Posted by Tamar on June 22, 2006, at 18:59:47
In reply to Am I being too selfish, posted by orchid on June 22, 2006, at 13:06:57
Hi Orchid,
I don’t think you’re being selfish at all. It is very difficult to be like a parent to your parents. And this is clearly distressing to you. If you didn’t want to hear about it because you thought it was boring, that might be selfish. But that isn’t the case. You are experiencing real anguish when your mother talks about her pain.
I’m not sure why you feel that way. Maybe you’re right about the sense of guilt, although I don’t think God gave your pain to our mother. But I can imagine that you might feel guilty even though you’re not guilty. Guilt is a strange thing.
I suppose the biggest question is how to deal with it. I imagine she will be hurt if you simply ignore her. So I guess it’s a matter or trying to find a way to listen to her, or trying to find a way of telling her gently that you don’t have the emotional resources to listen when she talks about her RA pain.
In order to listen to her, you may have to desensitize yourself a bit. You might find it helpful to do some reading about RA pain, or to talk about RA with someone else (someone you feel comfortable with). Sometimes just getting used to seeing and hearing the words can help a bit. I know you know all about the pain, but that’s not quite the same thing as being able to listen to someone else’s account of it.
If you think you can tell her gently that it’s a difficult subject for you, I think it will probably be quite hard. I don’t know how close you are to your mother; I suspect not as close as she would like. And maybe her RA pain seems intrusive to you; maybe you feel she’s using it (however unconsciously) as a means of getting closer to you. I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course, and indeed I may be completely wrong. I’m just extrapolating from stuff you’ve said before about your family dynamics when you were growing up. But if there’s anything in this possibility, it might require quite a lot of hard work from you to try to renegotiate your relationship with your mother.
Sorry that I don’t have any good answers. I hope you manage to work things out with her.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:660165
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060615/msgs/660259.html