Was This Reasonable? Need A Detached Viewpoint.

[lostforgottensoul]

can't answer again, grappling with seeing someone attacking every time my hair swings into view, and the shrivelling flesh and stabbing thing in the kitchen. Everything feels like an attack right now.

You're triggered. Grounding helps to ease it. Walk away for a bit, come back later and it can give you a new perspective.

http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/treatinganxiety/2010/09/top-21-anxiety-grounding-techniques/

Edited to add: Also this is a good thread...well ok i cant find it and have to leave for my therapist but Anthony has a thread somewhere, i think its a sticky (at the top) about the site making symptoms worse. Im sure someone will post it for you.

 

[Powder]

I can't read all replies, so I don't know if it got said already, but just from what I did read, it sounds like your mom had a high "need for control" in her personality makeup that was stable over time.

Your running away took that sense of control away without warning.

In addition, having law enforcement exposure sounds like it humiliated her. And made her vulnerable. Sounds like she wasn't able to get past this and focus on your needs. She felt you had way too much power over her emotions. She maybe felt betrayed.

That is what likely led to that kind of cold reception.

I have heard of much of this from women who were teens in the 70s. You had a very stoic, war-traumatized generation raising a baby boom, who was expected to be perfect and make up for the trauma of the wars.

There was a culture shift in that time, and the teens and their parents lived in parallel dimensions. This is happening again in this generation. Many of the current children will feel their parents were always out of touch. This is part of huge cultural shifts and not sharing common definitions about "the rules" of life.

You had all that going on plus whatever in your own family culture.

Sad when parents can see past their own emotions to the needs of their offspring.

 

[Sandstone]

two updates
I decided that whatever else, I can't keep hiding from my mother since she is going to keep walking past several times a day. I saw her in the garden so I took the patchwork sample block I'd just completed and showed her it. She told me the purple fabric was going to fray, it was a mistake to mix old and new fabrics, and that it was a good thing I had time to waste on doing it. So normal service has been resumed.

The GP did phone on Friday evening. My kidney function declined between the first and second test, but stayed steady between the second and third. To be retested in six weeks.
My thyroid is significantly under, and I'm to start medication for that, at a very low level initially. She wants to start this slowly in case of any reactions. I had some strong reactions to psych meds, the Psychiatrist had commented that I seem to be very sensitive to medications, so that makes sense.

 

[ladee]

I'm sorry @Sandstone. I am sure the quilt block was beautiful. Especially if it had purple in it... So hard to ignore and not internalize such ugly criticism.....
Is there a possibility you will ever get independent living? Where you don't have to see or talk with her? I hope so. That is not avoiding, that is going no contact to save yourself. sending you hugs if you accept them

 

[Sandstone]

I don't know if it was beautiful, but as a learner I was pleased with how well it lined up. I'm not really worried though, it was so absolutely normal for her, it was as I say "normal service" and I know it will always be her response to anyone and anything. I'm not sure she even realises that she is being critical.

So far as the living situation goes, my husband and I own the house, she lives in an annexe. As she is now in her late 80s, I don't imagine she will move, even though she said she views it as like a prison.

The trick is to hold on to this equanimity when I'm not having a calm day.

 

[ladee]

Well, you have a huge heart, and will have no regrets. I am always amazed at people who can somehow adjust to being around the people that caused you so much damage.... I don't have the heart or the courage. So I commend you for you generosity of her living there.... and ya know, quilters, who are kind, could have told you the same thing, as you are learning, with a different attitude and it wouldn't have stung... but be proud of your work... !!!

 

[stillstanding2]

You are not makin a fuss -Im for one is glad you made this important thread to bring up such an important issue. You do deserve help and support - hugs if accepted and please take care of your valuble self.

@Sandstone, I just noticed this thread and have not read the whole thing, so forgive me if I'm redundant of someone else. I just wanted to point out that the way parents react to their kids' problems often depends not only one their education in parenting, but also one of their generation.

I'm older than you, and grew up in a backward town where if kids had problems they were ignored. I was "maladjusted" for several reasons, yet my having problems was not a subject in the family. I was suicidal, but stayed silent, since there was no help. My parents might have tried to help me, but they didn't know how, other than to treat me as "normal" when I obviously was not. The closest thing to a therapist was a preacher offering prayer.

That was post-WWII, when abnormality went unnoticed, unless someone was violently alcoholic or "shell-shocked" from the war. A non-veteran with PTSD was said to have a "nervous breakdown", which was a serious stigma.

I'm not excusing your mother's behavior (or lack of it) but I know that even in my generation, the stigma of being "not normal" could be labelled (heaven forbid) "mental illness"', and could reflect badly on a whole family. Sadly, I think those attitudes still persist in some places.

 

[stillstanding2]

@Sandstone, I just noticed this thread and have not read the whole thing, so f...

Hi @Sandstone, I owe you an apology. I'm sorry that my reply to you was so rambling, vague and irrelevant to your question. Seems I've been rather confused these days, but that's not an excuse.

I do think your mother's seeming lack of concern after you returned home was inadequate. I think what I was getting at before is that even from one decade to the next, attitudes in rearing children seem to shift, sometimes radically. I have no other understanding of why a mother would behave the way yours did, and I do understand why that would still bother you now. It would bother me too.

I suppose what I was saying before is that there was a time when little was understood about managing emotional and mental health of adults. And a child's issues were easily--if ever so wrongly--dismissed as a passing phase. That is little consolation for you now, and I wish I could say something more useful than "Your mother was wrong, for whatever she thought was a reason."

 

[Thomas Mariani]

I keep remembering something that happened when I was 13 or 14. I can't work out whether my mother beh...

That's really hard to say what one person's view point is at the time it was made, as a kid in those day drug use was in my life, looking back my mother and I have an open relationship can talk about anything now. I had confronted her about how was it that she didn't know, truth be told with 6 children to raise she didn't want to know, just prayed we were safe at the time. We do the best we can,yet is seldom enough. God bless you. Forehead kisses

 

[Thomas Mariani]

Not reasonable from your mom. Mine did the same. I recent her to this day for many reason. Id do the same...

Be cause we are smarter now then they were.

 

[HFA_Cat]

Honestly? I'd have had to look her directly in the eyes and say, "No, actually YOU did." IMHO, a response like that from a mother gives me the creeps.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

@HFA_Cat if I would of said that to my mom as a kid, that would have been begging to be hit and/or kicked across the room.

But, resentment holds you in the past and doesnt allow you to move foward and heal. Forgiveness is for you and has little to do with them but it helps you to move foward.

This is a bit of a older thread so Im unsure of how @Sandstone sees it today and what, if anything, has happened but i still advise that forgiveness is the best way to go. Hard but it really does help.