[smiff]

I have just started to read your book. Being of a slightly older age group than some of the good people who have already written to you this feels quite alien and weird.

I am happily married, have two children who are nearing the end of their school careers and I have a job, which helps to pay the bills but is sometimes quite stressful.

I have never read a self-help book in my life before - I am 45. What appealed to me was that your book might offer an insight into why I have such a troubled relationship with my mother.

It has always been that way. As a child I often felt rejected when reaching out for love, and was constantly made to feel guilty about wanting to do things which might take me out of her 'control'.

There were many arguments in our house that I can remember from a very early age. I often a little bit lost and 'different' to other kids. Sometimes I was purely to frightened and scared of my mother and her anger and reactions to certain things.

I have a brother and sister, who have both been living in Australia for the past 12 plus years. My mother and father have visited them but now are becoming too old and do not have sufficient income to travel to them. My mother fell out with her own two sisters a while ago after a turbulent relationship with them over several years. Their contact with each other ended when my grandmother died.

I have very little contact with my mum and dad. I feel very guilty about this, being the only immediate family they have nearby, that they are actually talking to. I think they have a few friends to socalise with but going by past experiences if for some reason they fail to live up to my mother's expectations they will be cast aside, forever.

I am left feeling so guilty about not wanting to actually speak or hear from my mum, infact sometimes wishing she was dead so that I wouldn't have to worry about her - but at the same time needing to know that they are OK. I fear for the times she contacts me because I know that all the communications that we ever have are full of blame and critisism. I have tried to bring certain issues out into the open but they are always swept under the carpet - and if we do go and visit then our time seems 'false' and like we're all just playing happy families.

[Benjamin Fry]

Your mother has overwhelmed you from childhood with the by-products of her own unhappiness (such as the criticisms). You now carry this with you as the trauma stored up in your system from childhood. You can do two things with these feelings: ignore them hoping that they stay frozen, or engage with them, feel them and release them. The former is typically the more desirable option in the short term; hence your desire to ignore your mother as an adult: contact with her stimulates a thawing of your lifetime of traumas.

The problem with keeping your trauma stuck in your system is that it manifests itself in other ways; psychological and physical health can be compromised, relationships become more difficult, your own sense of wellbeing and creativity can suffer (hence perhaps your job frustrations).

Perhaps you could use contact with your mother as an experiment to bring some real case-study material of your own to the theories in the book? There is a Buddhist saying along the lines of ìcherish your enemies, they are the only people who will teach you anything.î In that respect your mother can be a great source of stimulation for your own healing; but you must only take as much of it at a time as you can bear, otherwise, you will just freeze again. Would looking at it this way make it easier to negotiate a middle-ground for you that would not be too difficult and yet not leave you with too much guilt?