Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[BusynMember]

Omg. Cheated again to see if sis is still reading this. Thing is I only read the last line of her post which said not answering my long
emails have brought her much peace. Lol since I sent her none glad she didn't read them.
I know she has no peace. It was not me causing her angst. It was and is her alcoholic boyfriend whom she has been with five years.
She still insists I'm borderline and I don't care anymore. This was a real test. Her posting didn't upset me at all. I am posting this while half watching movie with son and grandson and I feel as good as before I peeked.
Big victory for me. It means she no longer matters to me.
The way she worded her last sentence using the word peace like I always do makes me think she's still reading.
Maybe shell learn something. This is almost a cool blog by now.
Ladies, I'm out of the woods but still need to never cheat even if it doesn't upset me. But...It didn't bother me. She used to able to cause depression and deep despair in me.
What a relief that she can't anymore.
Please get over your guilt and vomit those mean people out of your system. Cleanse yourself from them. Nothing is gained by hanging onto deliberately peace destroying DNA.
Don't be nice to those who treat u like crap. You need fresh air and freedom.
I miss my husband and wisconsin kids and pets tomorrow night I'll be home. This was overall a nice visit.I am counting all my blessings once again.
Please count yours.

 

[Copabanana]

Allusedup, I hope you stay with us on this thread. I would so welcome the opportunity to be your friend.

I am so damaged from my marriage that I will never have another relatioship, just the thought scares me.

How do you know what will you be even tomorrow? Lives can change just like that. I was old before I met M. He was old when he met me. Neither of us ever expected to meet somebody to love. I wanted to but despaired it would ever happen. But it did.

I am the blacksheep of my foo and T is my only child. So it has been hard

Me too. When I adopted my son I had for many years been estranged from all of my family. I was all alone and had been for many years. I put all of my love and hope into my son. I was all he ever had. It has made this whole thing for both of us so much harder.

Sorry I have been rambling. I have so much on my mind and no one to talk to

First, you write very clearly and very well. Nobody thought you were rambling. I ramble. You do not.

Like SWOT and Cedar said, stay and talk to us. And now Nerf is with is and sometimes Insane. We all have to start where we are. You, me, everybody. I guess you know from reading that I have stayed off work now for 2 and a half years. I have largely isolated myself, too.

Stay with us, Allusedup. Get stronger, gain confidence, friendship. You do not know who you will be in 3 months. Please do not think we are any different from you. I will speak for myself. Everybody is a combination of strengths and weaknesses. We build strengths by practicing being strong. We look back at ourselves and say, Gee, that was strong. Maybe I'm stronger than I thought. And it goes from there.

Already you have gone so far. You left a bad relationship, standing up for your son and yourself. You got up from a disabling depression. You are here. In a million years I would never have participated in a chat room or whatever this is called.

But I got desperate. I bottomed. This board showed up on a Google search, and I plunged in. Welcome, Allusedup. Allusedup is there a name that you can identify with that is a bit more hopeful???? I know you are not all used up. The names we call ourselves count. We listen to them. Don't talk mean to yourself!!!!!

Welcome.

 

[nerfherder]

I think of "all used up" and I think of an empty vessel ready to fill with a new reality.

 

[nerfherder]

At one point I asked my mom if she would ever marry again (My dad died in '72, and she dated but never really liked the guys.)

"Vat, For what? So all the hard earned money your father and I sweated blood to earn should go to someone who didn't lift a finger? Here I can walk around in my underwear, I can scratch when I want, I can fart when I want, why should I have another man to worry about?"

 

[Copabanana]

I think of "all used up" and I think of an empty vessel ready to fill with a new reality.

"Vat, For what?

Hooray for how you think and double hooray for your Mother.

On the former, when I started posting I complained of how I kept thinking I was all better only to fall back into bed again. I saw this is failing and failing and failing over and over again. After so many failings, I was a mess.

Cedar gently chided me that I needed to allow myself to break as many times as I needed to learn what I needed to learn.

I guess I listened because I am not thinking about failing any more. If I stay in bed, I just call the cat to join me.

Yesterday M chided me about being day and night on the computer and I just growled. GRRRRRRRR. That's a crime? I guess I channeled your Mother.

Why should I have another man to worry about?"

I am not failing any more, I am glad to note. I am in bed.

 

[BusynMember]

I'm at the bus station waiting to go home.

Cop a, staying in bed makes depression worse. Can you get up long enough for a power walk? You failed less than me in life. In fact I don't see where you failed. I see people who failed you. You are a college grad with many high level jobs
And I see somebody who has done more than I did by far yet I didn't fail. People in foo may think I did. Big deal. I know I did my best and helped a lot of people and that was sort of my goal. Any goal you achieve is a win. Get those ugly voices out of your head and lay them to rest. They lie.

Shut the liars up and tell them you're not listening. Cheer up!

With love, swot

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

When you stop engaging somebody in any way at all they seem less real and by that token non threatening to our world. We remember how we were treated but it is muted and almost seems cartoonist. Their vile lies and games don't matter any more than a stranger's would because they are no longer issues we deal with. Yes, people can be issues.

This part speaks to process. It isn't very nice thinking. It is what I have been thinking. I posted it in case there is someone reading along wondering the same things about the way they are thinking that I do.

***

I still feel like I've been hooked with a fish hook on a lot of this. There it is so it must be real, so there must be validation and there it is but surely there is a better way to see this. That is where the problem is for me, I think. I spend so much time not believing it could be what it looks like and wondering what is the matter with me that I think like this when the matter is with someone else entirely and they mean it. I woke up thinking about the grand with spina bifida and my sister and whether she could actually have that kind of power.

Or am I making false accusations here, where no one can know for sure because I am jealous and hateful and acting like a bigshot?

And I feel like I am spinning in a beehive or something, because who thinks like I do about her own sister, about her own mom? But then, I remember the tire rimming machine.

And the eye rolling and senseless hurt in the way they talked about sending the old woman away.

And I get it that this really is true. This really is what is happening.

So then, I can take my head out of the beehive. If an alternate explanation comes along, I will hear it. But, having seen what I've seen, and having been treated like I've been treated, I am correct in my assessment.

I am correct.

I will trust myself implicitly on this.

It is what it looks like.

And I grew up in that kind of toxicity.

I'm doing really well, then. Given who those jerks were, I am sweet; my life, since it has been my own, has been Cartman sweet.

"Sweeeeeet!"

And funny, and kind, and rich with color and flavor and light.

I am sad about my kids.

That's okay. There is so much loss there for them, and for me, and they have had very hard paths.

But here we are, doing the best we know and taking it one day at a time and that is an incredible thing to acknowledge about this journey that seems so dark sometimes.

***

Here is the rest of the fish hook imagery. I am going to include it because it mattered to me yesterday before I progressed through whatever that was. So, I will post it here in case it will help anyone else.

Chain of consciousness can be ~ sometimes, I would rather you thought I was cool, instead of all outrageously confused.

:O)

***

It does feel like a fish hook in that way. Like...what do I do, now? In the past I would be so ashamed at the way I was thinking. I would try harder to do the right thing. Now...hand over hand right up that line to the fisherman, that's what. And pull him (her) into the water.

Yum.

Lunchables.

:O)

It's been that hard for me. I have really had to struggle to get to the emotion behind some of this. And it is heavier and harder to assimilate the deeper I go.

I will know I am done when I reach steady state, when I feel joy as steady state.

If you want I would be curious to know more, so as to try to learn a bit of what might have been behind this, in me.

Fear of the abyss within I think, Copa.

It has taken me forever to respond to this question. Here is what I really think I think: I am not arrogant and never was. Probably Copa, you were not either. As I thought about this question last night, I came to believe that what feels like arrogance to us may have been the evolution of healthy boundaries.

We were happy.

We were successful.

Then, the kids were in trouble we could not address it and we broke and broke until we couldn't handle it and we back into SWOT's "emotional flashback"; fell into a time of doom, of no control, of bad things happening and then, worse things still; into a reality of the certainty of punishment and loss for which we were responsible because this time, we were the mothers.

That is what I think happened.

Emotional flashback, full time.

I was not aware of the depth or toxicity of these feelings until we began this quest. The difficult thing about what we are doing is not to get bogged down in the horror of it. We chose it; we win. At the end is steady state. At the end is joy. At the end, we will possess ourselves more surely than we did, before our children fell and before we separated, or were separated from, our mothers.

Do you see the intensity of the trauma involved? Do you see that there are those who could not come back from it stronger?

We will; we are.

Amazing, that we are able to do this by an act of will.

***

In emotional flashback, we have lost locus of control and are in free fall.

Simply to know this clears it.

We have the power to proceed as we choose. All we need to do is see where we are. There are no guarantees in life; no one knows better than we do what is best for ourselves and our families. If you review your performance with your child Copa, or during your mother's death, you will find effort and commitment and perfection in so many ways.

Claim that truth, Copa.

However it happened that we were broken as we were as children, we have the right and the responsibility (and the honor) of choosing our responses, now.

That was not arrogance, Copa. Those were boundaries.

***

Working through core belief systems now, when my life is nearer its end than its beginning, has been shaming. Overwhelming, sometimes. I can't tell you the hurt of it but then, I don't have to because you are choosing it, too.

So is SWOT.

It seems so normal to us because we are doing it, but I think that what we do here is a rare thing. For it to work, we have to be honest with ourselves about what that was like. Those old, terrible belief systems are still virulently live within us, locked away, along with the energy it takes to keep them compartmentalized.

I cannot imagine how it was for me, or for any of us, as little girls.

To live as we lived...whew. (I am so sorry Copa that you were hurt by that greedy pig of a man, your stepfather.) You were meant to be cherished and taught well; instead, you were used by a coward.I wonder what they think of themselves, afterword.

It would seem to me that they would never be clean, again.

Yuck.

I have seen men like that. They are oily and sneaky and sly in their nasty little hearts, and their eyes are filled with obscenities because they have no ethics and believe their thoughts private.

Real men, decent men, are nothing like that.

***

I have posted before about locus of control issues.

That is the essence of it: locus of control. When we have been well brought up, we are in full and legitimate possession of ourselves. When we have been hurt as children, the legitimacy of our competency is in question because our abusers consistently overrode our evolving belief in ourselves with their stubborn, desperately determined beliefs that though we were beginning to no longer believe in them, we were still those same little girls, or little boys, who could be punched and kicked and screamed at; who had no will and no right, of their own.

They were wrong. Each time we encounter their toxic belief systems within us, we recognize the taste of it sooner, now, and clear it.

We are the only ones who can say yes or no to it, Copa.

But first, we have to see it.

That is what we are doing, here.

:O)

My thinking and my control over my sister as I hold her within me has changed substantially.

We are changing everything Copa, by taking a look at it. You made a decision regarding your sister and yourself when you decided not to cheat.

That was the first reclamation of locus of control regarding whatever it is your sister represents to you.

It will not be so long now until other good reclamation of self is realized.

Those first steps are the hardest ones because they seem unimagineable. We can't even see where we are, so how can we know there is a better way? That is where we all come in.

I love this site.

And just look what we are accomplishing.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If I stay in bed, I just call the cat to join me.

I LOVE THIS!

So, this is what I would say I know this morning. We are able to assess our emotional states now and recognize FOO feelings/thought patterns/personal assessments of ourselves as acceptable or condemnable.

We know now where these feelings that seem so right and so real and so unquestionably true have their genesis. We know now that we will follow them to the root experience and see our abusers abusing us through our own eyes instead of their filthy ones.

That is a big and very different conclusion to draw than the old way, when we automatically believed the feelings and did all those good things we did anyway, by choice.

How extraordinary, that we could do that. Not that every human does not challenge himself to act from his best self. We do that routinely, all of us, every one of us, every day in so many ways. But for us, for those raised and broken as we were...all we have is echoing toxicity where others have some version of unconditional positive regard.

I find it extraordinary that we were able to do that.

Yet, if you are honest with yourselves, that is exactly what each of us has done. Even with the deficits we came into our adulthoods with.

Since this is true, we are strong enough to continue, and to win.

Now, we are at the level of choice and free will.

Copa, it is like what you are doing now in changing your perceptions of what you are doing in bed, or in love. I love it that you see it now as calling the cat to join you. I love it that I read somewhere this morning that you are seeing that you love M.

I love that, for you.

These are the very things, those very thoughts and labels and names we call ourselves that we need to be able to recognize and latch onto and work through and spit out of our mouths.

I have seen personal change, too. It has to do with things like finding it funny that I would tell myself "That'll do, pig." I haven't spoken like that to myself, since. I think about that sometimes, when I am getting ready.

Toxicities, rising; coming into awareness and being cleared by conscious choice.

I am not failing any more, I am glad to note. I am in bed.

:O)

Shut the liars up and tell them you're not listening.

This defiance is similar to the anger I acknowledge when I post about following the fishing line up and seeing the fisherman as a Lunchable; as something to be defiantly gobbled up.

But I am the fisherman.

I am the one fishing the subconscious for the huge fish swimming around under there. So. In the envisionment of my process, it was my own arms and my own hands grabbing on and hauling myself up out of the water along the fishing line.

Sure. Certain. Sudden. Inescapable.

Conscious intent.

Swimming by choice, unacknowledged and unknown but emphatically there in the deepest water, freeing the toxicities that then rise, enveloping the fisherman in a miasma of terrible echoing spookiness and sickness and fear.

That is what it is like in the nine days Copa was posting about; the nine days in which she changed whatever it is the sister represents for Copa.

And then, you had the dream, Copa.

***

We clear it, clear the miasmic pocket of toxicity that we have released, and that has bubbled up, in those nine days.

It could be that in the thick of the worst of it, we begin to be trapped, like I was in that quicksand feeling for a time. That is when we come up, when conscious intent comes roaring up through the water, and pulls hand over hand up the line. To destroy and consume the fisherman, the conscious interpreter.

We are recreating ourselves, then.

Truly recreating. Devouring and encompassing and going on.

So.

That is what that hero imagery was about, then.

Because we need to be that strong.

Looks like we are that strong, after all.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cheated again to see if sis is still reading this. Thing is I only read the last line of her post which said not answering my long
emails have brought her much peace

For heaven's sake. Does that woman never have an original thought?!?

She is pretending to be you, SWOT.

You are committed to peace in your life and you post that to us here all the time.

You even use the word peace to describe what you envision for yourself.

roar

***

If you were kind enough to share your deepest thoughts with your sister via email, that was a kind thing, SWOT. It doesn't surprise me one bit that she would try to twist your generous gesture into something ugly. To have taken time for your sister, to have been willing to share vulnerability, to have offered her trust and to have honored her in sharing your heart with her through "long emails" was courageous, and was a measure of love.

Of course your sister will twist that into something ugly; but the ugliness is her ugliness, not yours. Pearls before swine, right?

For some reason, the members of our FOO function through ugliness and toxicity. Like when I can never figure out the win in the terrible, stupid and pointlessly hurtful things my FOO do routinely, SWOT.

Your sister is choosing it too.

WTF.

That is the difference between us and them, maybe.

We never were comfortable with them, with their take on life. We see what we see and we know what we know and we knew it from the beginning. Probably, that is why we were targeted in the first place.

What they see in us is a truth they want destroyed, maybe.

I don't know why, either.

But when I stop telling myself that what I think I see my mom and my sister doing cannot possibly be true, I understand my difference from them is a blessing.

It is the same for you, SWOT.

How is it these people have to steal our words to hurt us? Why is it they cannot come up with their own. Or why is it that my sister believes I am supposed to be so strong that I will melt when she cries and give in?

Why are they not stronger people. How is it that they see hurting us, or denigrating us, as a win for them?

Cedar

In a way, it is like that policy of exclusion I am always posting about where my FOO is concerned. Why would my sister feel validated by turning the mother, by taking control of the mother? A baby does that, not an adult. Why would it be "What would Cedar do."

Why fixate on me?

Whyever they do that, each of our sisters seem to do the same kinds of things. It has to be a typical pattern in dysfunctional families, then.

What would the name of that role be, I wonder?

Do they ever recover?

 

[Copabanana]

I want to say a few things before I go back and read your recent posts.

SWOT, I skimmed in Cedar's reply that you had CHEATED and read the last line of your sister's self-congratulatory's claim to find peace FROM YOU.

SWOT, pleeeeaaase. This is not like my looking at my sister's house that only minimally talks back. Your looking is so much more risky, because your sister does talk back. And as Cedar said your sister borrows your own words and sticks you with them.

Lioness, I want to mention your thread and my comments in it. (I saw this morning that you weighed in Cedar but have not yet read your post.)

The Foo Files has become a place where we examine and surmount the horribleness of our childhood's that still consumes us and which threaten our relationships with our adult kids.

We seek to as the parents our children need, and who we deserve to be instead of acting as if we have been abused by our own children. Even when they have in fact abused us.

I know others think differently than do I. While we all agree that you do not deserve the treatment you have received from your daughter. Some of us perceive your daughter as having behaved so badly as to have crossed a line, that because your daughter has done so much to hurt you you should consider having no contact.

I have done this a dozen times. The thing is I am the one that gets killed by it. Because I love my son. I cannot sustain it. For me it does not work.

For those of us who were treated badly by our parents, abused, all of this is impossibly hard. The feelings that are evoked are as if we are being re-victimized by our own children.

But we feel bad on an entirely new level. Because we are their mothers. For most of us, there is no running away, even in fantasy. There is righteous anger because after all we tried to reverse the damage that had been done to us. This wound is the deepest of all.

When I have tried to divorce my child, it has been when I have felt such as this. As if everything about me was boiling up inside me, scalding my innards and as if I had no choice at all. At the same time I felt the most horrible shame. Because I was out of control. Because I was completely ineffective. Because after a life I thought I had lived well, despite a horrible beginning had turned into a toxic waste dump, with me trapped inside.

This is FOO. This has nothing to do with my son. While he may have catalyzed it by some disrespect or some stupidity. What has come up in me is pure FOO. And POO too. (Sometimes typos tell the truth.)

Ineffective. A toxic waste dump. Trapped. No choices. Shame. No control. All of that is FOO.

I am no longer a mother. I am an abused child.

So everybody already understands what I am lecturing and they are saying get to
your point COPA, why are you going on and on without saying what you really mean.

I guess what I fear is that everybody is thinking POOR, POOR COPA, she is always so much a conciliator, like that prime minister of Britain that wanted to pacify the Nazis. Poor COPA she always protects her Mother and not herself. She always wants to take the high road and to minimize and forgive the harm done to her. Poor COPA, she will always be a victim, because she cannot or does not want to take a stand for herself. She keeps protecting others that hurt her.

So I have gotten to the point. Are you all mad at me? I am sorry.

You know I decided to take care of mother as she died, despite the fact that she had sometimes been cruel and uncaring to me. You know that I became depressed as my mother died and after.

At first I cared for her to do the right thing, to take responsibility. Had it not be me who stepped forward she would have had nobody.

Cedar thinks I have courage. I think I am just stupid. That I do not think about the potential effects on me before I do something. I do not think what it will be like for me when I come out the other end.

I never guessed that by the choice to take responsibility I would lose 3 years of my life. So I guess everybody is right. In this case the risks coming from taking responsibility have been insurmountable to me. And they have cost me my life. Three years is five percent of my time so far in this world.

So what killed me, I think, was that I discovered that I loved my Mother, and grieved that I had not loved her in life, and that I had lived a life where I did not have the love of a mother. And that now I would never have that love that I had needed.

And because I made myself suffer so these past years it seems as if I blamed myself for this. And little by little I have moved beyond this self-blame. And while I am still too much in bed, I think I remain there because I am overcome by events and feelings related to my son, and not so much my mother.

I moved beyond this self-blame with my mother because I was able to own that I had distanced myself from my mother for good reason. That this had been a bona fide choice, not capricious. And that my fear and anger had a solid and real basis. I then was able to feel the anger towards her that I had been directing against myself. I got better.

At least until I got felled again by events with my son.

All of us mothered our children wanting to be mothers different than we had had. Never knowing that as we were doing so well creating such a beautiful and effective new family, we were building a time bomb that would blow up in our faces.

Lioness, you are a wonderful mother that you and all of us might have wished for.

Your daughter decided at some point to not see it the same. That is the crux of the matter.

You were outraged. So was I when it happened to me.

I have been going through this nightmare for many years. The hardest part started 5 or 6 years ago right after my relationship began with M.

I was reminded of it strongly yesterday because the neighbor with whom I had had a friendship 6 years ago moved. There had been a little trio of women "friends" and I was made odd woman out. My son had gossiped about me to one of them, who gossiped to the other, who mistakenly mentioned to me that I was not much of a mother.

Over the years since I barely spoke to her, just smiling Hi and waving for the most part. I saw the moving van in front of the house. I could not or would not walk across the street to say goodbye. Friday I had thought I heard something that could have been the door, and I ignored it. I had thought to myself, that could be N or one of her children to say goodbye. (I have begun to shout when I speak in public, my hearing has gotten so bad, and M has to tell me to lower my voice. Attractive, no?)

I felt so guilty about not saying goodbye I mentioned it to M yesterday

Me: I did not said goodbye. I cannot forget and I will never forget how she hurt me.

M: You should have. That is what a well-mannered person would do, and you are a well-mannered person. *the woman ignores M when he is in the front yard, not waving, no Hi. I believe she dismisses him as some variety of a non-person. That angers me too.

Me: She is not well-mannered.

M: But you are. And to say that you will never forget and will not forget the hurt she has caused you is wrong-headed and foolish.

Why would you allow her this power over you? Better forget it. Better consider it not worth one bit of pain. Why give her or any thought of her one bit of power over you or your feelings?

That is the way you empower yourself with people like this. By saying goodbye you would have shown yourself that you are bigger than anything she has ever said or done or would ever do or say.

M is right. But I am not strong. I am weak. I am dominated by my feelings and not my brain. I was betrayed by my son and this woman used this betrayal to wound me to the core. To shame me. To feel more powerful and better than me. Because she knew she was the better mother.

She may well be. I did the best I could.

The thing is this. With our children there is no saying goodbye and there is no not saying goodbye. We love them. We are stuck with them. We can decide to never see them again, but there are consequences for that too. To us.

The remedies must come from us because our children are less motivated to find them. The imperative for adult children is to move out and away. Like me with my mother, children can feel entitled to leave and make distance. We as mothers are stuck with the hot potato because we want these children or their children in our lives. We are left holding the bag. Of feelings.

Now there are circumstances when parents do take a proactive stance and do say no more to their children: Stealing, violence, blatant disrespect, cruelty and more.

You may no longer do this to me. No more. I will not allow it.

In this way the parents feel they can contain and control the horrible pain that is destroying them. In some situations they protect themselves from real victimization. They make it stop. In no uncertain terms.

The thing is I fear Lioness that you may be like me. That there will never be a way to say STOP. GET OUT and mean it. That you would be saying it to the pain and not to your child. And it would kill you like it does me.

And that for you, like me, the solution has to be found inside of you. And that is why I spoke about your love. And the possibility of choosing it. Not to accept abuse or to seek it. But as a way to find peace in yourself.

 

[Copabanana]

Before I have the luxury of reading your posts I want to take time to piece together how I woke this morning. In the time I spent writing the above post I lost most of it. I will start where I can.

I dreamed before I woke that my son was bicycle riding around the house. You're too old to ride around the house on a bike. Then I realized he was 26.

I did not want to wake up. To open my eyes. I did not want to get up. In my own house. I did not feel equipped to meet the day or to fill it. I felt dread.In the minutes before I fully woke up

I realized this: I feel safe only in my bed. Nowhere else in my home or in my life do I feel safe. I want to be nowhere else except momentarily. The danger has become anything non-bed. There was nothing I wanted to do except to post.

What is wrong with a person like this? While at I might ask myself, too, when I stopped beating my wife.

I will start off with my decision, what I came to at the end. I defy the bed. I will defy it.

What it is that would make me feel unsafe everywhere except a bed does not matter.

That the bed must have been at one time the most unsafe of places. The worst place to be. The scariest. Matters but must be put to rest, or at least have specific waking and sleeping times.

That when I think of my father, there exists a thing that I know but cannot know. Matters but cannot define my life and me.

That as a child the world was my haven, my escape and that I was the most active and inquisitive of children. Over fences. In trees. Running through waves and defying ocean's undertoe just yards from our house. That I was safe and free outside matters most of all.

That the bed has been safe because M is here and protects it. And when this kind of thing happened before there was M but with my son. Matters. That my home with my son was a haven and a safe place, matters. That I do not know if can ever be again, matters too.

While there may be an inversion here in my psyche matters. That is to say, the cognitive confusion that that what once was safe has become dangerous and that which was dangerous, now unsafe cannot continue to define me. I cannot and will not permit myself to act as if the world is the scary place. And myself in it the scary thing. And the bed, me in it, now safe. This decision to no longer live as if this cognitive inversion matters most of all.

Because that is an untruth and I, not a person who lies, matters.

That I have done this before, or a variation, when I found out about my son's Hepatitis does matter. That I would work and come home to bed with a broken heart, matters.

What matters most is that I have surrendered my competencies in the world, and my comfort in the world. To feel safe in a bed. Heartbroken and confused matters quite a lot. It matters most that this must not continue. Not dreams or nightmares or guilt or shame or grief can I permit to rob me of myself or my life.

There had followed here a list of badges of non-merit that I have earned in my world. Mainly colleagues I took them to heart and I guarded and saved them. To justify, I guess, not deserving to leave the bed. Copa has no boundaries Copa is vulnerable.

Two times my phone rang yesterday. I picked it up and nobody was there.
I thought it might have been my son. I heard the cracking of the broken pay phone he uses.

For several hours I did not call back. Then I did. I called staff.

My son might have called me on the broken phone. Can you tell him that I called? If he wants to call can you let him use the staff phone?

Was it all along like this and for 24 years I have buried the truth? That my son was never ever in step? That it never ever was a redemption story? It was always a lie, to myself? If I had faced his limits instead of trying to shield myself, with hope... could he and myself have been shielded from the difficult reality we are living now?

Has my whole life been lived as lie? Was the running and playing and exploring and traveling and studying and working and dancing a lie?

What matters is taking a stand for myself.

 

[Copabanana]

Can you get up long enough for a power walk?

A power stroll, maybe.

You failed less than me in life. In fact I don't see where you failed. I see people who failed you.

SWOT, I know I did not fail in the world. Every time I tried to get up from bed and thought that I had put behind me the worst of the depression that had kept me in bed, after a while I went back to bed.

There have been more than a dozen times that I have thought I was better, only to go back to bed. Each time I defined myself as a failure.

Shut the liars up and tell them you're not listening. Cheer up!

I know that I am calling myself bad names and that part of the problem here is that. That I treat myself with cruelty and not with respect. And that this basic dis-respect of myself is responsible for a lot of subsequently bad choices.

I am coming to believe that trying to find the reasons for my disrespect of myself is a futile trap. That the thing that will change is to decide I am worthy of respect independent of anything, and to learn to act towards myself with respect.

To do my best to defy all feelings and evidence to the contrary. I am human after all. I deserve respect. Animals deserve respect. So do I deserve respect from myself and from others. I will from now on try to avoid the traps I set. And demand and expect respect and care from myself.

Thank you, SWOT. I am coming to believe that this is the solution, after all. To defy the voices. They are liars. I deserve everything and more. I do not have to prove it. Don't Cheat.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

This is the remarkable thing. I wrote the last post, about waking up bummed, BEFORE I read this. And guess what? Midway while writing, I decided to reverse the course of the feelings. I decided to defy them. I decided to disown them. Going on SWOT's admonishment to not listen, and before I read your post, Cedar. I did it. I changed from the bait to the fisherman, midway during the post. I am almost clapping now but my hands are otherwise occupied. That said, on to your post Cedar.

but surely there is a better way to see this. That is where the problem is for me, I think.

I do not know why I quoted this, but I will comment nonetheless. We have spoken about the discrediting of our perceptions that we do, you with your sister and me with my sister especially. There are posts from about 10 days ago, I think, about this.

We know what has happened, we have seen it and we trust our perceptions, and we trust our feelings. Nevertheless, we go on to undermine them and search for any possible other explanation to let the offending sister off of the hook. We came some pretty firm conclusions at the time to our motivation. All I can think of is that we do this, to save the relationship, in our own head. Somebody needs to go back and read the postings because I am pretty sure we nailed it and agreed.

I am sad about my kids.

That's okay. There is so much loss there for them, and for me, and they have had very hard paths.

This is the hard, hard part for me. The part I cannot get past. A bill arrived for my son yesterday for 8k for medical services rendered in City Mental Health Care in the BIG CITY where he is now. A couple of months ago a bill arrived for about 5k to me, for a visit he made to the Emergency Hospital.

He cannot it seems get straight that his Medicaid or whatever he gets is only within a specific County, that he cannot simultaneously receive services in 4 counties.

He does not want to accept that he cannot go to Emergency Hospitals as if it is Urgent Care. Or because it is more convenient. Yet no matter how much I tell him it does not get absorbed. And the reason, I do not know.

I would rather you thought I was cool, instead of all outrageously confused.

Cedar, we think you are cool.

I am not arrogant and never was. Probably Copa, you were not either. As I thought about this question last night, I came to believe that what feels like arrogance to us may have been the evolution of healthy boundaries.

That was not arrogance, Copa. Those were boundaries.

But people told me I was arrogant. Maybe only two people, I admit. I was shocked when they told me because I thought I was vulnerable and damaged, and arrogant did not fit with that. But secretly I liked the idea that people might find me arrogant, because it seemed powerful and mysterious. And remote. Oh yeah, that was the other thing people called me that I did not get: guarded; that I kept things to the vest. Now does that sound like the COPA you know?

So, the truth is I kind of liked guarded and remote. Who would not want to be Lauren Bacall or Marlene Dietrich instead of road kill or prey? NOT. I just remembered my vow to be kind to myself.

Then, the kids were in trouble we could not address it and we broke and broke until we couldn't handle it and we back into SWOT's "emotional flashback"

That is exactly what happened and it happened again this morning. But I caught myself. Insert a smiley face here.

fell into a time of doom, of no control, of bad things happening and then, worse things still; into a reality of the certainty of punishment and loss for which we were responsible because this time, we were the mothers.

Yes, this is exactly right.

Emotional flashback, full time.

Yes.

The difficult thing about what we are doing is not to get bogged down in the horror of it.

All too true.

Do you see that there are those who could not come back from it stronger?

Yes.

In emotional flashback, we have lost locus of control and are in free fall.
Simply to know this clears it.

Yes. This is why I feel proud of myself for my work today. I was stuck in it. And within it. And I re-read Swot's post and saw that I could chose to stop. Just stop it. Challenge it. And change it. It is if once we fall into it we try to find solutions within the logic of the toxic. We can never be strong while we stay in the emotional flashback. First because it is so emotionally driven and laden. More importantly because everything we think within it is based upon false premises. We can only lose within it and fall further.

I think that is what I am trying to say about Lioness' situation with her daughter. As long as she stays within her reaction to her daughter's cruelty and bad behavior she is mired within an emotional response to her childhood. She can never be steady state within it because it is a conversation between her daughter's toxicity and the feelings within Lioness from her childhood.

Lioness, at any point you can stop it. You can climb out of your reaction and get to the strong woman and mother who you are. That is what I mean, and nobody understands me.

All of you think I am covering for the bad actors. At least I hope I am not.

We have the power to proceed as we choose. All we need to do is see where we are.

Please refer to my post above as an extremely excellent example of this at work.

If you review your performance with your child Copa, or during your mother's death, you will find effort and commitment and perfection in so many ways.

I know. I wish I could live from this Copa but I seem to be unable to except when I decide to.

However it happened that we were broken as we were as children, we have the right and the responsibility (and the honor) of choosing our responses, now.

Yes. This is true.

For it to work, we have to be honest with ourselves about what that was like. Those old, terrible belief systems are still virulently live within us, locked away, along with the energy it takes to keep them compartmentalized.

This is true. But I do not understand if you are referring to the distant past when we performed as if the past hurts were not there, you with your family, me dancing through Latin America, or if you are referring to now, as the terrible belief systems still do their work.

When we have been hurt as children, the legitimacy of our competency is in question because our abusers consistently overrode our evolving belief in ourselves

True. It is amazing we ever got out of bed? OOPS. Am I revealing something to myself here? If I am I am not seeing it.

We are the only ones who can say yes or no to it, Copa.

True. There is no rescuer here. Except me. I do see it. By why am I still in bed?

Copa, it is like what you are doing now in changing your perceptions of what you are doing in bed, or in love. I love it that you see it now as calling the cat to join you. I love it that I read somewhere this morning that you are seeing that you love M.

I love that, for you.

I think I love M madly but I do not like the implications of that. Because in my life if you love somebody they take advantage of you or hurt you or use you and I do not like the implications of the state where such a thing is possible. So I get confused.

the nine days in which she changed whatever it is the sister represents for Copa.

And then, you had the dream, Copa.

So now I wonder if my sister was the alone, crying, rejected, abandoned, helpless lost person, and I was the COOL, COMPETENT,THIN, PROFESSIONAL that came and then turned my back. Because that happened. Remember.

When my sister was a young woman and walking her dog, her dog was attacked. She fell and severely fractured her arm. She called me from the hospital. Crying. Vulnerable. She wanted something from me. Whether Love or that I would go to her in a far city, and I decided I would not. I decided that I was not her Mother. I decided that the way she had already treated me, even then, did not warrant that I drop everything for her. I did not go to her. I feel guilty still. And believe that would have been the last chance to save the relationship. That there never again really was another chance.

We see what we see and we know what we know and we knew it from the beginning. Probably, that is why we were targeted in the first place.

I know that this is so. And no beatings or rejections or anything could change it.

What would the name of that role be, I wonder?

Do they ever recover?

This part is cute. I hope so, Cedar. I really hope so.

As I read this I am thinking of Gregory Bateson, the famous anthropologist and philosopher who was once married to Margaret Meade. He was the person who coined the concept schizophrenogenic Mother. I bought a book online about a family systems theory, Narrative therapy based upon Bateson's work. The order was cancelled. I will look at all of this, and see what I can find.

This is what I think. I think that you and SWOT put your finger on it. It is something about deciding what narrative to believe and own and live from. Everything is negotiated and conflictual about the brain. It is when we get trapped in a dichotomy and feel there has to be a winner and loser. And guess who loses?
I bought another book about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy by the originator, Marsha Linehan. And I believe she deals with all of this too.

SWOT is this where your thinking about DON'T LISTEN comes from?

My day started in victimization and ended victorious. Thank you SWOT and Cedar.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, I think the key to understanding why we subordinate our true perceptions of the behavior of the other in favor of some explanation more favorable to them
may lie in Bateson's work.

He developed a theory of Schismogenesis which is briefly summarized below.

In short, the behaviour of person X affects person Y, and the reaction of person Y to person X's behaviour will then affect person X's behaviour, which in turn will affect person Y, and so on.

Bateson called this the "vicious circle".[20]He then discerned two models of schismogenesis: symmetrical and complementary.[20] Symmetrical relationships are those in which the two parties are equals, competitors, such as in sports. Complementary relationships feature an unequal balance, such as dominance-submission (parent-child), or exhibitionism-spectatorship (performer-audience).

I have been wanting to read Bateson and will.

 

[BusynMember]

When my sister was a young woman and walking her dog, her dog was attacked. She fell and severely fractured her arm. She called me from the hospital. Crying. Vulnerable. She wanted something from me. Whether Love or that I would go to her in a far city, and I decided I would not. I decided that I was not her Mother. I decided that the way she had already treated me, even then, did not warrant that I drop everything for her. I did not go to her. I feel guilty still. And believe that would have been the last chance to save the relationship. That there never again really was another chance.

Why would you want a chance to rescue somebody who is mean to you and controlling and who only reached out to you during a moment when it was to her benefit to ask for your help? Your mother did the same. Why do you feel you have to pounce all over them when they are only vulnerable when they are helpless themselves? You think you would have had a swell relationship if you hadn't used good sense and not done your mother's job? It wouldn't have made any difference and she would have been ungrateful; maybe even used it against you.

You are not the bad guy with either of these people.

Thank you, SWOT. I am coming to believe that this is the solution, after all. To defy the voices. They are liars. I deserve everything and more. I do not have to prove it. Don't Cheat.

Don't defy ALL the voices. Listen with happiness when kind people who care about you give you praise. Believe them. Don't just believe those who wish you ill. And, yes, get your sister out of your life. What purpose does she serve that is good for you. Yes...YOU. YOU matter, in your world, more than her. We need to learn to be selfish a little bit. We need to put our own needs first at our ages. Our FOOs are dead or have already evolved as far as they ever will...your sister does not think she is a problem and will not look hard into herself with a professional. She will stay the same (like mine will probably be with alcoholic boyfriend as long as he'll have her).

They aren't changing, but we are.

We HAVE.

For me, I've been changing for years, but the biggest step was blotting "them" out forever. It gives me finality. It isn't cruel. If they don't want me, it's not cruel or if they want me to rag on, it's not cruel. If Sis is all alone one day and wants me, I'm not home.

Yes, these rather selfish thoughts give me peace, which...lol...yes, it's funny she ripped off of my posts. She will not have peace unless she changes her lifestyle. Like our difficult children, she needs to want to stop self-sabataging or she will live in a townhouse with her ex-husband (must not be fun) and date abusive man and maybe flirt with some married stuff along the way, not caring if she breaks up marriages or not. Peace?

Only if she has moved out on her own, dumped the alcoholic, stopped thinking it's ok to date married men who will only maybe give her sex and whatever else they have from whomever else they've been with...I was not her problem. Her problem was always her. See? Our problems are always within ourselves.

We cause most of our problems. We do have control over our thoughts. We have control over our bodies. We can choose to live normally and get help for our pain, in whatever ways we find comfort. We can choose to face the day, even if it's windy and cold and ugly and mean, like people we have known.

We can choose to be our own best friend or our worst enemy. The only thing we can't do is expect somebody else to be able to do this for us. We are on our own here. We can ask for help from professionals and dear friends, but only we can do the hard work it takes to change what is bothering us.

Sometimes that means hard sacrifices, like letting go of people we once loved or think we should love (and can't face that we don't) or that we still love. Sometimes we have to have a big confrontation with ourselves and decide what we won't put up with....from anyone.

I'm getting tired thinking of all the years I've put into this. And still...who were the last people I realized were making me unhappy?

Them. Thing 1 and Thing 2. I guess, like most, I watched too much of the Brady Bunch. It is ok to dislike and not see your FOO. It is not a shame if you don't care for a dying DNA relative who would sniff at you when she or he was alive in the prime of life, but want you now that it is over and they are afraid.

I would not nurse my siblings, either one. I don't even want to know if they are sick. Nor do I want them to know if I am. Heck, I don't want them to know if I'm dying. I don't want them. Ever. And they better not want me because I will not be there.

Selfish?

I can do that. And it's about time.

 

[BusynMember]

SWOT, pleeeeaaase. This is not like my looking at my sister's house that only minimally talks back. Your looking is so much more risky, because your sister does talk back. And as Cedar said your sister borrows your own words and sticks you with them.

Thanks for reminding me, Copa. I will try to never look again. I have only cheated twice and didn't read the post, just the last line and it didn't bother me. It sort of made me laugh and believe s he is still stalking me here.

I'm good

 

[BusynMember]

SWOT, I know I did not fail in the world. Every time I tried to get up from bed and thought that I had put behind me the worst of the depression that had kept me in bed, after a while I went back to bed.

Chronic depression is not failure or weakness. It is a medical disorder. It is your decision not to treat it with medication and I respect that, but it isn't being weak. It's an illness.

 

[Copabanana]

My new manifesto

Listen with happiness when kind people who care about you give you praise. Believe them.

We need to learn to be selfish a little bit. We need to put our own needs first at our ages

They aren't changing, but we are.

We HAVE.

You are not the bad guy

We do have control over our thoughts. We have control over our bodies.

We can choose to face the day, even if it's windy and cold and ugly and mean, like people we have known.

We can choose to be our own best friend or our worst enemy.

Thank you.

 

[allusedup]

Hello all, I have spent the night reading this thread trying to catch up. I haven't read it in its entirety (which I am going to do) but have been catching up since yesterday. It takes me forever as I am doing this with my phone and have to charge it up periodically etc. I don't know how to quote from a different page so I am going to try to wing it so please bear with me.
First I would so like to thank all of you for the warm welcome! It truly felt like a big hug that I really needed. And Copa, thank you for the kind words of encouragement and offer of friendship. I haven't had that in years it seems. Except from people that wanted to use me and were anything but a friend.
I have already changed my user name once and I don't know if it will let me change it again but if not....I am a Southern gal so on this thread you can call me Belle. It does sound much better, Copa.
Also Copa, SWOT is right about depression being a medical issue. But I know you already know this. My depression got much worse after I totaled my care and was without one for a long period of time. Being cooped up is so bad for depression. I think I read that you don't drive much. But could you make short trips? I try to get out everyday even if it's just to go to the dollar store and buy a diet coke. My health won't allow me to walk but I throw birdseed out and sit on my patio and watch all the little critters. I live in an apt complex and you can't have pets loose so there are lots of chipmunks, birds of course and even rabbits and squirrels that will come right to the edge of my patio to eat. I used to LOVE working with my flowers in my yard when I had a house. I got to where I couldn't do that anymore either so this summer, I bought plants and pots and have them on my patio. Going to the store does a couple of things. It gets you out of the house and gets you around people. I know you have all of us on the computer and believe me I am thankful for all of you, but it's not good to not see another living soul all day till M gets home. Could you maybe volunteer a couple days a week for an hour or two at a time. You have a multitude of good reasons to be depressed but you gotta put your boxing gloves on and fight it. I have to fight it daily too. I don't take medications anymore either. When I was so depressed I was on the maximum dose of several but they weren't helping so I got off of them. Not something I would recommend but after about 6 months my brain receptors were recovering and I got to where I could remember again. WOW. And I got better. But I still have to fight it. I have to MAKE myself get up and get dressed, brush my hair and teeth, clean up, etc. etc. Because when I was bad I didn't. Not a pretty picture.At all. And again that's another reason I am so thankful for you and all the others here too. to all of you!

 

[allusedup]

All those old familiar voices in our head that we need to ignore, get rid of, tell to shut the hell up are otherwise known as the " iddy biddy s****y committee "!! just saying! Very aptly named considering who those voices belong to!