trying to figure out why and what's going on .I think I feel if I had the "truth" I could accept it better.
I guess I believe there are absolute truths, but I believe these are very, very few, existing more in the scientific and spiritual realms but not in the psychiatric. There are consensus ideas in psychiatry and psychology but that I am aware of no "truths" as you speak of.
I think if I knew that her abandonment issues (if that's what it was ) were because she has xyz mental illness , I could understand how she did this 180 on me.
You seem to be searching here for direct causation where some X factor (or Y or Z factors) are responsible for her distress apart from you. I think it is hurtful and harmful both to think in terms of "causing" and to search for culpable parties. Your daughter (and you and I and everybody that I know) was raised in a family, in an environment and a culture, with a genetic and ancestral background.
We are learning more and more through the emerging field of epigenetics that while genes are not intrinsically modified by experience they are modified by the experience of forbearers. For example, even grandchildren of holocaust survivors who never met their grandparents carry markers in their genes...that affect them, their behavior, their emotions, their choices, their attitudes about life. The same is true for descendants of slaves, descendants of native people. Both sides of devastating conflicts generations later are affected by forces that are completely independent of their direct lived experience and genetic inheritance.
We know only a minuscule part of how we are shaped, what "causes" us to be who we are. How will one mother come to grips with "cause?"
This all sounds like a witch hunt to me.
I think I want to make triple sure that I am being mentally healthy and not contributing to someone else's suffering.
Personally, I think this is an ongoing conversation that I aspire to have as long as I am alive. I don't think there is a single yes or no answer. Because every hour I live I am subject to distortions that are self-serving and defensive. This is a practice of accountability
and acceptance.
It seems to me that you may be holding yourself accountable without enough in the acceptance part. Life happens. We need to let go. So that the cleansing and purifying waters of renewal and redemption can wash over us. Is this not the wisdom of spirituality of which the 12 steps are an example?
Am punishing her for not being interested in me (or my interpretation of that) by solely focusing on me
I think this is a powerful question.
You don't ask me but I will offer my sense. I think your focus on yourself, your goals, your needs, your boundaries, your emotional safety is laudable and entirely healthy. I think when we engage in tit for tat, or withholding, it is less so.
I am not doing elaborate Christmas gifts this year when Mother's day I got nothing
Your children are trying to establish themselves as adults psychologically, which requires them to individuate, to separate. There are powerful reasons they would not demonstrate generosity and selflessness with respect to you. I think you have the option of seeing the gifts from this perspective and to stay open to your own loving generosity and selfless love.
These one-sided relationships (with adults!) no longer work for me. Having a properly functioning healthy relationship of give and take with me is a privilege.
A give and take relationship is aspirational, with our children. My son is a decade older than is your daughter. I am seeing glimmers of reciprocity and compassion. I choose to focus on my hope. But all of us choose differently.
Which is not to say I don't react with anger, pain and judgement. After I have nursed my wounds I choose to act from the belief that my son and I will have one day the kind of relationship I seek. We may or we may not. Nobody can tell me we won't. I choose to define myself by my hope.
