This is the beginning of a mission statement. Thank you Cedar and SWOT.
Why do you feel guilty for taking a stand for yourself, Copa? What are the negative tapes saying and who is speaking?
My child is in danger and it is my fault.
By this It seems as if I am taking direct responsibility for the failure of my parents to care for me. Not only is it my fault that I did not receive care and protection. It seems as if in identifying with my mother, I am taking on her failures, her crimes, as if I did them. As if I am the perpetrator.
In this sense I feel as if I am repeating the failures of my mother with my own son. Both in the sense that I cause him to fail, and also in the sense of intent, my mother's intent towards me, to deliberately choose herself, and to deliberately not choose me. None of this is conscious, of course. That is, I do not in my conscious mind believe these things to be true.
The little girl that you were when she taught you who you were needs you to save her, Copa.
the Rose, her four thorns all she has against the world, the unmuzzled sheep hungry
I am my own little flower. And I will take care of her, myself.
The way out is to re-parent myself. To go back and give that child what she needed, truer ways to see herself in the world and better ways to protect herself in it.
To take a stand to heal by declaring I am worth care. Declare my intention to care for myself. To declare false the belief I was not cared for because I was not worth being cared for.
The problem is I forget. I have it in my mind one day, and cannot hold it there.
As well as rooting out false beliefs I need what I will call a dedicated structure of self-care.
For myself, I must do all of the things that a good mother does:
Pay attention.
Monitor.
Feed.
Clean.
Clothe
Take my well dressed child outside
Sleep
Recreation.
Constantly implement routines and practices to keep her child safe.
Correct bad habits in a patient, kind of loving manner and patiently teach new ones.
Help the child as she develops to understand herself and her world.
Help the child develop strong boundaries and maintain them.
Building confidence
Identifying goals
Supporting friendships
Appropriate beliefs and expectations.
Seeking out fun and opportunities to learn.
Go places.
Our problems with our children stem from conflating what happened in our FOO and what is happening with our children.
When our children act out or fall we look for the cause, but not too long or too far.
Because immediately we raise our hand and say Me. Me. I did it. It is my fault.
Right there in that place where we feel we have not done well by them or our situations with them would not exist.
Our default is both to take the blame. (In my case, I think I may accuse myself of mal-intent. And taking the responsibility for having to fix it.
At the same time we get angry and defend ourselves from the accusations that we hurl at ourselves. This renders me useless in dealing with present time, because I am totally preoccupied by defending myself even if my son is not accusing or judging me.
I think there is a generalized arousal that happens to us when our kids are at risk. Emotions are heightened. Adrenaline flows. We become feverish and desperate to find a remedy. We may initially try to solve a problem constructively. When the solution is not immediately successful we become more desperate, and whatever internal locus of control we had, is lost. We may initially try to ward off the self-accusation that we failed them, but soon lose that fight.
Our default explanation is that our children’s problems are our fault. We caused them and we need to fix them.
Because historically we felt everything was our fault.
We came to this belief based upon how we were treated by our mothers when we were little.
We adopted their attributions about us, what we will call the internalized punitive mother. Everything is your fault. You are a bad girl.
We came to believe this about ourselves and on some level and to some degree still do.
We have introjected a punitive mother as part of our personality. We are pre-disposed to take responsibility for all that goes wrong, and to accuse ourselves that is our fault.
In reality we were such good little girls that we decided we would do exactly what our mothers seemed to want and need us to do--take responsibility for punishing ourselves for what went wrong. All by ourselves. In our mother's absence, we learned to monitor the situations we found ourselves in and to find and accept culpability and to mete out punishment. To ourselves.
Still, we know when we deserve punishment. When bad things happen to our children. We know we have caused it. Perhaps even wanted it (in my case.) We punish ourselves for the bad things we have caused.
We have been programmed to beat ourselves up.
Our built in judicial function assesses our children's condition. In accordance to how we assess their condition, good or bad, we assess ourselves as mothers and we assess our value as people.
This justice meting reflex is so conditioned, and so brutal, as to be killing of vitality, of hope, of enjoyment, and in my case, functioning.
It kills to see them fall.
Change for us comes begins with developing awareness of this punitive dynamic of self-blame and self-attack. At the same time each of us needs a toolbox, a kit of practices whereby we re-parent ourselves.
This is essential because our self-care capacity has atrophied. We have an over-developed superego, the part of the personality that looks for transgressions and punishes them. But other necessary elements of self-care involved with protecting and nourishing the self are lacking.
The role of a mother in her care of her child, broadly defined, involves 4 main roles that I can think about right now: love, care, protection, and teaching. Our mothers failed us in each of these capacities. The one thing they succeeded at was teaching us to blame ourselves for what went wrong in our environment, up to and including the fact that we needed and wanted good treatment from their, punish ourselves for transgressions, including wanting too much or perhaps, anything at all.
It is our job now in relation to the little girls we were and the adult women we grew into to correct these deficiencies of mothering. The goal will be to temper the cruel superego, that blaming and punishing mother that was introjected. I for one will seek to build a loving and protective relationships with myself and the little girl that I was.
This involves developing empathy for who we I am and who I have been.
Adopting habits of self-care and self-protection, the practices and habits that will nourish me and keep me safe.
I will learn self-defense to advocate for myself, with myself and with others.
I will call this constructing a self protective mother instead of a brutally punitive and self-blaming one.
When I become afraid for my child, my default now is aggression and anger turned inward against myself.
The goal is to learn to come to my own aid in times of doubt, fear and uncertainty. The goal is not to be mean to others. The goal is to tell the truth to myself about my relationship to myself and my child. I will learn to protect myself from self-accusation and that I perceive or receive from others by developing firm and adequate boundaries in relation to others. When I achieve the above described aims, and am accountable to myself as a good parent to myself and my son, I will be able to become an effective advocate for myself.
It is impossible for us to remother ourselves in healthy ways when we are beating ourselves up for being bad moms
As we are now, when we begin to beat ourselves up, we abandon our real, necessary adult role as mothers of adult children. We are too busy re-enacting our childhood role as guilty of everything, fereting out the ways we were bad and punishing ourselves for them; too busy beating up the bad child introject.
As we persist with this bad habit, all of our energy goes there. Energy os used that could be used to live life in the here and now, in all its potential variations and possibilities. Energy is dissapated that could be dedicated to developing as people; energy for loving ourselves and others, is lost.
This changing will require making a fundamental pivot, taking a stand, what I will refer to as holding myself as valuable as worthy, living as if I am valuable, by fiat.
In deciding to hold myself as valuable I will be taking a stand for my son, for our relationship, and for myself. I will learn to stand alone for my adult child, to not need him to do or be one single thing to justify my love, my faith, my acceptance and my hope. So that he too in time will stand alone for himself.
In holding myself as valuable I will work from a conscious, non-negotiable and affirmative understanding of who we are and what our relationship is. This involves telling myself the complete, real truth about my situation and defining the situation from an adult perspective based upon who I am now, and who I want to be. I will also include here the need for an affirmative and conscious understanding of who my son is, and specifically define his responsibilities to me as well as my own, to me.
This conscious and deliberate beliefs I hold of my son value and potential and my own, as well, will be built of love, faith, respect, trust, hope, and tolerance. Of course, I will need to study and re-study these foundational building blocks, in order to practice them. Because none of these wonderful things were taught to me. Rather they were held as quite laughable and of no value what so ever by my family. I have great regret that I did not know to teach them to my son. It pains me that because of this lapse, he does not hold many of these things as valuable or useful.
I will learn to have great restraint towards, empathy for and charity of sentiment for my child, which I will act from without words.
He is like, twenty. He knows nothing whatsoever of the meaning of love.
His heart is filled with love for me. He just doesn't name it that way. He thinks it is hate he feels, or blame, or rage.
Don't let your son tell you who you are or how you feel.
I know my son loves me. I must qualify this by stating that I know that I lose touch with this reality when I regress to become the bad girl, the guilty girl, the punished little girl. When I beat myself, there is nothing that can convince me that I am loved.
Instead, I am looking to be forgiven, absolved, pardoned, and reassured. This is not the work of my child. It is not his job to take away the pains of my childhood.
A man is what I want my son to be, too.
I will respect my son, who at 26 is now chronologically a man, as the man he will be. He deserves and wants to be a responsible man. I am responsible for not getting in his way.
Regarding the redemption, Copa...the failure there is your son's.
I will hold my son responsible for himself. I will take a stand for the relationship by apportioning responsibility where it belongs. But at the same time I will be strong enough to identify ways to support and help him in a way that does not get in his way.
I will learn to listen and not react.
Did I tell you? I forgot if I did or not. My son called in the late afternoon. He voluntarily asked to be admitted for emergency treatment. He said he did so because he knows that he cannot continue as he was, living as he was. He was about to be transported to a facility for a two week stay.
He listened to me. Remember I suggested strongly that he return to treatment, as a way to respond to the struggles he was facing, being taken advantage of, flailing, lack of direction. He listened.
Whether for respite or to change or some other instrumental purpose, he chose a potentially positive influence and outcome, rather than continuing to struggle and fall behind. However he defines it to himself, he chose something better. I am grateful. I am proud.
While I hope he extends his stay (the next phase is 3 months, I think) I will respect him to identify his best option, as he sees it. M and I will leave for the new far away city, and make this our priority.
Had I protected him, had I harbored him, had I compromised my needs, had I compromised our space, he would not have independently come to the realization that he had to do something, and go ahead and do.
While I understand that this decision might have been a means to an end, other than treatment, that is a way to get more comfortable housing, the fact that he entertained and accepted treatment as a way to get his needs met, shows a level of acceptance of his situation. I am grateful for what it is.
Whether we name it love or we name it hate, we are deeply, irrevocably, connected.
"Those we love are simply those we love."
I am aware that I am limited in how I understand love and relationship. And the container in which I hold relationship has been limited by early and bitter experience.
I need to acknowledge that the way I am able to love is way bigger and stronger than how love was experienced in relationship with my FOO.
I need to change my deepest understanding of relationship, of the ties that bind, to make room for me to be angry, my son to be rejecting, and to develop a confidence in our love, and a definition of such that allows both of us the room to change and grow, to fail and flounder. And to hold every other thing whether fair or foul. Even failure or falling. Even separation:
He has to walk a different path. Love him enough to let him do it without letting it destroy you.
Love for me needs to be defined as that which can or will contain everything that will come or will not come. I love my son. Whatever comes. And there will never be a time when I will not. To be love, for us, will not need to be sweet, or gratifying, or spoken. It can feel bad. No matter what it is or says, it is love. Our love can be anything it needs to be because it is something beyond and below and above anything that can ever touch it. It precedes all of it and it will outlive it. Nothing can subordinate it or eliminate it. It is beyond conscious will to change or modify, or even to describe.
However this does not mean that our treatment of each other or ourselves, can be any of these things.
You cannot live with or without him as you are now, Copa.
And I expect growth for each of us. And there is as much time as each of us needs. But the expectation of him, of myself is responsibility for self.
This process is aspirational for both of us. Which underscores the importance of hope, trust and faith. The belief in the possibility not the guarantee that both of us can change. That there is always hope. That the loss of hope and trust and faith is the enemy of change.
Does the man require loyalty, does he expect a strict code of behavior, does he demand that your son be the best he can be?
No. He is a charming worm. He married a temperamental and strong-willed woman with family money. He has worked in the hotel his whole adult life without authority. When the mother was sick and tired of the two kids he consented to send them away to boarding school, the son to a therapeutic school. This man has shown a lot of kindness and friendship to my son, but he is no one to be admired. M is the male in my son's life who is worthy of admiration. He is the flawed hero.
Further notes on boundaries and locus of control:
We are not responsible for the bad behaviors of others. We are not the root cause of someone else's disparagement or judgment. Everyone is looking for someone to blame. Let them.
I will not let my son tell me who I am, what I feel, and what is my worth. I will not let him define me or my limits.
As I respect myself I will require and expect respect from others.
We are not responsible for bad behavior of others. Weare not responsible for their judgments of us. Let them blame us. It is there right to do so. It has nothing at all to do with us. We are not responsible for how they treat us, whether bad or good.
Final thoughts:
There is a lot of work to be done both conceptual and implementation of practices: Understanding our relationship and the nature of the commitment. Describing and understand old and new ways to see relationships.
The future is in the balance. The ability to claim our own, if theirs is in doubt. Their own future, to write.
Whether my son can ever stand alone, the expectation will be mine that I will stand alone, not requiring the admiration, devotion or reflection of my child or any other person, to feel OK.