Posted by Ilene on May 22, 2004, at 18:47:41
In reply to OMG!! » Dinah, posted by Racer on May 22, 2004, at 15:37:34
> If a child's subjective experience is one of great pain or distress, then it DOESN'T MATTER what the objective reality might have been. That child still experienced pain, which is the only relevant fact.
>I gotta say I agree entirely. Children are not in charge of what they feel. Even if the same events are experienced positively by another child (sister, brother, friend, Billy down the street) your experience is *real* and *true*.
> You can't say no to your mother and find a new one, as I can with a therapist, but at least you might be able to shake off some of the feelings that you're responsible for being hurt by her behavior. Being hurt is one thing. That was your experience, and it was real. You were hurt. NOT your responsibility. What is your responsibility, though, is processing that pain and learning to process the future discomfort you'll experience with your mother so that it doesn't create new problems. Make sense?
>Sometimes I wonder how much to expect from another person. I don't expect as much from a child as I do from an adult, but plenty of adults don't act responsibly. How much can we hold someone accountable if they are clearly not mentally healthy?
> (Here's another Racer's Mom story, that happened 20 years ago and I'm proud of my response to:
>
> I was at my mother's, being yelled at for being -- well, for being me. She yelled, "Your problem is that you let everyone walk all over you -- FROM THE DAY YOU WERE BORN, YOU LET ME WALK ALL OVER YOU!!!" I turned around and SAID -- not yelled -- "Did you hear what you just said, Mom? You said that you walked all over me from the day I was born. Do you think you may have trained me to be walked over?"
>
> Sometimes reframing works a treat...)Your mother may not have trained you. You may have been born with that kind of personality. The combination of you and your mother was not optimal, just like the combination of my mother and myself was not optimal. I can't blame my mother for doing what she did, because she was at the mercy of her own anxieties. My sister didn't find her as disturbing.
poster:Ilene
thread:348135
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040517/msgs/349731.html