RECLAIMING OUR SELF

Independence

Dear Daughters of Tiger Mothers:

As much as you struggle in this emotional war of guilt, know that your mothers who wage wars were once where you are, their free will bound so tightly at such a young age that their expressions of love had long been rotting until the shape of their love has grown misshapen the way bound feet become the living grave of broken bones.

And men of this culture once found these stumps of control beautiful, calling them “three-inch golden lotuses”.

Don’t be envious of how your brothers receive ‘better’ or ‘preferential’ treatment from your mothers and fathers. Your brothers endure endless lashes of obligation to excel and perform, only they bury their feelings and show the world their unbroken facades, because they must and they are expected to.

Our ancestors had to surrender their free will to survive and this survival mechanism has become a coat of prickles that we wear. And we wonder why we can never seem to get close enough to our mothers and daughters for love’s embrace.

Don’t underestimate the strength of these chains of control, for what we feel comes through generations of manipulation dressed in love’s clothing. You will not always triumph in your quest for freedom, and you may even wonder if Independence was just a commercial holiday for people who can afford to be free.

Take it from me, I have wondered the same before. I have found that becoming free is incredibly hard because first I have to free myself.

That was when I realized that I have been complicit all along with these ghosts of manipulators. Their ghostly voices echo around my life even when I’ve never met them. They speak through my mother’s mouth and I hear what they say about my mother, about me, about “who” we should be and “how” we should appear to the outside world.

I hear them telling me that I haven’t performed to specification, haven’t outshone enough competitors, haven’t achieved to expectation. Now that I’m a mother I can hear them goad me about my failures and faults and fallible judgments with my child.

I hear their propaganda about my role in my parents’ lives and my role in my child’s life, particularly the parts about “This is all your fault, I don’t care what it is, or when it’s going to happen, or if it’s going to happen, but whatever it is, if it happens it’s your fault and if it doesn’t happen it’s still your fault.”

Then I listen closely and I discover that these ghostly voices sound just like me. I don’t know when this happened, but it probably happened long ago even when I was a very little girl: I had learned the language of the manipulators and I have become my own enemy, prisoner, and abuser.

I don’t know how long it takes for this to get better for you. Sometimes you may feel hopeless and sometimes you may catch a glimpse of freedom. Grab onto those glimpses of freedom and never let go of them and collect them the way you used to collect praises from your parents. Because these glimpses of freedom are the true precious stones of your soul, they become the mosaic tiles of the vision of you, free from ghostly echoes of generations past.

Love,

A Daughter who is now A Mother

Now, look at the picture of that little child, think about how that child had to learn how to survive all that, for this many years….

then write that child a letter, as the friend who finally came along.

BE the friend this little one has been waiting for so long.

• Your parents understand the dynamics of peer pressure, and in their fear that you may not grow up into a fine adult, believes that they can use peer pressure via comparisons to steer you “right.”
  Your parents equate your achievements with their own worth and family repute, and your worth as their child. You need to be better than other children to make your parents more worthy than other parents and make your family more reputable (boast-worthy) than other families.

As a child growing up among tribes of Tiger Mothers, then later as a teenager looking to “stop the hurt”, I’ve tried different things — from doing my “best” to live up to parental expectations (the “best” that was never good enough), to emotionally withdrawing from parents, to angry outbursts and shouting and screaming. None of these worked.

Know this: There is a level of excellence you should expect from yourself. Identify this level of excellence based on what you yourself agree as your personal best (effort.) As you carry yourself forward, you should exact this personal best effort in all that you do.

Without this, you have not earned the right to be seen as a budding adult, and whatever you say or shout or plead or scream — will have no weight. Not just with your own parents, but with the adults in society. I don’t expect you to support yourself or pay rent — I expect you to show via actions that you have the means to motivate and steer yourself toward productive social contribution.

Action 1 – Interrupt the Game. You begin to agree, with great enthusiasm, that other children are {variables of better}.

“Wow! They got top grades in school? THEY ARE AMAZING AND SMART! They are so awesome! They got into the best universities, early admission? I knew they would! They earned it!” — if this doesn’t sound like you, practice it until you sound like you mean it.

After all, a useful life skill to have, and one that the happiest people carry out consistently, is the ability to be happy for others’ success and good fortune.

Action 2 – Change the Game. You give credit where credit is due, with a bit of creative license, in these success stories.

“I’m not surprised, look at their parents, I mean the level of love and support they got, they must have been inspired to new heights! I remember one of them telling me how their moms got up at 3am to prepare their favorite meals and write letters of encouragement about their best qualities… {create the greatest parent-child love story, have fun}.”

Action 3 – Leave the Game. You allow parents to have their opinions but get more specific about the comparisons.

“Yes, you may be right, I may not be score as high on exams as well as them, and you don’t like this about my test-taking skills, that’s a pity. I know, I know, my grades aren’t near where their grades are and you don’t like this about my grades, that’s a pity.”

I underline the specifics. This is for your own benefit, so you can gauge whether your best effort has lived up to your own expectations. Having specifics allow you to improve in concrete ways, rather than feel bad about yourself.

In my personal case, it sounded a bit like this: “Yea mom, I might as well have come out from a rock, I’m sorry you brought us to the United States, that I’m not as good to you as your friends’ kids, I’m sorry you made all that sacrifice for nothing, yea you’re right {to say that I have no heart.}. That is very sad for you.”

— I started doing this one day when I got tired of trying all different ways for parent to change, feeling frustrated that I wasn’t succeeding, then decided to just go along and not try to change parent’s opinions anymore. This single strategy shifted a lot of the dynamics between us.

Now’s the time to learn how to build yourself up by doing things within your control.

When you get out there in the world, you’ll see how many people are eager to come tear you down. Learn the skills to build yourself up, right now. Parents have given you a head start on this.

Emotional Resilience

Emotional resilience has less to do with “being more positive” and “cheering up self” and more to do with (a combination of):

• how you have learned to respond to others’ behaviors toward you,

• how you have been conditioned to view/feel about yourself, and

• how you naturally are made to “feel how you exist”.

Why should we care about how we are wired or made? Because some of us can hear the exact same statement and have very different responses. For example, when a statement is made thus: “You are a piece of sh*t!” some range of responses may include:

• “What the hell is wrong with that guy, must be having a bad day.”

• “No, YOU are a piece of sh*t and if you keep this up I’m going to beat you down!”

• “I am a piece of sh*t… who else knows?”

The above are generalized examples but you may be familiar with the self-perspective that goes with each type of response.

I assume that you as a self-aware and intelligent being already know the logic behind “don’t worry about what other people think of you” and maybe you have even heard of the quip, “what you think of me is none of my business.” I certainly have. To be honest, these clever quips combined with my intellect had ZERO effect on my ability to manage how my feelings work.

So what can be done?

First, learn to catch the precursor to the feelings and begin to challenge the precursor (beliefs). Become extremely aware of how your feelings are tied to the responses to other people’s behaviors and then how these responses are linked to a specific message you have been feeding on “auto-play.”

If someone says you are a horrible person and you immediately believe this, become alert to this “automatic response” within yourself and the belief that you are horrible (usually as a function of “worthless”). After some practice you get adept at catching the automatic response.

When you catch this internal response, begin to challenge the beliefs. If the belief is you are a horrible person, challenge this: “Really? Am I a truly horrible person? Am I stealing toys from babies? Am I deliberately tripping old people and laughing at them when they are falling?” Get creative and think of all the ways you can be horrible and then listen to whether you are really doing these things. Chances are good that you aren’t stealing from children or tripping the elderly or doing actually horrible things on a daily basis. This way you get to see how biased and baseless some of your internal beliefs may be.

Second, deliberately surround yourself with nice people. People who are courteous and considerate in general. People who treat you nicely and give you genuine compliments. This is important to get some counter balance in outside perspective if you happen to have mean people or bullies in your life (that you cannot rid yourself of yet). Learn to say “thank you” to compliments and believe in these compliments because you can vouch for the quality of people giving you the compliments.

Eventually, you are looking to build a balance sheet of external feedback that are affecting your feelings. When you have as many people giving you positive feedback as you have negative feedback, at least you are giving your rational mind a fair shot at assessing the true picture of the way you are as a person. Again, unless you are stealing from babies and breaking old people’s bones, most of the negative beliefs you hold may be caricatures of mean-spirited remarks from mean-spirited people.

Third, set yourself up to make progress. I think we are fed a lot of bullsh*t about what it means to become more emotionally resilient, even those of us who may “suffer” from empathy. I am not a person who will ever have a thick skin, and if I set the goal to “grow thick skin” I am setting myself up to fail.

Instead, I have learned to look at whether I can “bounce back sooner than I used to.” I look at whether I have learned to fall down “smarter” (maybe bracing my feelings so that I don’t let myself get completely destroyed, but still feel bad because I feel intensely to begin with). I look at how my speed of catching negative beliefs have improved, and the tools I have developed to deal and manage those. Progress like this is as valid as “success” in personal growth as a very sensitive person.

A final word: If you think that you may be suffering from a medical condition like clinical depression that makes worse your response to “ordinary insults”, please seek help.

Mental Strength and Emotional Resilience

I used to be one of those people who was extremely guarded to the point of appearing standoffish and antisocial.

I had many excuses — some are good reasons — for this:

• I am an introvert: Dealing with people is hard for me to begin with.

• I did not have an emotionally secure environment growing up: Of course I became closely-guarded.

• I am too gullible and trusting: No wonder I have to protect myself.

I put my intellect and analytic ability to good use: I looked for ways people are trying to rip me off, take advantage of me, or deceive me.

If I didn’t protect myself, who would?

Here’s the problem:

What your head knows is very different from how your heart feels. Just because you have all the intellectual tools does not mean these magically transform into emotional reserves.

In other words:

Becoming Mentally Strong Does Not Guarantee Emotional Resilience.

I read enough “self-help literature” to know “What People Think of Me is None of My Business” and how I shouldn’t care too much about what other people think, and that hoarding other people’s approval is the quickest path to personal hell. I acted like the good conscientious student of life and I went to class and did my self-help homework.

I can tell you from decades of personal experience, through all this “self-help”, I did not feel emotionally resilient. I had all the intellectual tools at my disposal, and I consider myself pretty smart and mentally astute. But this did not magically translate into emotional strength.

Until one day I realized this:

Mental strength comes from cultivating brain-based tools.

When I think of mental strength, I think about knowing how to deploy the right intellectual tools at the right time, in the right dose, for the right person.

I view the development of brain-based tools as a “bank account”. You have to regularly add knowledge into your bank account to grow what you know, and you have to periodically “balance the checkbook” and ensure you haven’t let any unchecked assumptions let your overall knowledge balance “drift” and deviate.

Emotional strength comes from surviving pain.

I view the development of heart-based tools as a “muscle”. You have to be willing to exert it, to stress it, to put microscopic tears in it. And you know what? Just like a muscle, sometimes you injure it, push it too hard, and that muscle rips and tears, and you are out of commission. You feel a world of pain and sometimes even breathing hurts (just like physical muscle! I also know this from personal experience, through rock climbing or childbirth! …I digress). You then have to let yourself recover and HEAL, before you head back out and work those muscles again.

In other words, you have to believe in your capacity to SURVIVE the hurt and LIVE THROUGH the insults/injuries with your Self INTACT. And — this is important — You Have To Be Willing To Put Yourself Out There Again, and Risk Possibly Getting Hurt Again.

This is why I view emotional resilience as more muscle than smarts, all heart and some brain.

I didn’t get emotionally strong by withholding myself from hurt, by shutting other people out, by packaging myself in false bravado. At least, I tried this way and learned this way did not work. Have you seen people who have lost the use of a muscle? That un-used muscle didn’t get stronger from being protected: that muscle atrophies. SAME AS YOUR HEART. Hiding your heart causes your emotional resilience to atrophy –not to grow stronger.

I grew emotionally strong by opening myself up to others, letting people in, and admitting my vulnerabilities.

Of course, I used brain-based tools I have gained to be very deliberate about selecting people to get close to, but this is more of a due-diligence when creating friendships or partnerships than “guarding against all possible harm.”

If I get hurt, then I use my brain to look at what happened (did I ignore a red flag or a signal?), acknowledge the pain in my heart, permit myself to wallow and feel bad — cut out a toxic or one-sided or dishonest connection — then I choose to get back out there, with my heart, receptive. It is a choice to put myself out there, because reflexively I want to withdraw.

If you want to see the most accurate examples of “No Pain, No Gain”, you should see people who have survived the worst kinds of emotional traumas and pain.

They may not all be super-smart people, but they are so emotionally strong, they exude a depth of center and acceptance that is impossible for me to describe. These people have survived hurt, they have lived through insults/injuries/traumas AND THEY HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN WHO THEY ARE (their “Self”). They choose to keep trusting and keep opening up and keep connecting.

I am still an introvert.

I am an introvert who have put in more than a thousand hours of social skills practice, to the point where socialization has become easy — even enjoyable for me. There are people who told me, “No, I can’t believe you’re an introvert!” and I tell them I am indeed (“I am, I’m still not really into people”) only I had a lot of practice.

I still remember some childhood wounds.

I honor those wounds by practicing conscious parenting to my own child, to ensure he feels secure and have a safer environment to build his own emotional resilience. I am often rewarded by being a witness to how he processes hurts and fear and pain, because I then remember once upon a time when I was a little girl, how I was just like that.

I am still gullible and trusting.

I choose to believe people and trust people until they show me that they are not the kind of influence I want in my life.

In the end, I think I have learned to trust my self and the inner resources I have to draw upon through life.

Accept the Little Hurts, Survive the Big Betrayals

Once upon a time, I met someone who appears incredibly giving and loving. When I came home, I told to my husband how wonderful this person was. How fortunate I’ve been to have met such a person.

Then I said, “I don’t ever, ever want to become like this person. If this is what’s going to happen to me when I walk down this path, then I must make a new path. If I cannot make a new path, then I must walk differently.”

This person is one of those who intellectually I “understand” but emotionally I cannot “palpate”.

I cannot feel “who” this person is even when I understand all the words of wisdom coming from this person.

That’s the only way I can describe it: this person is trying so hard to protect a self (or soul) but in the process the person loses that self / soul.

Many of us may fear our walk in the emotional landscape of life because of the fall.

The fall is what happens when something is torn — a sacred trust is ripped.

Someone lied to us or hurt us, a friend who turned out to not be a friend.

We taste the bitterness of betrayal — our perception of ourselves as “whole” is prodded by stress.

This is where many of us stay, afraid to get back up, afraid to get hurt again.

Our muscles are built by microscopic tears imposed by stress. There is a process to strengthen our muscles, and I have come to see our emotional resilience as being built a similar way.

When our emotions are torn, we need recovery / healing time. Give ourselves permission to recover and while we’re healing, sort through what happened that created the injury.

Accept that feelings of shame can “occur” when we sort it through, one of those “How can I have let this happen to me?” (because we’re human), “How can I have trusted this person who has hurt me so?” (because we’re human).

DO NOT TURN AWAY FROM SHAME.

Shame gets strength from silence and secrecy and it will hunt us down and haunt our heart and harden us into the kind of person I know I do not want to become.

We face shame and meet it, as we are, and let it pierce through us until we remember, “This is how shame feels.”

Each time shame knocks us down, don’t think - we summon our legs one at a time and move until we get back up and we are standing.

The way this plays out in real life is like this: we get back into connecting with human beings, trusting them as whole and unbroken, while keeping an objective clear eye about whether a person is trustworthy.

The way we become emotionally stronger is to weather an emotional injury, survive this injury while believing that we-the-self remains whole and intact, and then — most importantly — get back into the game with the same depth and courage we started with before we got hurt.

We do not shy away from human beings making mistakes sometimes hurting us by accident.

We protect ourselves from human beings who has been hardened by shame and who sucks the life force out of us trying to replenish their own.

We accept the little hurts and survive the big betrayals, all the while learning how to navigate ourselves among human beings who are trying to do the same thing: survive emotional tears with their own souls, intact.

But we only become emotionally stronger when we keep engaging with human beings.

We do not become emotionally stronger by disengaging from feeling, disengaging from trust, and disengaging from life.

I have seen the shells of humans who have disengaged, and while their shells are so iridescently beautiful, their souls are gone.

When They Can’t Follow the Path You Wish to Go

From this Quora question, “…I had a very sheltered and school-oriented upbringing. I’m shy and not very adventurous/willing to take risks; not exposed to any of the darker parts of life. I feel ungrateful and bitter about missing out on taking early responsibility and making decisions for myself, and gaining life experience…”

Some background.

I’m an immigrant Taiwanese American; wasn’t born here, immigrated here, had parents – primarily mother – who wielded the “We are not American, We are Chinese” card.

I, too, was resentful of whatever I was given and whatever I was not.

My parents were not in a habit of informing us about major life decisions like moving to a new state or taking on a risky business that affected family finances. We were kids and we did not have rights to know anything about adult decisions including ones that directly affected us… like me going to a different high school every one of those high school years, because parents chased failed business after failed business. I’m not saying this is right. I’m saying this is the way it had been, until the parents decide it is no longer the way it should be. I felt like the background was necessary for you to know that I’m not the outsider-looking-in without having some of that cultural context/conditioning.

I was struck by what you said here:

“I’m shy and not very adventurous/willing to take risks; not exposed to any of the darker parts of life.”

Suppose you get exposed to the darker parts of life. Do you really believe that you’d become less shy, more adventurous, and more willing to take risks?

I find that logic unconvincing. I’m one who has not been sheltered from life, and I’ve gone through difficult years from ages 13-22 including leaving home and disowning my parents, and those years were mainly years of self-destruction and self-loathing.

Step 1. The way we inherently “are” personality-wise, is hard-wired. We then respond to the environment and allow the environment to shape us further.

Don’t buy into an illusion that “if only I were less protected” I’d be a different person than I am today. Instead, work with the personality you have, know your strengths and work those strengths so that your weaknesses become irrelevant (credit to late Peter Drucker for that concept).

Is it possible that your personality may simply be more deliberate and more cautious? Can you simply be an introvert?

I feel that one component of your angst is that you are trying to reconcile who you think you “should/could have been” and who you think you “are now.”

Why can’t you be RIGHT, as you are, now? Why do you need to have a personality that maybe simply isn’t you, in order for you to believe that you can achieve all that you can achieve?

I’m an introvert. “Shyness” comes with the territory. I achieved what I achieved in part because I stopped trying to change my personality and learned to work with my personality. I capitalize on where I am strong and I avoid situations where I know the amount of effort I need to manage my weaknesses will overtake the energy I can use to make my strengths work in my favor.

Your Parents’ Contribution. Maybe you have been sheltered emotionally, but you haven’t been physically and mentally sheltered. Your parents placing you in an environment where rebellion is celebrated and elevated (“The American High School”) made me think of a Chinese folk tale about an emperor who enjoyed hunting. I don’t remember which emperor which dynasty and I’ll be heavily paraphrasing dialog:

One day the king went hunting with his men and the king sighted a deer. The deer gave him a good chase but the king did not relent. Then the deer came upon several nets that had been set in the forest. The deer hit a net, turned around fled a different way, only to hit another net. The king sat watching on his horse. After several rounds of these with the deer becoming more and more panicked, the king told one of his men, “get rid of one of these nets.”

“But your highness, you’re giving the deer a way out,” said the king’s subject.

“You should always give a living being at least one way out,” said the king. The subject removed one of the nets and the deer took off.

Step 2. Accept that your parents have made the one contribution that counts. Your parents’ contribution to you is they brought you to a country where you enjoy the freedom to think and voice your own way without very real threats to life or quality of life. They have removed that one net of controlled thinking / speaking / being so you can set yourself free should you choose to take that path.

Look.

The fact you are asking all these questions, questioning them, questioning yourself — you are taking that path.

Step 3. Your parents have done their part. Now you do your part. This includes you making things happen for yourself that you want happen, without relying on your parents to make these happen for you.

I see an irony. This irony is where your mind is struggling.

Your mind is resentful of your parents for sheltering you to the point where your mind is making you believe that you aren’t able to do many things.

At the same time, your mind is resentful of your parents for not doing enough for you to the point where your mind is making you believe that you don’t have the resources moving forward to do many things.

Your mind is fucking with you.

[Pardon the language, but it was a term a psychologist I worked with used, and “mind-fucking” best summed up the state of mind I dealt with, back then.]

Instead of keeping your eyes on the ball moving forward, your mind has done a fabulous job teaming up with one your inner demons (“Fear”) and together they are chanting:

“hey — look behind you, see all those things you should have had, and you didn’t have — this is why you can’t have whatever you want now, that you can have, because look — look behind you — look how you grew up and where you came from.”

Fear is causing you to stall. Fear is giving you many things to ruminate on and dwell on, asking you to spend all your potential energy on regret and then siphoning all your kinetic energy on resentment.

Part of why Fear is so successful, is that your parents, in doing their part successfully and placing you in a place where you can think for yourself, have left THIS BIG HOLE in your consciousness.

I can hear you ask, “then what’s my part?”

Your part is to start filling THIS BIG HOLE in your consciousness BY FINDING ROLE MODELS AND MENTORS.

Find people whose way of “being” you admire, from all walks of life. Learn about how they had gone through the metamorphosis you are going through now —

How did that boy become a man?

How did that girl become a woman?

How did these beings who were once children become conscious, discerning, thinking, honorable, self-reliant, socially contributing human beings?

Your parents cannot be your role models on the path you wish to go.

I think deep down, you realize this, and it is a somewhat scary prospect. You get to walk this alone. But you don’t need to walk this without a compass or a road-map.

Figure out the points of your talent compass. That’s your job.

Figure out how to use your talent compass. That’s your job.

Figure out the walks of all those whose values resonated most with your own about what should matter in your life. That’s your job.

Find these travelers and learn from them. That’s your job.

Start preparing yourself as the person who will be worthy of becoming a mentor to another young person who will be like you once-upon-a-time used to be.

This is your job.

YOU CAN DO THIS JOB.

I believe in you.

Getting Out of My Head

If you’re like me, you live in your head most of the time.

Even if your head is a pleasant place to spend a lot of time in, it’s healthy to “get out of your head” once in a while. Daily, actually. If you are someone who suffers from clinical depression, then getting out of your head in a positive way is a crucial part of your self-care regimen.

You get out of your head by getting grounded in your body.

That’s what usually works for me, and I should probably do more of this (but admittedly, I don’t.)

I hate exercising, but I tend to enjoy the activity more if I were exercising in a group (like a class), or taking a martial arts class because there is structure in the activity. Here, the atmosphere and culture of the environment is CRUCIAL, because if you have a poorly managed environment, you’d spend more time analyzing the leadership problems of the class than participating.

I hate gardening, but I don’t mind doing arts and crafts with my little boy, and it becomes a way for me to work with my hands, participate with another person and at the same time, spend quality time with that person.

I enjoy music, and wish I could play an instrument; it would be a way for me to use a different way to “think” with my brain. Since I don’t, I will sing loudly and dance (I do this with my little boy).

I’m too fidgety to meditate, even though at one point I was able to build up my patience and tolerance for stillness to 30 minutes.

I find taking a walk or even a short run can do wonders for my mind.

I don’t recommend this, but I do it sometimes, and it works (therefore, easily abused) — I eat. The key here is to eat very stimulating and richly seasoned foods. Bland foods don’t cut it. If the food were spicy enough and rich enough, I’d eat less of it and be satisfied.

I’m an introvert, so one of the ways I can get out of my head is by forcing myself to talk to someone else on the phone or preferably in person. Sometimes getting into someone else’s head helps get me out of my own.

How do YOU get out of your head?

COMMENTS

Charles says:

I don’t, I really feel that I am not ripe, or something. My wishes and dreams I have let go to the wayside and now age has stomped them flat, so what else more is there?? I feel better inside here(head) when I don’t have to face people and deal with the silly way I compare myself to others. Made me tear up when the article said”I do this with my boy” Am happy for you, but it stings deeply inside of me, not through jealousy, is the sense of my failness that hurts. Loneliness, has driven me in my head and has now taken the key and left me here,which is where I wanted to be ironically, but sad. Maybe I can find an activity that will jimmy this lock, simply writing these words has created a pinhole of light it feels. Thank you and best wishes to you and yours.

Jane says:

I’m sorry that you feel age has stomped flat your dreams and wishes, Charles. If there is a safe place inside your head, there is nothing wrong in seeking safety. But if there are many hostile pockets of thoughts in your head (I have a few of these in my own head), that is when “getting out of your head” may offer a temporary sojourn from this hostility. You know… there was a time when I did not have my little boy to dance with, and when I did not have a life partner to dance with… I didn’t have friends to dance with — during that time, I had turned up the music and danced with myself. We can be good friends to ourselves. You’re in my thoughts.

Mikael says:

I can’t do this. I’ve been obsessive since i was 12 or so. No one did anything about it. I do have OCD in the typical sense that i need to repeat certain actions. I’m also obsessive in the sense that i cannot put my mind to rest because of severe angst. I can’t stop focusing on horrible things for even small periods of time. An obsession i’ve had since i was 17 (19 now), is that i’m doomed to be stupid because of my education. I got great grade in High school, but i still feel horribly stupid. I got straight A’s in my first year in college, but could not accept this as a victory because i’m obsessed with the idea that i chose the wrong college. Currently it seems that i have to take leave for a term from college because of depression. This constant repetition of angsty thoughts is driving me suicidal. I have a obsession with that the past should have been different, so that i would have had a better present

Emotional Abuse: A healing letter

“My dearest daughter,

“I don’t know whether I am writing this letter for you, or for me. Maybe it is for us both. There is much I have wanted to say to you over the years but have been unable to do so. It is very hard for me to explain my actions, and maybe it is because I am ashamed to admit the reasons. It is not easy for an elder to admit one’s mistakes to a junior, especially when that person is your daughter. You see, I was supposed to set the example for you, to educate you, to be your role model. That’s a lot of pressure, you know. Humans are imperfect, and mothers are human.

“Being brought up in a different era created part of the wall between us. Back then, a woman’s identity depended on the man she married. She was supposed to bear his children and take care of his home. It’s different now, though. A woman makes her own identity through her career and independence. I think that one of the reasons why I have not been supportive of your career choices is that I am jealous. It’s too late for me. I realized too late how important self-identity is to the soul. Without it, your sense of self awareness dies, and you live through others. It is not easy to renounce the way you have been brought up. It is also not easy to fail to notice things changing around you.

“A person without career or identity has no control and is dependent on others. That what made me resent you. You chose the path which I would have wanted for myself, but could not choose. I could not go against my upbringing, even though I knew it was not in my best interests. As you grew up, you grew more independent, and I was jealous. I felt that I was losing control. So I tried to control you even more. To keep you on a leash. And everytime you broke free it would make me resent you even more.

“Some things I did to you were out of resentment. That was the only control I could have over you. Sometimes I felt that you were taking attention away from me. Attention means a lot to those who have little to make them feel important. When your independence got the better of you, I felt the sting of people’s eyes, the knowledge that I had no control over my daughter. I lost face, and blamed you for it. If you wouldn’t do it my way, then I hoped that you would fail. The past years have been marked with failures of my own, which further increased my frustration. The failed motel business and losses in the stock market. There was nothing I could tell my friends that would save my face.

“In the old days, and even presently in this culture, a woman likes to think of herself of a success if she has married well, and has children that have married well, and she can tell her friends how much her children love her and the things they buy and do for her, and how they take care of her. I want to do that. I feel that somehow, I am owed that. I want to have my friends look up to me and say how succesful I am. ‘Look at her loving children! Look what they do for her.’ It is very hard for me to accept that my success will have to depend on myself. That my sense of self-identity comes from within. They were lies that the old culture told us women. But society still tells them. And even though I know the truth, it is hard to let go of the old ideas. It is too late.

“I regret many of the things I did to you as a child. The only explanation I can offer is like the child that torments a small defenseless animal. It gives him a sense of power and control. But it is control by fear, not understanding. It was the only way I could get a sense of control. I did not have much control over my own life, so maybe I could control another’s. And it happened to be you. And it was wrong. It was out of my insecurity that I did those things. When we were sick and your father paid you more attention, I felt jealous. I felt less important than you. I resented you for taking that love and affection away from me, even though it was not your doing.

“My pride and selfishness is a prison that I do not know if I’ll ever be free from. It is so hard to fight. Deep down inside, there is a voice that tells me what I should say to you, but somehow, a much louder, angry voice drowns that one out and says things I know are wrong. My failures loom so large that I cannot see the successes of my daughter, or be happy for her. I am who I am, and I cannot change that. There have been so many times that I have tried to bite my tongue and refrain from saying the wrong things to you, but my fragile sense of self worth overpowers it, and I still cling to the idea that if I get you to do what I want, then maybe I can save some of the face I have lost. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t seem to control myself and do what’s right.

“I’m sorry that our family environment was not the best for a little girl to grow up in. Ever since you were young, you displayed a sense of self-identity, intelligence and direction that most girls of your age did not have. I felt proud, but for the wrong reasons. I felt proud because it made me look good. It made me glow when people commented on how well behaved you were. It made me furious when you misbehaved, because it was a reflection on myself. That is what happens when you sense of self-identity comes from without, not within. Do not make the same mistakes I did, dear daughter. Your life is just beginning. And you are in control. My angry voice is still loud, and prevents me saying to you what I should have a long time ago. And I do not know when it will quieten down.

“But deep down inside, my quiet voice whispers, and I hope you can hear what it says. “My dearest daughter, I have always loved you. I regret that the ways in which I expressed myself were so confused and convoluted. The ways in which I sought to control you by fear. You are a beautiful, intelligent and loving child. Our roles have reversed; you are now an example for me. My heart is filled with warmth to see you as the woman you are, determined and strong. Your fierce sense of independence and direction in your career is one I wish I had myself. My heart is filled with sorrow when I recall the efforts you have made over the years to be a good daughter to me and your father. We were immersed in our own problems, and could not fully show our appreciation for your loyalty and filial piety.

“It pains me to think about how our problems became yours, when they should not have. It is a parent’s role to protect her child, not expose her to harm. But through it all you handled it with grace and an inner strength which made me proud. When you had your own problems, I wished I could have reached out to you and told you how much I loved and cared for you, but the ‘scolding mother’ in me could only find harsh words instead of words of comfort. I wish I could be as good a mother as you are a daughter, but we are different people.

“All I can say is that anyone would be proud to have a daughter like you. You are entitled to your own happiness, and you do not owe it to me to ensure that I have mine. You have a loving soul and take an exuberant joy in letting those you love know of how you feel. You have a husband who recognizes how worthy you are of love and sees you as the wonderful person that you are. Jane, I wish you all the happiness and success in the world, and I see you now as a strong-willed individual, that can think for herself and knows what is best for herself. I see the efforts you make in life, and want you to know that I am behind you in every step that you take. I am proud to be your mother.”