At the end of our recent therapy session Erica said that the episode with Damien was a healing experience.\u00a0 She said why that was so, and I remember thinking I should write it down, but it seemed too complicated to get my pen and clipboard, so I forgot it.\u00a0 I wonder about the amnesia, that I wasn\u2019t able to hold on to what she said.\u00a0 I wonder if that\u2019s often happened when people have said good things to me and that\u2019s why my old narrow stingy self-image is still with me.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t been able to update it.<\/p>\n
I also discovered, not so many years ago, that I had been \u201cdisappearing\u201d all the nasty things mother said to me.\u00a0 Like a child who can\u2019t afford to believe that their parent could be cruel, and has to make it that they deserved it, I would come up with an excuse and\/or just forget it. \u00a0I also remember my ex-husband saying he wanted to hit my father for saying something unflattering about me.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t noticed it, probably because I was so used to it, or maybe it was the same amnesia.<\/p>\n
It was less than 20 years ago that I discovered this mechanism through the \u201cColonial Dames\u201d incident.\u00a0 We were sitting on the front porch of our house at Biddeford Pool: Mom, my sister Jo, her friend Weezie, and me.\u00a0 Mother and Weezie were talking about the \u201cColonial Dames,\u201d a high society women\u2019s organization they both belong to.\u00a0 I was watching the discussion and glad that Mom had something that really interested her.\u00a0 Suddenly Mom turned on me and said in her nastiest voice \u201cOf course you<\/span> wouldn\u2019t care about the Colonial Dames.\u201d\u00a0 I felt like she had thrown a dagger into my open heart.\u00a0 At first I thought I had looked patronizing, that that\u2019s how my gladness for Mom looked on my face.\u00a0 Later that day I wrote about the incident in my journal.\u00a0 The next day I read my journal and was confused \u2014 did that really happen?\u00a0 I asked Jo, and she said yes, it did.\u00a0 I saw that when Mother said nasty things to me I just disappeared them.\u00a0 No wonder they always seemed to come out of left field.\u00a0 After that I knew that I had to protect myself from Mother, not give her a target.<\/p>\n Much later, I realized that I hadn\u2019t looked patronizing, I was trying to excuse Mom, another part of the pattern.\u00a0 I also thought that I could have said \u201cIt\u2019s true I don\u2019t care about the Colonial Dames, but I\u2019m glad you have something you enjoy.\u201d\u00a0 But then I realized that that wouldn\u2019t have satisfied Mom. \u00a0Nothing other than me joining the Colonial Dames. \u00a0I also notice, from this distance, that my mother didn’t attack my sister, only me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the end of our recent therapy session Erica said that the episode with Damien was a healing experience.\u00a0 She said why that was so, and I remember thinking I should write it down, but it seemed too complicated to … Continue reading