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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 7 of 7. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by rjlockhart37 on August 22, 2019, at 20:42:24
this post isnt ment to be a like a confession thing, no no. But years ago there was a poster that i apologized too for writingg something very hurtful, and i hate myself - i was immature and had child teenage persona. I still want that poster to come back, but she never forgave me. No many how many times, she didnt forgive me. And forgiveness....i don't know how forgiveness is, because some people say i forgive you but but they say the few words i do forgive you "but"....
1.i want nothing to do with you anymore.
2. i will never trust you
3. I will not talk to you or have associationsi've had people say that to me before, and you know the "apology accepted, trust denied" i think is a good term, such as accepthing their aoology but you don't trust them anymore, say they lied or screwed you over....apology accepted. But....what does apology mean to you? do you feel better about that person when they apologize and also if your forgive them, do you still hold like resentment....
i just don't get saying forgiveness but having no ties with you anymore, maybe its just me thinking that saying i forgive yoou and now where back as friends again, and don't worry about what you did to me, i forgive you
there have been so many people i've met that freenutly say that but their heart defeintly does not mean it, it's just a courtesy term word to make them feel better
anyon have any thoughts on this?
Posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2019, at 3:58:56
In reply to ever not forgiven someone, posted by rjlockhart37 on August 22, 2019, at 20:42:24
I've been thinking about apologies since I have apologised recently about too many posts.
When I think about other people apologising to me I find it hard to credit the apology when I think it likely they are going to continue on doing whatever it was they apologised for.
Sometimes... If it is a relationship thing, sometimes I think people move on. I mean, you might have a good relationship. Then something happens. Maybe you did something they didn't like. Then they didn't spend as much time hanging out as they used to. Then you apologise. They accept it. But things don't go back to the way things were. Not because they don't forgive you. But just because time has moved on and they have other things going on in their life now.
My Mother wanted me to say I forgave her, once. I cannot express to another human being how horribly horribly tormented I felt at her hand for so very many years when I was a child. There is no forgiveness for the extent of that. There just isn't any. Is none. When I beg and plead to her face to stop hitting me and so on... And she just ignores it because she thinks I'm just a kid and I just don't matter at all... I just can't forgive stuff like that.
But I think I said I forgave her. Because... Well... What is the point in not saying it? For a person who was so intentely persistent that no little kid should ever believe in the lie that was Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or whatever childhood magical thing there was... For the person so insistent on speaking the cold hard honest literal truth about that... This is the very same person who has expressed quite clearly they want / expect to be pleasantly humored and emotionally lulled along during their final days when they have social sanction to forsake all that is reasonable and honest.
Sigh.
I was honest with her at some point. And I thought forgiveness might come out of that. Someone on the boards said something to the effect of 'why say that to her, you know that is only going to hurt her'. And then I felt bad. But I had never been honest to her previously about how horribly I had suffered at her hand, before.
But strangely enough things turned out alright because of it. She got very... Quiet. And still. And I was like 'sorry' and she could have swallowed that hook line and sinker like she typically chooses to do but instead she was like 'you really mean that, don't you' and I was like 'yes, I do actually'. And she was like 'that's mean nasty elder abuse' and I was like 'well... It's how I feel' or whatever. Because it wasn't nasty -- it was an honest expression of how I felt.
And she took some time with that. I almost want to say that she didnt' forgive me. Only... I hadn't actually done anything wrong so there actually wasn't anything for her to have to forgive me for. She actually took some time to integrate what I said. And mostly it's that that she does not / cannot do. Integrate anything from outside herself into herself. Normally she can only project herself into others.
Sigh.
She is a very hard woman for me to deal with.
I realised the other day. Finally worked it out. She chose to work as a cleaner when she was with Dad. She actually said something to me once about how he expected her to clean up after him... So she went off to him about how if she was expected to clean up after him she may as well clean up after everyone so she got a job as a cleaner.
The idea being to... Humiliate him, I suppose. She does things like that sometimes. If she can see she is embarrasing you or humiliating you (especially if you feel kind of bad about having that response to it) she really does everything she can to magnify that and there is a real glee. I don't know if you know what I mean. Maybe someone you have seen. Maybe someone picking up cigarette buts of the ground or someone rummaging in a trash can and they see you notice them and there is no shame or guilt in them. But if they see you feel a little of that perhaps on their behalf there is a triumph that is expressed.
Like with teasing sometimes people see they are getting a reaction and they poke and prod and poke and prod and poke...
That would have been her about her job as a cleaner. She would have gotten immense personal satisfaction from telling all her friends all his friends everybody who she could possibly get to listen about her amazing new job as a cleaner and about how she took the job since her husband thought that that was what she should be doing all day!
And of course... My Father wasn't a messy man. I don't remember him leaving the top off the toothpaste. I remember him getting up in the morning and making his own lunch. I remember us all doing grocery shopping after work on Friday or Saturday morning.
So what did mother actually do all day?
I'm not entirely sure.
And why didn't she go back to nursing then (she never finished her training because she got married instead) if she decided she didn't want to be a homemaker and she wanted her own career?
Then when they split up (and we surely could have used the money) she never worked again.
And that's my Mother.
And I wasn't allowed a newspaper route because it would be too hard on my bike and because I wouldn't do it and so Mother would have to do it and so I wasn't allowed to do it. And I wasn't allowed to work in the supermarket because... I wasn't allowed.
This is the woman who made me miss school camp (3 day educational trip) because I forgot (actually was just f*ck*ng dreading) telling her that I was supposed to take a packet of biscuits. It would be just a little thing like that that would set her over the edge, you see. So I was going to not tell her at all and then just pretend I forgot when I was at the camp and it was time to hand them in. Especially because she would only organise the cheapest and intentionally most unapetising busicuits she could find to give to me to take, anyway. Which would be embarrasing for me. That's the kind of thing she would do intentionally. She would find the bargain bin of ones that had expired and then she would tell everyone within hearing range that she found some expired biscuits for only 50 cents to take with me to camp! What a bargain! This is while the other kids mothers send them along with the nicest ones they can find because... Because most people are not as nasty as her. I don't know what to say...
It isn't that she couldn't afford it. It never was about the money.
It was just about her nastiness. I don't know what to say.
Forgiveness...
I don't know what that means.
Self-forgiveness...
I think I am doing better. Coming to peace with me.
I think I am learning to externalise more the way most people do in order to cope.
I also think I am feeling more secure in myself. I am not like her in important and relevant respects.
She does have some nice qualities that I value. But I can't forgive her for choosing to have me instead of going on birth control.
Do you forgive you??
Posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2019, at 4:10:49
In reply to Re: ever not forgiven someone, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2019, at 3:58:56
and of course i do see that it might appear to be that my posts are me externalising and projecting everything out and not incorporating what it is that others have expressed and what it is that others have to say...
only i know that i have in fact responded to people appropriate on these boards over the years and i have in fact taken much time and energy and effort to read and think about and properly respond and answer other people's posts.
i don't know if i will ever forgive new zealand. for all these years of not listening to me in the things i need...
i suppose i just need to focus on strengths. the things i do have. not do the regression on admission kind of a thing. yeah. i'll be okay. i have some time to study now. to learn concepts. the kind of study that Pathoma says you do... To think... To reconceptualise...
And I suppose I am / will be looking for part time work. Which is perfectly reasonable and so on. It's just that I was getting fed up with the bogus data collection jobs, before, and with the whole 'beggars can't be choosers' and 'take what you are given' mentality.
Cohhcarnage playing Oxygen Not Included... Super Researcher gets allocated to cleaning toilets. He's like 'yep, that's why you go to college for 5+ years'...
I am embarrassed and ashamed of this country...
But the way things are, here. The fact that the people are hierarchical and all that.
I think frictional unemployment is something like 1 1/2 years in these parts.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't suppose I'll ever forgive here, really.
Posted by rjlockhart37 on August 24, 2019, at 15:42:41
In reply to Re: ever not forgiven someone, posted by alexandra_k on August 23, 2019, at 3:58:56
doing somethiing like that to childhood is defeintly ... i understand kinda of the pain. For her to be nasty all the time, and never ... cook the most cheapest biscuts, or abuse during childhood. I don't know ... this is what i've read online before, there are narassistic parents that can cause disturbance in people when they get older, somethign with shaming them and being the superior model. I don't know if your mother was in that catagory, but from what your wrote it was mainly nastiness, or coldness. I've never had that happen to me, but there are things .... that i don't want to talk about in specific that people did to me, and traumatized emotionally, i've had a period of never wanting to do anything with them again. But at the same time, i love them. And for me....it's hard to carry unforgiveness and bitterness, it just effects everything, my attitude, my relationships with new people. But your story, defintly dealing with bitterness or nastiness from them. In a way, i think if you truly love them (this is not relating anythinig to you, or expereincces) that you would forgive them. I think unforgiveness you lose love, and hate and bitterness and noto wanting to ever see them again happens. I don't like to use any scenarios of life or people i met, but there is one individuel who her dad abused her severely, this is not any of my family, it's a friend... but phsyically, but more emotionally and punishment like dragging out the car and throwing htem on the concrete. In a way, i think they did forgive them, but it caused hatred and bitterness that effected their relationships with people. This is not any of my family, this is someone i'm close too, but its not my family.
I've chosen to forgive, because i have had trauma happen to me, and i try to supress it and keep it down deep within me, almost like a secret. But i still love them, and that in a way helped with forgiving them for what happened. The thing that really gets me, is your forgive them and they do it over and over again, to the point where forgiving them is irrelevant. I really have a deep trauma that happened to me, but i keep it down deep inside
like your said apologize to someone and they accept it, and the move on. I've thought of that as hard concept, because i still wanted to be friends, but they didnt. So it was like what's the point of apologizing. I don't know....maybe it releases a anger within them, or easeing up offense. But they move on. I'e think not forgiving, keeps a bitterness feeling, or apathy. From a religious stand point, i've read that the lord says forgive your offenders, and do well to your enemies. The thing that....it said if you have bitterness or unforgiveness on the last day, the lord will not forgive you. But let's not go into that too much, this is just discussing.
I just think unforgiveness causes either apathy, or bitterness, and like it can corrupt the heart. Anyways, thanks you for responding least i can share experiences with someone :)
Posted by alexandra_k on August 24, 2019, at 16:48:22
In reply to Re: ever not forgiven someone, posted by rjlockhart37 on August 24, 2019, at 15:42:41
thankyou for responding, rj :-)
maybe it depends, in part, on the background relationship.
i mean, there might be a meanness or a trauma that arises in a context of thoughtlessness. i'm thinking of how some people genuinely feel a lot of pain down the track that a group of kids may have been particularly mean to them, one day, on the playground or something like that.
forgiving that kind of thing might be about realising that sometimes people get a bit wrapped up in the moment when they are little. triumph on the playground goes a bit too far and morphs into something else. understanding that mostly kids (especially but not exclusively) act as sheep and just sort of go along for the ride so understanding that most kids weren't really on-board with what was happening but didn't know how to oppose it... realising some kids were probably beat on quite severely at home and that's all they knew...
then there are traumas arising without a good context or good background.
i used to very intensely hate my mother. i used to feel a lot of secondary shame and guilt that i felt that way, but that was the fact about the way i felt about her. thinking of her actions / behaviors... i don't remember much in the way of kind or loving behaviors, at all. i remember her as a source of screaming or a source of shame or a source of determined intensity or something. i remember her being forcefully... herself. always. i remember her being unable to respond to me. unable to see that i needed calmness or her to back away a bit or whatever. her seeing that i needed something different from what she was would only have her... react... further away from what it was that i needed.
how could i love that? anything about that?
i don't have good memories of her. i don't have good memories of feeling good with her. i don't have memeories of her doing good or kind things. i just don't.
i can be grateful for some things... she did not feed me garbage like a lot of kids parents do. she did not raise me on sugary drinks and junk food. i do remember being given a little plate of raw veges before dinner to munch on because i preferred raw carrot and cabbage and brocolli and peas and so on to them being over-cooked... i can be grateful for a good collection of board games and books... that she didn't spend her money on alcohol and or drugs...
but i never did feel love. it was a deep dark very very black reality indeed that i spent quite a lot of time tormenting myself over whether i should try stabbing her with the kitchen knife in her sleep to be freed of her... that's why i started running away. because i hated her that much.
do i still hate her that much? no. because i can get away from her. she does not know where i physically live (though i suspect if she thought it mattered to me that much she would trick it out of my sister and let me know that she knows where i live! she could / would even trick a key out of my property manager (and likely succeed in this nasty hell hole of a f*ck*d up country) if she thought it mattered to me that much...
but she doesn't call me. and i can send her messages to spam and check spam only when i feel able to cope with her... so...
i suspect it is true that if i had financial independence then i would never see her again.
i don't know if that is true or not.
i am realising that many of my 'friends' 'acquaintances' and indeed family... believe it to be true. that's how come i don't get to have financial independence.
it is about the whole lifeway thing... being slave to a job i hate would be only trading different...
anyway... it is their believing it is so that makes it so. they want it to be so because it is their choice in how they treat me. that is the thing. Mother likes it when i need to be in touch with her over money because then she can treat me like garbage and i'll still be forced to be in touch...
that's the thing.
it is like when i was a kid... and Mother sent me to school every day with 2 vegemite sandwiches. and it was too much food for me when i was so little. I mean... she made for me the exact same lunch Dad made for him -- but he was a grown man building houses all day... bringing the food home with me resulted in her yellling and hitting... so i would try and throw it away at school if i had opportunity.
i figured i would get in trouble with teachers if i was seen to be throwign my lunch away (this was when i was going to a small school of up to 30 kids). so i tried to be surreptitious. then, of course, a girl saw me hiding them, really, under a building. so lorded that over me 'do this or i'll tell do that or i'll tell'. then she told another girl and they played that off with them setting up impossible situations of me having to choose between them or one or the other would tell...
that hung over me for months... i want to say years... but that can't have been true...
anyway...
this whole 'do you like her most or do you like me most' set-up of a situation that people raise sometimes. my answer always was 'you are putting me in the unreasonable position of having to choose therefore you lose'.
both of those girls...
do i forgive them?
i want away from them. they don't want to know me / interact with me as an equal and free person. they want to be my lord and master and don't care what i want at all. they only want me to bend to their will.
_______
there is this thing about cycle of abuse... how those who abuse most likely were abused themself. don't know any different. do what was done to them because they don't know another way.
forgivenss is supposed to free you from the cycle. forgivenss is what is supposed to make it such that you won't go on to do that to others. forgivenss is supposed to be about your choosing not to retaliate by t*t-for-tat abusing them in return (if you think you can get away with it).
so... by forgiving my mother... that is supposed to save me from elder-abusing her if i think i can get away with it down the track to repay her for all the years of child abuse i suffered at her hand...
_______
i suppose most of the worst of the 'abuse' comes from melt-down. not knowing what to do... i do have some memories of my mother acting more as a normal person who i may have actually quite liked... i remember her hanging out with some of her friends and later boyfriend. i never did like how she treated me -- but she seemed to be having mutually enjoyable / amicable friendships with them and interactions with them for a while... doing pottery and arty things. bush walking / hiking. hanging out at family festival types of things.
i guess there was a stress in our interaction that was too much for her and she genuinely did not know how to cope. i can totally forgive her for that. feel empathy for that. it's this... malevolent machiavelli thing that i detest and never will forgive where she seems to embrace evil, somehow... mischieviesness... of seeing that something is important to me or causing me pain and she only seems interested in hurting or harming or upsetting me as much as possible...
in an attempt to go 'see! see! see! you are no better than me! you can't do it, either! you are just like me! you would have done to me what i did to you if you thought you could get away with it!
and the whole thing of child abuse / elder abuse just becomes part of the whole / the same thing. do unto others as you would have others do unto you... is flipped on it's head. reversed. turned inside out. expect others to do to you what you did to them... oh, but wasn't it worth it! you can spend out the end of your days in an off-shore detention facility in pennance for the rampant bullying and exploitation and so on that you did and got away with doing in your younger days... but wasn't it worth it?? you get to hold on to those memories for always...
i think it is a game some people choose to play.
_________
i am just articulating different cases of... things that might need forgiving.
so to... illustrate(?) introduce(?) the different sorts of forgivenesses that might be fitting or appropriate for different kinds of situations....
there is the whole 'behavior' and 'intent of the behaviour' thing, too...
____________
i think you are thinking of something more along the lines of the AA sort of notion of forgiveness. i did the step program at some point and i remember the whole forgiveness thing.
it seemed to me it was meant to be about letting go of traumas instead of holding on to them.
the idea being that many people engage in reminiscing over their traumas when drinking. i think that might be the idea. instead of reliving / remembering as a sorry drunk, the way that people do, articulate the traumas when sober.
only... it wasn't about traumas done to you it was about traumas done by you...
i guess as the result of traumas done to you...
it wasn't supposed to be confronting it was supposed to be apologising. for the good of...
peace. i guess. there can be a thing, sometimes, about whether apologising is for the good of the person doing the apologising or for the good of the person who they harmed...
___________
i can't forgive my mother because she's still the same person she always was. forgiveness doesn't make any kind of sense at all. i understand in fact that much of the worst of it comes from her genuine inability / ineptitudes. even her machiavelli aspect comes from her genuinely not knowing basic principles of emotion regulation and her having a genuine inability to understand cause and effect on things like its too cold -> depression and emotional numbness and hurt...
maybe... i don't belive in forgiveness... any more than i believe in alcohilism (as a life-long chronic disease of the person). which is not to deny that people do harmful things, sometimes, and which is not to deny that it is heaps easier to not drink at all than to get into habits of drinking a bit sometimes.
anyway... just something to bounce off...
Posted by alexandra_k on August 24, 2019, at 17:06:32
In reply to Re: ever not forgiven someone, posted by alexandra_k on August 24, 2019, at 16:48:22
I was reading this article in the NZ Medical Journal that was written by an older surgeon, I can only suppose.
It was about the attitude that was prevalent in surgery when he was coming through. Or the attitude that was selected for. Or something like that. This attitude of 'we left something inside a patient that was supposed to come out'... Uh... Laughing it off. Letting it roll off your back. Hardening up. Toughing it out.
A... Solution.
?
A... Response...
Was that maybe we need something like a closed group internet website where young surgeons can write about the personal traumas they experience in response to the f*ck ups they make.
Was that maybe we need actors to pretend to be lawyers to role-play with young surgeons how to handle themselves in the court-room when the prosecution lawyers accuse them of all kinds of incompetence...
I wrote the author.
I was like 'there is going to be a part two on surgical checklists -- right?'
Only...
This is NZ and I suspect there won't be.
It is possible that there is something about this whole situation that I am missing... But it seems to me...
That there is a solution to prevent the situation of harm from arising / to prevent the need for forgiveness from arising. Surgical checklists. How do we prevent the surgical team from leaving things inside that aren't supposed to be there -- we do a checkist to make sure all items are returned to the tray before closing.
Only...
People are rather more invested in keeping the trauma alive.
Because they do not forgive. It seems to me.
The older surgeons are more interested in trauma bonding with the newer generation. They would rather listen to special victim unit types of gory and emotionally intense stories of all the atrocities and accidents and mistakes and so on... That the younger generation did... Got away with... That, uh, happened...
And we can find out about the long term effects of leaving this, that, or the other thing in various regions of the body, at any rate... Oopsie, did that get left in there accidentally? Uh huh, uh huh huh huh, oopsie.
There is... Motivation. Push... Incentive... To keep that. To keep that situation alive. That or something like that.
That (seems to me) is lack of forgiveness.
In the very best case. If not something more Machiavelli.
_____________________
And then we have issue of informed consents. Which don't work. Because we don't believe in consent. Because we don't believe in equal persons. So....
Posted by alexandra_k on August 24, 2019, at 17:14:09
In reply to Re: ever not forgiven someone, posted by alexandra_k on August 24, 2019, at 17:06:32
What I mean to say is that I learned in DBT that 'sorry' means something about not doing the behavior again.
Or maybe it was something I learned in Philosophy. 'If someone says they intend to get married but they do not get married despite opportunity then they leave themselves open to the charge that they do not know what it *means* to intend to get married'.
Or... They do not really intend to get married at all.
___
My brother was terrific to me (genuinely). There were a couple annoying (transiently painful) things / games he had when he genuinely wanted me to stop something that he was finding genuinely annoying -- but he was not mean spirited at all and he stopped playing when I indicated I really did not want to play, anymore. One game was he would take my hand and hit me (not terribly hard) on the head with it. And say 'Alex, why are you hitting yourself?' And he'd do it again... And he might even be like 'Mum - Alex is hitting herself!' But he was lighthearted and teasing about it and, again, he stopped when he could tell I needed him to stop. He knew when to back off and I don't ever ever ever ever ever remember him crossing the line on that.
___So... He would hit me (not hard -- but surprise me). And be 'sorry'. And then he would do it again. And say sorry. And he would do it again. And say sorry. And again... And in this manner...
I learned to stop annoying him when he was watching TV. Because I would whistle or something and distract him and then say sorry.. And so on.. Because I wanted him to play with me instead of watching TV.
Anyway...
He taught me what 'sorry' means.
This is the end of the thread.
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