ME: I started writing a post, but it went off track. I was trying to write about why I have problems getting my passions, desires, and emotions to the surface, but when the subject turned to my mother, I realized that I was feeling some real bitter anger as I wrote. I was distracting myself from exploring the subject by angrily arguing with her in my head and had brought progress almost to a standstill. I pushed forward and started to explore the subject, and for the first time since I started doing whatever it is that I’m doing right now, I felt fear. I REALLY did not want to dig into this relationship, and a part of my mind was trying to distract me from doing it, and when I figured that out and started to approach directly, I felt a really good amount of fear of looking behind that wall. This probably means that this is exactly where I should be digging.
I had said before that my relationship with my mom hadn’t had that much of an effect on me because I had designated her to be the bad guy in the divorce and was able to discount everything she said without harm. That was half of a lie. I did designate her as the bad guy, but considering how much resentment I still feel toward her, I don’t think it worked all that well. I was lying to myself again. There is as much or more crap stemming from my relationship with Mom as there was from the one with Dad, I’d just buried it deeper. That’s odd since I blatantly think of her as being a far worse parent and person.
I’ve mentioned before that my mother mentally and emotionally destroyed my father, or at least I blame her for it. Dad opened up occasionally. Enough that I have some clue about how she did it. I’m going here to get an understanding of how she did it and what kind of person she is. His damage is no longer my burden to bear. I wasn’t born yet through most of this, and too young to have a clue through the rest. (My mind is really trying to turn me away from this)
Mom was callous, degrading, and casually cruel, and good at convincing Dad that it was all his fault. He told a couple of stories that really illustrate this. They were at some kind of multi day long distance bicycle event, and Dad hurt his knee enough that it swole up and was causing him considerable pain. Obviously, it slowed him down considerably. Mom just got angry at him for slowing her down, ripped on him for being a wimp and not just sucking it up, and soon just rode off and left him. That’s how she reacted to other people’s pain. Including mine. It couldn’t be painful because she doesn’t feel a thing.
Another story he told was what happened when he asked why she wanted a child. “So I can have someone to love,”. Implying that she didn’t love him. I don’t know if she said that to be cruel, or just didn’t care, but she was very good at making the most damaging statements possible casually and without a care.
She was also very angry, constantly belittled him, and accused him of being overbearing and domineering to her. I was there, he wasn’t.
Once she discarded my dad, she only had one target left for her anger. Me. Where Dad’s anger was hot and eventually resolved itself, hers was cold, quiet, and constant. She occasionally flew off the handle, got loud, and wasn’t shy about what physical abuse she was capable of, usually it was cold. She picked out every flaw I had and pointed it out to me every time she could. She was especially cruel about my weight (I’ve always been a little overweight, and appeared so even when the tests said I had a good body fat percentage, or maybe I always see myself as fatter than I am). She also gave me a daily reminder that I was clumsy, not athletic, a wimp, and a coward. These things were stated like they were immutable facts and they amounted to me not only having a value of zero, but in negative numbers.
As I grew older she got worse. The insults and abuses continued. But they took on a more complex dimension. I was always wrong. I’d mention that I had a problem with someone at school, shed tell me it was my fault, and part of me would believe her.
She also used her power and authority to deny me anything that I REALLY wanted. She had reasons for all of it of course, but I sensed what was really underneath it. She was proving to me and to herself that she could. It was all about dominance. She never voluntarily let go of that either. She tried to deny me money that was legally mine while I was in college. She insisted on being in complete control over where both my wife and I were when we came back for my grandmothers funeral (I was in my thirties)
Things got better around the time I started high school. She may have been doing some kind of work on herself, but I suspect that it was just that she had begun to be physically afraid of me.
In short, she was the first person to really make me feel powerless, small, and inferior. I came to really hate her for it. That was fear based of course, same old fear of powerlessness. This grew into a lot of the things I’ve been talking about. Of note is that it started the problems with my love life. Two reasons, I did not have the original validating female influence that you are supposed to have and I took that as women don’t like me. Second, I got the message from the abuse that women are scary. It’s also lead me to have a problem with female authority figures. Not all of them, just the ones who have that “I’m going to put these males in their place” vibe.
I also blamed her for everything wrong in my life. She broke my dad and caused him th he angry and abusive, and she abused me herself. I saw her as destroying someone’s I cared about deeply, and then tried to destroy me. Besides which, so far as I can tell, she didn’t love me after I got out of the cute baby stage, and moms are supposed to love you.
I had a flash of I guess you would call it intuition. I know why she was like that. She was TERRIFIED of strong men. They represent a threat to the fake image she has in her mind of a super strong confident woman who is better than any man. She would often let slip her contempt for the male of the species. I don’t know details, but her father invalidated her because she was a girl.
She loved me when I was a baby and a toddler, but the more I grew into a man, the more she saw me as a threat, and the more she tried to stop me from becoming the strong confident, man that she feared. It worked. For a while.
Here is the self lie in all of this. She was more powerful than me in my mind. It’s BS. Under the bluff and bluster and aggression she was a weak scared little girl who couldn’t handle the thought of a man ever growing into her equal let alone surpassing her. That’s why she destroyed my father as soon as he’d given her a kid, and that’s why she tried to destroy me. I don’t hate her anymore, I can’t. I feel horrible for her.
I am much stronger than she is, I always have been. Where she let what was pretty mild destroy her core (I think she may be a narcissist, sociopath or something in that family) and turn her into that, I went through much worse and held onto that spark that is me and successfully protected it so it can bloom later. Hell, what I’ve been through would have killed a lot of people. I even remember teaching myself to use an auric shield before I knew what an aura was.
Bear in mind that this is only my perception. I could be wrong about what’s going on in mom’s head. She did act like a decent person sometimes.
A couple of interesting things happened while I was doing this. I ran into the thing that had been trying to distract, scare, and generally prevent me from looking at this. It’s the part of me that really holds on to anger, resentment, grudges, ect. Nasty piece of work that one. He’s the source of those rage fantasies and all the anger that bubbled up on me unbidden. He was afraid for his life if I found this. If I let go of the anger and resentment, he’s afraid he’ll die. I dealt with him by commanding. Being nice and comforting just isn’t his language. I told him that he will continue to exist because I may need his energy (my life path does involve developing the ability to do great harm if I need to, and he is my killer instinct) but From here on in he will be under the direct discipline and control of my conscious mind. He rises when I call, and stops when he is told. I got a pretty cool mental image of him kneeling and bowing after that.
I ran into another subconscious character as well. There’s a sad little boy in there crying because his mommy doesn’t love him. I actually felt tears try to rise for about two seconds, but I was at work so I had to say not here and not now. This is weird because I don’t cry. I had to tell him “sorry, but your mommy just isn’t capable of loving you the right way, she’s too messed up”. The only conciliation I could offer him was to show him the man that he was becoming. I can’t offer what he is missing. Perhaps someday my wife will be able to help, but she’s got her own crap to deal with.
Damn powerful experience.
I had said before that my relationship with my mom hadn’t had that much of an effect on me because I had designated her to be the bad guy in the divorce and was able to discount everything she said without harm. That was half of a lie. I did designate her as the bad guy, but considering how much resentment I still feel toward her, I don’t think it worked all that well. I was lying to myself again. There is as much or more crap stemming from my relationship with Mom as there was from the one with Dad, I’d just buried it deeper. That’s odd since I blatantly think of her as being a far worse parent and person.
I’ve mentioned before that my mother mentally and emotionally destroyed my father, or at least I blame her for it. Dad opened up occasionally. Enough that I have some clue about how she did it. I’m going here to get an understanding of how she did it and what kind of person she is. His damage is no longer my burden to bear. I wasn’t born yet through most of this, and too young to have a clue through the rest. (My mind is really trying to turn me away from this)
Mom was callous, degrading, and casually cruel, and good at convincing Dad that it was all his fault. He told a couple of stories that really illustrate this. They were at some kind of multi day long distance bicycle event, and Dad hurt his knee enough that it swole up and was causing him considerable pain. Obviously, it slowed him down considerably. Mom just got angry at him for slowing her down, ripped on him for being a wimp and not just sucking it up, and soon just rode off and left him. That’s how she reacted to other people’s pain. Including mine. It couldn’t be painful because she doesn’t feel a thing.
Another story he told was what happened when he asked why she wanted a child. “So I can have someone to love,”. Implying that she didn’t love him. I don’t know if she said that to be cruel, or just didn’t care, but she was very good at making the most damaging statements possible casually and without a care.
She was also very angry, constantly belittled him, and accused him of being overbearing and domineering to her. I was there, he wasn’t.
Once she discarded my dad, she only had one target left for her anger. Me. Where Dad’s anger was hot and eventually resolved itself, hers was cold, quiet, and constant. She occasionally flew off the handle, got loud, and wasn’t shy about what physical abuse she was capable of, usually it was cold. She picked out every flaw I had and pointed it out to me every time she could. She was especially cruel about my weight (I’ve always been a little overweight, and appeared so even when the tests said I had a good body fat percentage, or maybe I always see myself as fatter than I am). She also gave me a daily reminder that I was clumsy, not athletic, a wimp, and a coward. These things were stated like they were immutable facts and they amounted to me not only having a value of zero, but in negative numbers.
As I grew older she got worse. The insults and abuses continued. But they took on a more complex dimension. I was always wrong. I’d mention that I had a problem with someone at school, shed tell me it was my fault, and part of me would believe her.
She also used her power and authority to deny me anything that I REALLY wanted. She had reasons for all of it of course, but I sensed what was really underneath it. She was proving to me and to herself that she could. It was all about dominance. She never voluntarily let go of that either. She tried to deny me money that was legally mine while I was in college. She insisted on being in complete control over where both my wife and I were when we came back for my grandmothers funeral (I was in my thirties)
Things got better around the time I started high school. She may have been doing some kind of work on herself, but I suspect that it was just that she had begun to be physically afraid of me.
In short, she was the first person to really make me feel powerless, small, and inferior. I came to really hate her for it. That was fear based of course, same old fear of powerlessness. This grew into a lot of the things I’ve been talking about. Of note is that it started the problems with my love life. Two reasons, I did not have the original validating female influence that you are supposed to have and I took that as women don’t like me. Second, I got the message from the abuse that women are scary. It’s also lead me to have a problem with female authority figures. Not all of them, just the ones who have that “I’m going to put these males in their place” vibe.
I also blamed her for everything wrong in my life. She broke my dad and caused him th he angry and abusive, and she abused me herself. I saw her as destroying someone’s I cared about deeply, and then tried to destroy me. Besides which, so far as I can tell, she didn’t love me after I got out of the cute baby stage, and moms are supposed to love you.
I had a flash of I guess you would call it intuition. I know why she was like that. She was TERRIFIED of strong men. They represent a threat to the fake image she has in her mind of a super strong confident woman who is better than any man. She would often let slip her contempt for the male of the species. I don’t know details, but her father invalidated her because she was a girl.
She loved me when I was a baby and a toddler, but the more I grew into a man, the more she saw me as a threat, and the more she tried to stop me from becoming the strong confident, man that she feared. It worked. For a while.
Here is the self lie in all of this. She was more powerful than me in my mind. It’s BS. Under the bluff and bluster and aggression she was a weak scared little girl who couldn’t handle the thought of a man ever growing into her equal let alone surpassing her. That’s why she destroyed my father as soon as he’d given her a kid, and that’s why she tried to destroy me. I don’t hate her anymore, I can’t. I feel horrible for her.
I am much stronger than she is, I always have been. Where she let what was pretty mild destroy her core (I think she may be a narcissist, sociopath or something in that family) and turn her into that, I went through much worse and held onto that spark that is me and successfully protected it so it can bloom later. Hell, what I’ve been through would have killed a lot of people. I even remember teaching myself to use an auric shield before I knew what an aura was.
Bear in mind that this is only my perception. I could be wrong about what’s going on in mom’s head. She did act like a decent person sometimes.
A couple of interesting things happened while I was doing this. I ran into the thing that had been trying to distract, scare, and generally prevent me from looking at this. It’s the part of me that really holds on to anger, resentment, grudges, ect. Nasty piece of work that one. He’s the source of those rage fantasies and all the anger that bubbled up on me unbidden. He was afraid for his life if I found this. If I let go of the anger and resentment, he’s afraid he’ll die. I dealt with him by commanding. Being nice and comforting just isn’t his language. I told him that he will continue to exist because I may need his energy (my life path does involve developing the ability to do great harm if I need to, and he is my killer instinct) but From here on in he will be under the direct discipline and control of my conscious mind. He rises when I call, and stops when he is told. I got a pretty cool mental image of him kneeling and bowing after that.
I ran into another subconscious character as well. There’s a sad little boy in there crying because his mommy doesn’t love him. I actually felt tears try to rise for about two seconds, but I was at work so I had to say not here and not now. This is weird because I don’t cry. I had to tell him “sorry, but your mommy just isn’t capable of loving you the right way, she’s too messed up”. The only conciliation I could offer him was to show him the man that he was becoming. I can’t offer what he is missing. Perhaps someday my wife will be able to help, but she’s got her own crap to deal with.
Damn powerful experience.
