Hi Trouble with Mother: You've described how screwed up your "Mom" is quite well; most would agree that you've mastered blaming. For example, a responsible person would have written, "My problem is the nonstop fights I've been having with my mother." Even better, ". . . the nonstop fights I've been causing with my mother."
My reply will not support you in getting your mom to communicate positively with you. For that result
you will first have to master intention, meaning that you have to intend that she communicates the way she does with you.
* You can't change her and you don't have her permission to coach her. What you can do is fix you and in so doing create space for her to choose to heal, or not.
The curriculum for you is courage, courage to tell the truth each and every time your mind wants to withhold a thought from her; verbalize your fear (as opposed to non-verbally communicating it) and in so doing disappear it. Most adults didn't learn this at your age when they were supposed to and so they have lived their entire life in fear of at least one person with whom they are afraid to speak with spontaneously; that person is usually one of their parents
and their partner.
I would have felt less concerned about you had you asked, "How do I get my mom to therapy?" or, "How do I stop causing arguments with my mother?"
Now's the time to bring to the front of the mind one of life's truisms—[if you keep doing what you've been doing you'll keep producing more of the same undesirable results]. "Trying to make your Mom your No 1 priority" obviously hasn't worked, yet you still keep trying. One way to find out what a person has been up to in life (what they have been intending) is to look at the results they've been producing, not what they say they want.
From your description she hasn't destroyed enough relationships in life to seek positive support; clearly the conversations between you negatively enabled her. It's interesting to note that you capitalize the word "Mom" and not the word "dad." I suspect you got your pattern of blaming from your mom. Once she drove her husband out of her life she needed another sparring partner so as to get her periodic fix of adrenaline.
It's evident that reading your bible hasn't worked for you. Clearly you've been intent on failing with your mom and now covertly blame God's User Manual. Someone intent on not arguing simply walks away. Someone stuck in wanting to be right, and making another wrong, starts an argument and then lies about who started it. You should have learned by now that anything other than "trying" might just work; that you haven't learned this reveals that you have been damaged to the extant that you need as much therapy as your mom. Yes! Equally as much.
A religious person intent on having things work goes to a bible-reading/interpreting coach (a.k.a. a clergy person), and gets coaching on how to formulate prayers that work. You obviously have not been asking "God" something He/She/It can grant. You have a misunderstanding about prayer.
A responsibly worded prayer is always always answered. Put another way, you have two relationship problems—one with your mother, the other with God. When your relationship with God works it works for all of your other relationships. BTW: Very few people have a working (mutually satisfying) relationship with God, ergo most of them, especially their friends, are stuck in mediocrity.
Test: When you're in-communication with God do you experience joyous love and ecstasy in that moment?
If not, then you have been withholding significant thoughts from God. You've become stuck doing your
imitation of communication with your mom. Communication always results in an experience of love, whereas, talking produces more of the same. You can use
The Clearing Process to experience love, simply empty your mind to God.
You have a serious problem. You've already been so abused that you no longer know right from wrong. For example: You make excuses for your abusive (yelling) mother; you are in denial. So what that she has fed you? So what that she has . . . etc.? That's her job. It is irresponsible of her to make you feel guilty for her doing her job. The truth is she is stuck in abusing you and your siblings. I say
serious because you have no one to coach you about the
ultimatum you're supposed to issue her.
"Mom, get therapy to address your abusive angry yelling or I will report you to the authorities." (authorities meaning a teacher, school counselor, principal, clergy, or the police)
If you don't have the courage to do it now you certainly won't when it's your intimate partner abusing you. And, no matter what you believe, unless you enroll yourself in coaching/counseling, you will magnetically attract an abusive partner. Why? Because you are already addicted to the abuse. To you verbal abuse means love.
The longer you put off insisting that your mother get counseling the more damage you cause her to inflict upon your siblings.
**Here's the steps to take:
First, say the following words to your mom: "Mom, tell me something nice about me." Or, "Mom, thank me for doing the laundry." Or, "Mom, what have I done that so upsets you that you feel as though you have to yell at me?" "Mom, do you know that when you yell at me it doesn't feel good?" These examples are a responsible way of asking for the acknowledgement your mind needs to hear so as to be complete. Never ever, for even one second, think that you are better than others, that you don't REQUIRE acknowledgement. Your mind needs to hear very specific sentences so as to be complete. Only your mind knows what these sentences sound like and what it will feel like to hear them. When adults in a weekend-long relationship communication-skills workshop do the Acknowledgment Process the sounds of crying and mourning from a life-time of grief of not being acknowledged, of not being gotten ever, is beyond description. It's an amazing experience when one experiences their own magnificence.
For example: You say to your mom.
"Mom, say these words to me. 'I know it hurts when I yell at you. I also know that it hurts even more when I yell at you and I don't follow it up with an acknowledgment that I know it hurt you.'"
Notice that you're not asking for an apology, simply an acknowledgment of what's so—her letting you know that she knows it didn't feel good, that it was abusive. You'll find that the more willing you are to ask for acknowledgment the sooner acknowledgments will start to come without asking. No one can possibly know all the wonderful things you've done (and so you need to ask until your ego no longer runs you). For myself and most others it takes decades of service to free one of the separation between self and the ego-mind. Just as you need to be acknowledged for all the good things you've done so too do you need to be acknowledged for all the perpetrations and withholds you've "forgotten" and stuffed. If you can't create someone with whom to be open and honest and spontaneous, zero significant withholds, then enter everything in a journal. You can also use the four free communication processes on
The Clearing House.
If you won't ask your mom these questions write to her saying that you want her to get abuse therapy or counseling. If after a week she has not sought help then tell her that if she doesn't get counseling within a week that she'll leave you with no responsible option but to bring in outside help.
Note: She'll lead you to believe that she'll get counseling but a week later you'll notice that she hasn't; she'll have some "good sounding" reason(s). She is an abusive blaming addict. Addicts lie. She'll behave nicely for a few days and then resort back to yelling.
Given that you are bound up by fear in your relationship with your mom, and most likely can't picture yourself telling her to get therapy, the next best thing is to discuss the problem with your spiritual leader or a school counselor—a responsible adult will effect a solution.
My sense is that your addiction is such that you won't seek outside help so that you can continue to get your daily fix of abuse. Notice I didn't say, discuss the problem with a relative? All of your relatives are enablers; they all enable your mom in abusing you.
Another, far better, option is to show your mom your letter and this reply.
Keep in mind that part of your addiction to abuse is to apologize which you will automatically do later in life when your siblings ask, "Why didn't you do something?" And yes, telling an outsider is the same as "ratting on" or "reporting" your mom; it
will cause her embarrassment and reveal the trouble she's already in. That's because she's already in trouble; she is wrong, she is mistreating her children and she needs therapy. The ideal is to give her a chance first and then, if she won't enroll herself in therapy, bring in help.
She is unconsciously setting you up to support her in healing. In truth you must assume the role of her mother. For you to hang out with her (a blaming victim
***) invalidates your father who was smart enough to leave her; it's not unlike you walking away, arm-in-arm with someone who just beat up another, leaving the person on the ground still bleeding.
Lastly, and most importantly: Any and all yelling is abusive, no matter what you read or who tells you otherwise. What's also true is that once a person acknowledges that they have been sick and stuck in abuse, they will try to stop but still continue yelling. They still won't have any choice but to react, to yell. The difference will be that they will have asked you for your support to acknowledge it (to mention it) when they have done it again. It's your job to point it out and to extract an acknowledgment,
each and every time. You'd say to your mother, "Mom, that didn't feel good. I'd like to hear you tell me that you know it was abusive." If you "try" this now on your mom it won't work. She has yet to acknowledge to herself, or you, that she has been stuck in abuse, and, she has yet to ask for your support in completing her experience of abuse (see the
Spouse Abuse Tutorial). She must first verbally acknowledge to you that she knows she has been abusive, and, that she'd like your support whenever you hear her being abusive. Eventually a person will arrive at choice, to clean it up himself or herself; eventually they will have a choice to not abuse.
Once you've gotten into communication with your mother ask her to tell you what she did to drive your dad away. It will be very difficult for her to recall the first instance, the very first abusive communication between them, the one she caused and let slide, the consequences for which she is still paying. Most likely she's stuck in blame. She's yet to be acknowledged for having made something more important than her integrity. In other words, part of what's bothering her is that her integrity is out. She is paying herself back for a life-time of perpetrations.
The Clearing Process for a Parent and Child will support both of you in restoring your integrity; it will open up the space for loving communications between you.
BTW: If you don't clean up your relationship with your mom it's almost certain you'll be tempted to find yourself a boyfriend, someone whom you will manipulate into telling you that he loves you, so as to justify sex. Sex that replaces intimacy at home is but an imitation of intercourse and always has undesirable consequences. Such sex begins with the fact that you'll have to deceive your mother to pull it off, and, you'll blame her for the consequences of your deceit (as in "accidental" pregnancy). And, you'll have to con the boy into deceiving your mother and his parents, hiding his plans to seduce you from both sets of parents. It generates a mess that most adults (stuck in mediocre marriages) have yet to clean up. I'm certain your mom will tell you that she deceived her parents, she hid her plans to have sex from them, and, supported the boy in deceiving both families. Selecting a boy who condones deceit guarantees that there will eventually be deceit between you; there are no exceptions to this phenomena.
You could start babysitting and offer to split the take with your mom.
Show your letter and my reply to your mom.
* Read
The Zen Master Bird Poop Story** There are still cultures in which, when a young boy simply can't take it any more, beats up his father "behind the barn," which transforms the relationship from father-child to father-son-partner. Mature girls, to hurt-hit either parent, would often get pregnant or marry an abuser, so as to (get back at) to prove what a lousy job the parents did; others simply ran away rather than submit themselves to more abuse.
*** I say "blaming victim" because I suspect that she still badmouths and blames your father for the separation, she has yet to tell the truth as to how she destroyed the relationship, how she, using her leadership-communication skills, magnetically (karmically), attracted him and then set him up to leave. It's possible that you think he was more abusive than she; with divorces there are no victims or bullies, only couples both
equally addicted to abusing and to being abused; there are no exceptions.
Thank you.
Last edited 5/14/18
