I mean one of the things that I have learned with Desteni is that the things that irritate you about another person are usually the things that you can see in yourself.
And so, even though this is sort of a backwards / reversal of that phenomenon, when I am in any given situation and see myself behaving like my mom, I often become very upset with myself, because I do not want to be like her. There are obviously many layers to explore here. And so then, when I am in the presence of my mom, I project that anger onto her, and blame her for the way that I am, even though nothing has passed between us that would indicate such a reaction from me. So we're both left kind of confused as to why I am so upset.
This can be little things like vocal tonality that reminds me of my mom, or bigger things like me behaving in a co-dependent way in a relationship or interaction.
So I made the perhaps rather obvious connection during my phone conversation with her today that I am angry with her for having taught me these things through modeling. I mean as much as some of the behaviors I see in her are things I do not want to do, ways that I do not want to be, nonetheless I see myself living them out. Co-dependency is the major mal-adaptive example.
So this was the point that I realized, as I have been resisting looking at myself as my relationship with my mom, and my extreme irritability and moodiness around her, that this experience of seeing her in myself as I live, even apart from her, creates a reaction in me, and adds fuel to the fire of the friction in our relationship. So to further define what is happening in that dynamic was helpful to see.
And actually for at least half my life, I would actually say, "If I could be half the woman my mom is when I grow up, I will be awesome." Then I grew up and my perspective expanded, and I went to the opposite polarity wherein I wanted to be absolutely nothing like her. I have gotten somewhat stuck there; I am still coming out of that reaction which only occurred within the last 6 years or so. This reaction has not helped anything. I am glad now for the opportunity facilitated today to see more of this, because I have resisted looking at it, I have resisted solving this obvious problem.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist solving this problem because I believe "I already know" what the problem is and so I resist looking at it in detail.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist looking at this problem in detail because I know that I am ashamed of my behavior and my moodiness and irritability. I realize that I am taking advantage of my mom within these moods, that I am like pushing the envelope of how bad I can treat her and she will still love me, and that I am not respecting either of us as life.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be moved by my reaction to my reactions, which is shame, rather than seeing a problem / point and addressing it.
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to realize that there is more to this problem than what I think I already know, because I have never really allowed myself the time and space to look at and consider this relationship and who I have been within it, and how this relationship has impacted who I am at all times
So anyway, this point of having an example, and knowing it is not who I want to be. Knowing only then what NOT to do. I learn this all the more in my job with the students, where the disciplinary system in place has previously only ever punished the undesired behaviors, and yet never at school and very unlikely at home have there ever been examples presented of adaptive positive desired behaviors to replace the negative behavior.
Here is a cool article about that: Getting to the Bottom of Social Skills Defecits
So as much as I have gone through life seeing in my mom or dad or other exemplary people how NOT to be, I have not had many examples of how TO be. And so amid my suggestions for how my mom might proceed in a certain complicated familial issue, I also told her that it would really mean a lot to me, as her daughter, to see my mother, as an exemplary figure, getting help and assistance for something that she clearly cannot handle. I mean there is a situation right now, and for the past many many years, where it is like the blind leading the blind. And my mom knows this, and yet she persists in trying to do it herself, even though she cannot see. So I expressed to her how much it would mean to me to have an example of someone actually standing up and taking responsibility for themselves in terms of what they are or are not capable of doing in a given situation. Right now she is not capable of doing what she is trying to do by herself -- in large part because she is too emotionally invested, and because she has her own deeply ingrained issues of co-dependency. I mean how is she supposed to navigate that in real-time without any space or time to reflect and correct? And then too it is like this vital crucial situation in which she is in way too deep becomes like her guinea pig to be irresponsible within, because she is not taking responsibility to find a point of stability until she herself is stable and able to respond in common sense. She is ir-response-able, literally.
Another cool point that came up was just seeing again how any kind of change has to be a slow and steady grind, or else it just a reaction as a "solution" or a "cure" that will soon crumble without the consistency and stability and true lived learning experiences. Also to see how the best thing I can do is set an example by my behavior. The words I speak are very important, but so is how I say them, and what specifically I choose to say and when. So I see how my approach to any of these family "issues" has to be slow and steady, or none at all, because anything else is detrimental to myself and to the cause. So it was really cool today how in both familial interactions I had today, I was able to express myself clearly, slowly, and steadily, not allowing myself to become so emotionally invested / divested that I would exhaust myself and then be of no use.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to myself in disgust basically when I identify certain aspects of my behavior, thought process, or vocal tonalities as being similar to those of my mom.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to only react within these points, never investigating who I am within that reaction or who I am within that behavior.
I forgive myself then for accepting and allowing myself to carry over that disgust and project it onto my mother in anger and disgust, not wanting even to look at her because I so do not want to see myself in her.
I realize from experience that when I push myself to actually look at her and make eye contact with her, I am better able to equalize and see her and myself as two human beings.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to avoid eye contact with my mom because I am angry, I do not want to see or look at her, and I do not want to see or look at myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to project anger toward my mom and express anger and irritation in our interactions because of reactions I have had in myself not even in her presence.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to disrupt my relationship with my mother because of my own reactions.
When and as I see myself reaction to what I identify within my own behavior as reminding me of my mom, I stop and I breathe. I commit myself to investigating these reactions more. I commit myself to investigating myself as co-dependent. I commit myself to follow through on my agreement to attend Al-Anon meetings with my mom so as to support her and myself and other members of our family. I commit myself to explore my relationship with my mom as a dimension of who I am. I commit myself to take responsibility for my moods and reactions in relation to my mother. I commit myself also thus to not let my relationship with my mother be the last point I address, as it has thus far continued to stay at the bottom of the "list" of points. I commit myself to making it a priority as a central point within my life, given how often I see and communicate with my mom. I realize if I do not walk this point, then I am likely to miss the point in other points, and therefore ignoring this point is self sabotage. I also realize that I am accountable only to myself, and so even if my mom lets me "get away with" treating her poorly and being irritable around her, I cannot allow this in myself, and I cannot be self honest, self supportive, or self responsible if I do not walk this point that I see and have seen clearly in front of me. My process will be sabotaged if I continue to ignore this point.
What is cool is that just yesterday I also wrote on my relationship with my mom, privately, and now there has been a facilitated opportunity to address the relationship and open up the point. I will share here:
Simple questions lead to actual answers.
In my usual indecisive fashion I've been struggling to decide if I want to go to Tahoe this weekend or not. I was sharing this with a friend and said that one of the reasons I am weighing is that lately I am pretty irritable around my mom, and right now it is just my mom and grandparents in Tahoe. So I have been irritable on the one hand, which is a reason not to go, so as to not be around her, but on the other hand I am not irritable with my grandparents, so maybe I could sort of break down the irritability by spending time with the three of them together. My friend asked why I was irritable, was I mad at her for something?
I could only say No. I mean I'm not mad at her really. She hasn't done anything "wrong" per se. My friend asked if I disagreed with any of her decisions she's making, and so I then explained that I'm not really mad about any of her decisions presently, but that I am holding onto anger about past decisions. And it's not necessarily that present decisions have changed or been much different, I've just detached myself from being invested in her decisions presently. So I've let go of the present, but I haven't yet let go of the past. And of course here my friend pointed out that we cannot hold onto the past, we're not in the past, we're in the present, here and now. All I could say is "yeah, you're totally right" and see myself. She pointed out too that maybe this means I have not yet accepted some facet of reality of what happened in the past. I am still wishing it had gone another way. And so here then I see that if I am wishing something had gone another way, then I am blaming the past, and another within the past, for who I am, or how now is. Still living in the past, not now. Not taking what is and working with what is and walking through what is.
I mean this is so simple, but it took some simple questioning by a friend who was simply trying to understand me to actually realize it and admit it and see it. Because I'd been ignoring it. Like the elephant in the room I don't want to address right now. "I'll get to that later." I knew perfectly well it was happening. I just wasn't facing it.
(Which is interesting because, as I will share here soon, this point manifests in part as a not-facing and lack of eye contact.)
It was actually the last time that I was in Tahoe that I last wrote about my relationship with my mom, but I didn't post it here. So now I will look at that writing again and bring some of it here, and also walk some self forgiveness on the irritability in general and my resistance to changing and walking this point.
This also relates to what I have mentioned in some of my recent previous posts about holding myself hostage to my own "failures" as a way to punish the person onto whom I project blame for who I am.
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I still want to edit the writing mentioned for sharing, but due to time I will not today. But here I can see what some of the ways are that I renew my anger with my mom through my reactions to behaviors that I see her in myself.
But I also see that I am also still holding onto the past interactions and past "infractions" that I've not really forgiven her for. And she has said this actually. Like sometimes I will bring it up trying to make her understand why I am so irritable, why our relationship suffers. But what am I expecting of her? She goes into a guilt-trip kind of reaction, and this frustrates me more. But really, what do I want? Neither of us has a time machine. She has apologized. I guess I want her to change. I want her to be less this, more that. I want her to change the ways she deals with certain "issues." I get irritated by quirky idiosyncrasies. But why that? Why the quirks? Is it a fear that I will be like her, that I too do those quirks? Or a knowledge from experience that I do in fact also do those quirks?
I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to investigate who I am and why, and I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to take absolute responsibility for who I am, which means changing myself, and directing myself, so that if I am any way that I do not "like," I change it, rather than react or project blame onto my mom for having shown me this way of being.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not forgive my mother.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame my mother for who I am.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see the error of having thought for so many years that my mom was perfect, the best, blameless, and then to react in polarity and get stuck in polarity of now believing the opposite, and justifying it through anger at myself for not having seen who she is sooner. I still do not see who she is, because I am still in reaction. So here I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to ever really see my mom, or myself, as life, as beings, and to accept and love each of us unconditionally. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold angry emotional energy against my mom, again holding myself hostage in this energy, and also locking myself into that which I judge, where when I judge my mom I realize I am setting myself up to be locked into that judged behavior.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive when my mom enters a kind of guilt-trip reaction when I bring up issues from the past, rather than actually hearing her when she asks if she can't ever be forgiven. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to believe that my mom deserves to be forgiven, that she must do something before she can be forgiven.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually use other people in my life as a scapegoat for who I am, so that if I can hold anger and resentment against them, I never have to take responsibility for myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually live in the past of "infractions" others have "committed against me" or otherwise just the reasons I have been mad "at others" in the past. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to look at my anger in this instance with my mom in the same way I have examined it in grudges, where I can see that anger against another is always at least in part really anger against myself. I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see the ways I am angry with myself for who I was in the past, things I have blamed on my mom that really I chose to be, I accepted and allowed.
I commit myself to continue on this path of my process of walking these points in relation to my mom over time. I commit myself to writing on this point when and as it comes up, because it comes up often, and I do not need a "facilitated opportunity" to walk these points.
I will come back to this point in the future.
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