[katy]

Hi Benjamin,

My sister sent me a copy of your book and I've just finished reading it. I wanted to say that you put across some very difficult concepts in a very simple and practical way, and your own story within the book is.....well, so many self-help type books come across as holier-than-thou, I-know-better-ish, whereas you come across as totally human. It always helps to know that someone else has been there before, understands.

I've worked a great deal on myself over the years. It's not been easy. I have seen a couple of therapists, at different times, although only short-term, but mostly I have worked on myself. By that I mean I've read very widely, learned different techniques of healing and relaxation, taught myself to meditate, studied different spiritual ideas.... the list could go on and on. I am not going to write a whole lot about my life here as that could easily go on and on too!

Yet somehow, despite all my knowledge, despite all the work I'd done, I found myself falling apart at the seams three, four years ago, when a relationship ended. I cried for a year, pretty much non-stop, and I realised that no amount of reading, no amount of knowledge, no amount of 'spirituality', no amount of therapy, can replace honestly feeling your feelings, and that if you want to be free you have to feel what you spend your life trying to run away from. I felt as though for years I'd been shoving things in the-cupboard-under-the-stairs and now someone had inadvertently opened the cupboard door and a lifetime's-worth of rubbish had fallen on top of me. I thought I was going mad. My best friend told me I was finally sorting myself out.

It was horrible. I felt....exposed, naked. Very vulnerable. I felt as though I'd lived my whole life sealed in plastic and suddenly the plastic was torn away, and I could breathe, but the very air stung and chafed. There was nowhere to hide any more, and I actually found that I didn't WANT to hide. I wanted people to see ME: of course I was afraid of rejection, of criticism, of other people's judgement. But the worst thing I could have imagined happening had happened: I'd fallen in love with someone, really loved them, and they had rejected me for something which had happened a long time ago for which I hated myself. My best friend told me I had to learn to forgive myself and accept myself, and I didn't know how. I didn't even know where to begin.

I briefly saw a psychotherapist at this time, who told me that the cycles of crying followed by rage followed by calm acceptance followed by more crying over and over again was consistent with grief. Had I grieved for what happened at the time? No. I'd been more concerned with other people's reactions, my mother's in particular, and with managing her feelings. I thought I'd spend hours talking about my now-ex-boyfriend and how he'd hurt me. Instead I found myself dissecting my relationship with my mother. Despite the fact that all through my childhood and teens it had apparently been my alcoholic father who was the problem, I found I was insanely angry with my mum. Not least for always playing the victim, always needing a whipping-boy and scapegoat upon whom to blame her problems. I understood the nature of projection and unconscious choice, and I understood that my mother was responsible for her own life and her own choices, and that she had chosen my father unconsciously perhaps BECAUSE he was an alcoholic and 'useless' and would be a great burden and a disappointment to her. As I had also been. Or at least, that was how she'd treated me.

My version of self-treatment had consisted of trying to be a better person and trying to win my mother's approval. If I was 'good' enough, if I could prove I wasn't just a fuck-up, wasn't just like my father....... I was terrified of rejection, desperately wanted someone to love me and approve of me, and naturally enough had had some truly horrific early relationships which just deepened my feelings of being unloveable and evil. Whilst I understood WHY these relationships had happened, and that they held a mirror to my own inner feelings, I saw no way of changing my feelings. So for many years I avoided intimate relationships. I felt I was unloveable, unacceptable, evil even, and I could only imagine two possible outcomes to any relationship. Either I'd play a part, go through the motions, always keeping my inner self hidden for fear that other people would not only NOT understand but would judge me as unloveable and evil, which would be the most enormous strain, trying to keep up appearances all the time. Or, I'd fall apart. And surely anyone would be so shocked and horrified by the mess I was inside, that they would not want anything to do with me, would reject me for being vulnerable, for being......not good enough. I could not expect anyone else to carry the burden of myself, either. That wasn't fair. I couldn't have a relationship just to work out my stuff, because that really wasn't fair on the other person if they were a nice, well-adjusted sort, and if they weren't.....well, it wouldn't do me any good at all, or them.

Then I met G. He was not my type. He was also clearly as messed up as I was in some respects. And yet - I just really liked being with him. I felt very comfortable with him. Safe. I wanted to curl up with him and go to sleep. I could talk to him. I found myself telling him things I'd never talked to my closest friends about. And yet every time I tried to get closer to him or get him to open up, he pushed me away. Eventually we split up, and after a truly terrible row in which we both said awful things stopped any communication at all. By this time I was well into breakdown. So, apparently, was he. We'd pushed each other's buttons. Both of us brought up things from each other's past which we didn't want to think about, feel, or deal with. However, neither of us had much choice in the matter.

We're back together now. Out of the blue, after three years of silence, he got back in touch. He's not perfect. Neither of us are. We're still both struggling with our own issues. I still find myself wanting to please people, wanting their approval. Far less than before, but habits take a long time and vigilance to break. But it's amazing the difference that it can make knowing - as I DO know - that someone is there for you. In fact more than one someone, because after we split up and I fell apart, I was forced to open up to friends and family more, and, whilst some people, my family especially, either didn't understand or were dismissive, other people, both friends and people whom I'd not have expected, have surprised me by accepting me as I am, even respecting me for who I am. It's nice to feel approved of and validated. But it's even better to feel accepted without having to try to prove your worth. Interestingly, where I still struggle most is at work, where I have squashed myself to fit in and get on, and find myself wanting to please people who scare me or whom I really don't like very much. I know there's a reason for this, I know that they press my buttons, remind me of my mum or my childhood, but despite everything I can't help but react (well, if you can call it reacting, when I go quiet, want to disappear and not be noticed or asked my opinion and dread being criticised). It's - better. I know perfectly well that I'm bitched about behind my back, judged and criticised, and it does not bother me too much, and even when I've been bitched at to my face I've figured - I chose this: I chose to work here, so there must be something I have to figure out before it stops affecting me in such a way.

Hmm, actually, reading my own post, in the light of what I've read in your book, I'm beginning to understand why this is. I still have a problem with my mother, don't I?! I realised the way I've written about her does sound quite accusatory. Which IS how I feel. This is the bit I get stuck on, because whilst I'm clearly projecting onto my mother, I cannot get past feeling resentful and angry with her. Not her as she is now, but her as she was. I understand a great deal of why she was the way she was, and I know that she did her best, and yes, my father really WAS useless. If I deny how I feel then that doesn't do any good. But neither can I 'blame' her. It's hard because it's almost impossible to talk to her honestly because it's like trying to stop water. She just flows around you, almost ignorant of you as an actual other person. It's as though she doesn't remember things. And when I've tried to talk to her honestly about my feelings she tends to pull an understanding, but holier-than-thou one on me. It's as if she's not actually engaged with what I'm saying at all: she's just playing another part, the part of the wonderful and sympathetic mother....Um, I'm not being unfair - something just clicked! There's a particular woman at work whom I don't much like. Sometimes she is ok, but I've had a few run-ins with her, and I don't like her because I think she's very false at times. She's all nicey-nicey sympathetic but it doesn't ring true: she's a bitch behind other people's backs, is a control-freak and is always poking her nose into everyone else's business, and constantly looking for the next opportunity to advance herself. She seems to think that she has learned to 'manage' people well and is good at negotiating, but in truth she just gets people's backs up. You wrote in your book that when you're not being authentic others do sense it and don't trust you. And that is exactly what I feel with mum. However sympathetic she is, it's not real. There's no emotion there or real feeling, just empty words. She doesn't know what she feels, if she feels anything at all. And if she did let herself feel, then I rather suspect that what she'd feel is something rather unpleasant.

When I was a kid we were expected to Be Good, Be Polite, Behave, and Do Not Dare To Show Mum Up, no matter WHAT was going on or how awful things were at home. You did not make a scene, you did not tell other people your private business, and you did not let on that things were anything less than perfect. That meant we had to behave perfectly because of course we were a reflection of mum. The consequences of not behaving or of making her angry were at best being smacked or being sent to bed, but if you really made her angry (which I usually seemed to do), being stonewalled. She could keep it up for days, refusing to speak to you or look at you, or even acknowledge your existence, and frankly I don't remember ever doing anything that was so bad as to warrant that sort of reaction. The stonewalling was generally for when you'd 'shown her up', which seemed to be a cardinal sin.

A couple of people have suggested that she has some sort of a personality disorder, and I have wondered myself. Okay, so what's a personality disorder other than a set of rather extreme coping mechanisms which have become so ingrained as to have become a habitual mode of action or reaction. But certainly, being happy was not on the agenda in our house. What mattered was what other people thought, or might think, and mum had poor views of anything which threatened her fragile view of herself and her family as somehow perfect. Ha. Yes, perfect on the surface, whilst underneath everything was rotten to the core and happiness was sacrificed to others' good opinion and affection to guilt and martyrdom. It sounds a very dramatic thing to say, but I don't feel as though I ever really had a mother. I don't feel as though I had parents. I feel more as though I grew up in a house where I was an unwelcome guest who didn't understand the house rules or the culture and so constantly made faux pas or offended people quite unintentionally, and where the rules of what was acceptable changed according to the whims and moods of my hosts.

I'm rambling. It's late. Thank you for reading. Initially I'd started to write this post as 'hope' because in the darkest times it didn't seem as though there was any, but......people confuse the word hope with the word desire: you say you hope for something meaning that you desire it. At the very darkest times you have little choice but to surrender to what is happening to you, and perhaps especially surrender your conscious desires, and simply hope that you will get through it. It is not faith, as faith has a ring of certainty to it. Hope is more fragile, more tentative, vulnerable, yet somehow more human... and more joyful when it is realised. Hope is the tiny point of light in the darkness when we cannot see ANY other point to our existence at all.

I called my post hope because it's hard to see where on earth you might be going, with no light. It's hard to understand that whatever you're going through is important or that opening up to other people is a good thing. It is. Even if it doesn't feel like it, it is. You can only hope that others will understand, but....they will. Some will.

I actually feel quite nervous posting this.

[katy]

Sorry I was tired last night and had begun to ramble.

Firstly, I feel awful writing / speaking badly about my mum. Most of the time these days she's a very nice and relatively chilled out person. It's the overlay or projection from the past which is still sometimes a problem.

When I was in psychotherapy I found out something which seemed to make a great deal of sense to me, and you say in your book that there is significant research to suggest that you do remember, in some way, events from when you were a baby and too young to have conscious thoughts. I mentioned to my psychotherapist one day that I'd been a problem right from when I was born, as I'd been a horrible baby. She asked me what I meant and I said that that was what mum had always said: I was a horrible baby who never slept and cried constantly. My psychotherapist asked me to find out more. When I asked mum about it she said yes, I'd been horrific, and I'd rejected her. She said it quite bitterly, as though it was something I'd done intentionally, with malice aforethought. I pointed out that babies do not reject their mothers. They need them to survive. Mum insisted that I had rejected her and things got a little heated. With further questioning however, this is the story which came out: mum was on steroids and couldn't breastfeed me, and I couldn't keep down the formula milk. The health visitor simply said I'd have to get used to it. I must have been starving, and no doubt as a result, didn't sleep, and hungry and exhausted I cried constantly. Mum said I screamed whenever she tried to pick me up or cuddle me, hence her feeling of rejection. I asked if she'd ever thought that I might be (a), starving, and (, able to smell her milk, which I couldn't have, and it was hunger and frustration which made me scream. She looked genuinely surprised and said no, she had never thought of that. But because I screamed when she picked me up, she would leave me to cry in my cot for hours, even going 'round to the neighbour's for an hour to get away from my constant screaming. She was only 24, was stuck in the middle of nowhere with no transport, had no real experience of children or babies and little natural maternal instinct, on her own for much of the day with a baby who screamed constantly. I can't say I really blame her. On top of that, her mother told her I was evil and 'unnatural' because I couldn't bear to be cuddled or picked up.

I told the psychotherapist all this, and she said, 'So, let me get this straight: you were denied your basic survival needs of food, sleep and affectionate physical contact as a tiny baby. You must have been literally starving, exhausted because you couldn't sleep because you were always hungry, so you cried, which is a baby's only way of communicating need, but nobody fed you or comforted you. I'd scream too. And as a result, you were labelled a 'bad baby'. It was your fault was it? And that label has stuck, hasn't it.'

At the time, during psychotherapy, it seemed a relatively minor thing. But it's stuck in my mind as perhaps the most fundamental part of who I am and why I am the way I am and why I'm so rubbish at getting my needs met. And why I still shrink from being touched or cuddled by anyone except those people I feel very safe with. I very rarely ever hug my mother. Some people make me feel itchy or claustrophobic just being near them, and even if I really like them I can't bear them to hug me. Yet I can be very physically affectionate with other people, and seem to be one of those people to whom animals and children tend to gravitate, which has always surprised me given my dislike of physical contact. My relationship with G is very physically affectionate, and the first time I met him I remember feeling a strong desire just to curl up in his lap and go to sleep. I trust my body's instincts more than I trust my conscious mind and have done for a long time, as I figure my body probably has an instinctual knowledge of what's good for me. I've studied various healing techniques as well as yoga and martial arts, and it seems obvious to me that the body remembers things or picks up on things which we're not consciously aware of, and learning to trust your subconscious can begin with listening to your own body and its instinctual reactions.

Anyway. Sorry to be a bore, but......although I am a whole lot happier now than I have ever been before, work is still my stumbling-block. I am stuck on the idea that we mustn't change our circumstances to suit our feelings, or our feelings to suit our circumstances. Hmmm. Well, at work, I do do the latter, but if I leave my work, then am I doing the former?! I took the job I am doing now because I needed the money. That is it. I hated it, for the first six months. Then it was okay: at least, I'd got used to it. I get on okay with everyone at work. That doesn't mean I like all my colleagues but I can get on well enough to work with them. I loathe being stuck in an office all day. The petty squabbles and office politics and all the bitching drive me insane and at times make me feel extremely paranoid. Some of the people I work with are.....not very nice people. At least, some of their attitudes are not nice, and yet they are dogmatic in their opinions. Whilst I'm aware of everything you've written about projection, some people just ARE very difficult to deal with, very dogmatic, certain that they are right about everything and prepared to batter other people verbally into submission to get their own way or prove a point.

I wrote in my last post that one of the women I work with does bring up some emotions from my past. But I have recognised that, and - actually, for all her bad points (or all her points which bring up negative feelings), I can work with her and get on with her okay, which has surprised me, as initially she scared me stupid, and was fairly horrible to me. I know she probably bitches about me behind my back, but it IS okay, it's just the way she is. Other people....well, I tend to try to keep my head down and pretend I'm invisible and not get involved in the office politics. There's no point. I may just as well bang my head repeatedly against a wall for all the difference it would make, because the strongest personalities are the most belligerent and least inclined to listen (and least bright....). I cannot be bothered with it all. I feel like I spend seven-eight hours a day in a sort of coma. I think I sort-of know how and why I ended up working there though. I thought about it this morning when I woke up.

You know I wrote last night that mum was obsessed with 'what people would think' when I was little? Well, it's the final (I hope) working-out of that. Instead of following my heart and letting my real self choose my path I opted for the safe and acceptable. An office job in local government. Both my sister and I grew up with an indefinable sense of pressure to be 'a proper person', not a fuck-up like our father. My sister's always been far better at it than me. I don't find it easy to fit in. I never have. I used to crave to fit in and be accepted when I was young, but I was just one of the weird kids who was painfully shy, super-bright and nerdy. My brain simply didn't seem to operate in the same way as other people's. Still doesn't. I don't know why. I don't fit in. I'm not 'normal', and however I try to fit in, people always sense it. The difference is that now, finally, I don't want to try any more. I just want to be me, whatever that is, because I am sick of trying to shape myself to suit other people. I took the job I'm in because I needed the money, but I also thought that it was a real, 'proper', grown-up job, one with career prospects and a pension plan, and I'd at last feel like I was beginning to be a 'proper' person. Hum. What I hadn't bargained for was just how much I would hate it, and how I would really, truly, finally realise that financial security or material goods can never, ever make up for being miserable, nor fill an emotional or spiritual hole.

I first saw you on Spendaholics, and whilst I have never got into serious debt and can manage my money very well, I recognised that I had the emotional pattern of compulsive spending, and although it may only have been a few quid here and there, I spent money on things I didn't need, didn't even want, as a way of assuaging feelings I didn't want to deal with: mostly anger. Whilst I curbed my spending, and began to understand the reasons for it, it had never occurred to me until very recently that there was a direct cause-and-effect link between the pressure I felt to be 'a proper person' and the desire to avoid my feelings, especially anger. It's only through thinking about why I bought things compulsively at times, that I've understood that in fact it's a very profound link. I bought things often when I was angry, as a means of escape, and I often bought things because 'a proper person' would have / wear such-and-such, and then I'd suffer the typical buyer's remorse and feel guilty and angry with myself and the whole cycle would start over. That I both felt angry that I felt such pressure to be 'a proper person', to fit in, to be acceptable, be 'perfect', rather than accepted for myself, AND used this unattainable vision of 'perfection' as a means to try to escape my feelings, is a paradox that I did not understand for a long time. The image of the perfect person I was supposed to be led to a lot of anger and frustration which led me to try to escape my feelings by trying to be 'better', more 'perfect', to try to fit in and to be a 'proper person' - and that included buying the accoutrements! - which in turn fed my anger and frustration, and so on, and so on, and so on.

I've had enough. It's as simple as that. That is not who I am any more. I don't want to live my life by anybody else's standards. I don't mind any more if other people want to judge me or criticise me (that's a lie, of course I mind, but not anywhere near as much as I once did - it's an irritation as opposed to what once felt like a real threat). Hmm. Big words. Am I brave enough to follow through with action?! I will be. If not tomorrow, then...soon. I don't feel I have a great deal of choice.....At least, it's a no-brainer. I can carry on putting up with situations which make me miserable because they are 'safe', known, and demonstrate my 'proper person-ness', and secretly wither inside, or I can be more honest, more open, follow my own heart and to hell with being a 'proper person'.

Anyway. Thank you for reading my ramblings! X

[Benjamin Fry]

Hi,

Thanks for this full contribution. The combination of very poor nurturing in infancy and an alcoholic family is a hard one. Trauma from the early years is hard to treat. Trauma in general is non-verbal and in the limbic system, and particularly from pre-verbal years. Something that has helped me greatly is EMDR and if you can do that with a good practitioner I would recommend it.

ACOA is a great organisation for the adult children of alcoholics as is Al-Annon. Both could be great resources for you.

For your relationship you might like to read Love Addiction and the Intimacy Factor both by Pia Mellody and see if they help you.

best wishes,

Benjamin