to love our neighbours and our enemies alike, but some people you just have to love at a distance.” – Forgiveness is not a constant state. It ebbs and flows like the tide. Sometimes you feel good about those who hurt you and other times you feel the anger all over again. But this doesn’t mean, you haven’t progressed. I’ve found that, as long as I ask God for the strength to release my anger, or announce it in my support group that I am going to “turn it over” or tell my therapist I am really tired of these resentments and want them to go away, the anger comes less and less often. People should not be told to forgive when they are not ready. They shouldn’t be shamed by others, and they should not shame themselves. They should push themselves gently in the right direction."
HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I am so thankful to have found you both and your wisdom... you truly saved me from going down a BAD road, and I thank you for your generous and honest sharing at a critical time.
Morning New Life, wow - that's a lot to think about. Forgiveness... that's a tough thing. I had forgiveness rather shoved down my throat from a young age. I didn't DARE hold my mom accountable for any of her hurtful words or actions - neither in my own heart and mind, nor in communication with her. Forgiveness wasn't just expected of me, it was demanded. It doesn't matter what she said or did to me. It was my job to forgive, forget so that she could turn around and do it all to me again, the next time her stress levels built up too much. So to me, forgiving her just drags me into that dizzying downward spiral again. And I think I've still got too much anger and pain I need to release to make expecting forgiveness of myself, a healthy option.
It would be nice to think that 'ebb and flow' might flow my way and that I could forgive her. Eh. Maybe yes maybe no. I don't know about that now that I see it written. Anyways, just writing about it this has been making my heart start to pound and I can feel my mood start sinking again, so I better stop thinking about it. But thank you again for your thoughts - I appreciate it alot. Take care, FMV.
I cannot complain for not receiving from others, that which I've never asked them for.
Oh, and I'm sorry... I didn't ask you about your comments on your background..If you'd want to share, I'm very interested to hear more about your self-parenting and boundary work. It sounds like our pasts have confronted us both with eerily similar issues...
I cannot complain for not receiving from others, that which I've never asked them for.
And I think I've still got too much anger and pain I need to release to make expecting forgiveness of myself, a healthy option.
I would think that forgiveness is a state of mind that will be difficult to attain, regarding your mother, but attainable. It is a continual process of expression, acceptance, clarity, perspective, and then compassion. It's hard for me to imagine what that state of mind would be like. I can understand conceptually a Jesus or Buddha-like perfection, but can't picture how that would be for me. If I've allowed myself to be expressive, accepting (facing the truth), have increasing objectivity about the target person, with increasing compassion, then I'm on the right path, even if there are conflcting emotions. You sound like you're in the stage of facing difficult emotions, expressing them, breaking patterns of self-judgment and emotional reactivity, and gaining clarity about your mother.
CL
CL 53 W 54 M 20 yrs. 03'-09' Separation + Old Patterns + GAL 10-14' Piecing
"The Master allows things to happen. She shapes events as they come."
I'm sorry for the pain you're experiencing right now. Family of origin issues are the most difficult to deal with, because they take us right back to all those emotions which we couldn't yet understand or deal with when we were small, and yet are agonizing to have to wade through now in order to live them, own them, and ultimately discard them.
I just want to assure you that it is definitely worth reexamining the past, because it allows you to have a future free of all the unfair miseries which were visited on you as a child. I've related this before, but I was molested as a child by my parents' best friend, a man who was like another father to me (at least that's what everyone thought...). Really looking at that relationship and its results took me years before I was ready to face it. However, having got to the other side of forgiving this man, means I'm actually fine with the fact that all these things happened to me.
For years, I was angry that he effectively isolated me from the rest of my family (who only have good memories of him), that he made it difficult for me to trust others, have a "normal" sex life, etc, etc. I didn't think I'd ever be able to forgive him, because he has never apologized or shown remorse. Besides, he didn't deserve it!
The process of forgiveness taught me that forgiveness actually has NOTHING to do with the perpetrator of the hurt. Sure, you learn to show them some compassion for their incapacity to be the sort of parent you required. Other than that, it's about acknowledging the false beliefs about yourself and the world which the abuse created in you, and choosing to affirm what's best and strongest about you--what allowed you to survive and rise beyond what you experienced.
I know exactly what you mean about thoughts of the abuse leading to sinking feelings, but post forgiveness it's just impossible to feel that any more. Also, the kind of forgiveness demanded of you as a child was false because it was forced, whereas the kind you choose for yourself is an act of self-affirmation.
That said, forgiveness is absolutely your choice to make, and can only be done on your timeline. It took me 20 years to get there. However, if you ever reach a point where you think, "You know, I hate wasting another moment of my life thinking about this old stuff--I just want to live my life for me as though this had never happened," that would be the time you could talk to your therapist about exploring forgiveness.
Meanwhile, please be very gentle with yourself. Your were denied proper nurturing as a child, so be that nurturing figure for yourself now. Trust me, the pain you're going through will be worth it once you get to the other side. You're a very strong person to have made it through everything you've gone through--blessings.
(((Cyrena)))) This is the third time I've started a reply to you; each time I end up in a puddle of tears and I still can't adequately express my thanks. I do want to comment further but need some time to reread, to think. I do want to say though before I go, how sad and sorry I am to hear of your abuse. I admire your courage and the strength it must have taken to get to the other side; to forgive and heal. I am quite in awe of you and so grateful for your kindness in posting to me today. Blessings to you as well; FMV.
I cannot complain for not receiving from others, that which I've never asked them for.
Other than that, it's about acknowledging the false beliefs about yourself and the world which the abuse created in you...
This made my jaw drop... I can see exactly what you're talking about. It's like you've been in some of my appts with my IC with me. We've been working on this alot since Oct. And it's been since then that my mood has fallen so much. So it gives me hope to read the next part of that sentence...
Originally Posted By: Cyrena
and choosing to affirm what's best and strongest about you--what allowed you to survive and rise beyond what you experienced.
I do hope that's what will come from this. When you talked about not wanting to waste another moment of life thinking about this old stuff... I SO want to get there. Those memories, they just swirl around and around in my brain getting bigger and more upsetting until I practically feel like hitting my head against the wall to make it stop; to just shut it all off (which of course I wouldn't do.. but you know what I mean?). But still, I know I'm not ready to forgive. There's another, bigger aspect to this that I can't write about here, that it sounds like I haven't dealt with yet. When I think about THAT, I feel just... well, numb. Empty. Even less than empty. Like I wasn't even there, but I know I was. And it seems really odd to me, that don't have any feelings about it; nor did I when it happened. I think maybe that's why all these other things won't go away...maybe once I deal with that; all this other stuff will start to ease and then maybe... possibly... get to where I can start thinking about how to forgive it all.
Originally Posted By: Cyrena
Meanwhile, please be very gentle with yourself. Your were denied proper nurturing as a child, so be that nurturing figure for yourself now.
Thanks for saying that...really. It's so hard for me to process b/c I STILL judge myself (grrr) for being upset that I didn't get it. I think ... there's so many people that got even LESS that I did; so many people who didn't even HAVE parents... who am I to look at some of the good parts I DID get and turn my nose up at it because of the bad. Again, dizzying. And again I must stop thinking about this; so much work to do. But again, thank you. I can't tell you how reassuring it is to hear someone say 'yes, I understand.' Take care, FMV.
I cannot complain for not receiving from others, that which I've never asked them for.
I know what you mean about the memories seeming to consume your mind, being bigger than anything else going on in your life. And also how you can feel numb about abuse even as it's occurring. I have few memories of the abuse--more like of being in various locations while SOMETHING was happening, distracting myself with my surroundings. My C explained that if a child's brain is in fight-or-flight mode, but neither is possible, she shuts down (hence the numbness). The anger is still inside, but hard to access because it's not connected to time, emotion, physical sensations, etc.
For me, the hardest part was being afraid that once I really looked at the past, I'd be destroyed by stuff that was obviously so difficult that my brain had buried all memories of it the first time around. But it wasn't really like that. Apart from a few flashbacks, it didn't come back. The pain was terrible, yet ... then it was gone. I saw the past couldn't hurt me anymore, because I was so much stronger now than as a child. Also, I wanted my life to be about ME, not defined by the actions of another, deficient person.
I judged myself too--for not stopping the abuse sooner, for not trying to tell people, for not managing to persuade them when I did tell them, for putting myself in the same category as people abused in much more horrendous ways.... Then, I began to tell myself that I had NOT been to blame as a child, and that since then I'd done the best to cope given the skills I'd developed to that point, and processed the abuse with all the speed I was capable of. I took a break from spending much time with my family, because it was too stressful for me, and did that for myself regardless of how family members might choose to interpret it.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being upset that you didn't get the ideal situation which every child deserves. It's something you need to grieve. Afterwards, there's time to develop gratitude for what you WERE given--but first that silenced, hurt child needs to be listened to and acknowledged.
