45 Comments
Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

I love this advice, Polly. And for others out there experiencing similar self-doubt but whose parents never directly called them names: it happens in subtler ways too. If your parent gives you toxic positivity in response to sad feelings ("You really have so much to be lucky for! Just put one foot before the other! So many have it so much worse!") this is still reflective of their inability to be present with your feelings and to try to fix them or minimize them for their own comfort. It can have the same effect of making you believe the lies that your emotions are too much, that something is wrong with you, and that you should shrink yourself if you want to be able to connect.

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

I can relate to the letter writer having grown up with a loving but ultra critical mother. However, I think I have inadvertently become a lite version of this myself towards my own children. Not so much the outright criticism but definitely the lack of boundaries and blindness caused by my own anxiety. Heather, I’d love to know what you’d write to the letter writer’s mother. I love my children so much and want so very much to be better.

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

A note to the letter writer: you might consider undergoing testing for neurodivergence (most commonly ADHD or autism, but there are other conditions under that umbrella). I am not a medical doctor, and I'm not sure if that type of advice is even allowed here, but as a neurodivergent myself I notice a lot of similarities while reading your letter.

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Hoo boy. My mother often reacted to me in severely judgmental and undermining ways (e.g., every time I was upset or sad she asked, “are you getting your period?”) and it took me until my late 30s to recognize that she is an extremely anxious person who cannot handle her own turbulent emotions, and that the emotions and responses that she pathologized my whole life due to her own discomfort were just…normal human feelings. After a lot of therapy, I see all of this clearly, but when I am stressed/worn down, my fear of fucking up manifests itself into horrible intrusive thoughts that take that fear to its extreme (the post-lockdown version is that I will end up in prison for something terrible but unspecified— which is very similar to fears I had as a young kid).

Everything you said about relaxing and learning to love and be loved…it’s still so hard for me not to constantly be *working*—on myself, at my job, on my relationship, on my friendships. The thinking part of my brain knows where all of this comes from and what it is, but the sad, scared girl inside of me really kicks up a fuss when I feel threatened or afraid. Giving myself now what I needed then is the only way through, but it still is a real learning curve.

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Excited for this person to learn in college what I didn't learn until I was like 30+!

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

This letter triggered me. I stopped speaking to my family, my mother especially, in my 30s. It saved my life. But mother sought out ppl I went to grammar school with (50 years ago) and asked them if they had spoken to me and why was I so mean to her when she loved me so much. The gaslighting, the alcoholism. Both my sisters believe my mother hung the moon and I'm an ungrateful, mean, nasty bitch. I'm in my 60s and still dealing with it.

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Sep 7, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Ah totally relate. My father used to literally leave the room shaking his head in disgust as soon as I started crying while he yelled about my mistakes or personal flaws (lmao!). By some miracle I found a partner who was secure in his emotions and didn’t leave when I cried but pulled me close instead. This shattered my worldview (!) and eventually led me to pursue therapy as I realized that my ideas about emotions meaning I was pathetic were perhaps…. Untrue.

LW: Allow for the possibility, the smallest possibility, that your ideas about your badness are wrong. You don’t have to fully reject them now— a slight loosening of your grip on them is a fantastic leap toward healing.

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LW: Girl, same.

Therapy was the greatest gift I've ever given myself. If you don't click with the first, please try again. The biggest mistake I made was not clicking with a therapist and waiting 15 years to try again.

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A lot of modern adult's issues come from deeply fundamentally horrid parenting, I don't know why we as a society spend so much time putting ourselves down and thinking there's something wrong with us when it's more important that we reject our parents' ways and distance ourselves to gain some clarity, and begin picking up the broken pieces they shattered. I know family's important and it's hard to separate yourself emotionally and mentally, but it's worth the effort to try. Be more critical of your family, and assert your boundaries firmly, even if that means you have to go no-contact, for a bit or even indefinitely. You can't begin the healing process if you stay around a parasite and let them trigger you. Establish whatever boundaries you need to stop getting triggered by them.

Work on yourself, overcome your fears, be kind to others. The journey ahead is long, but necessary.

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Sep 7, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Let me join the club, as I too have had a blaming and controlling parent (that can happen even to a Brazilian male like myself). I'm very insecure as a result I guess. Managed to work on it over the years (through therapy and self work - part of my current "work" on it is reading your column Heather, I love it). I'm still quite anxious, but hope to learn to enjoy my quirks as you say, rather than fear them. Have any of you guys read the book "The Highly Sensitive Person", by Elaine Aron? I related to it A LOT the 1st time I came across it. The book highlights positive aspects of being sensitive (for example, being very intuitive and having a 6th sense for things). I recommend it. Cheers from Brazil

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It's so weird because this sounds like something I could have written about five years ago, before I started therapy. I always thought me and my mum got along super well (she'll insist we are just like the Gilmore Girls -- which I know see have the most dysfunctional relationship ever!). But then my therapist at the time started questioning exactly the things Heather points in this letter. How much I kept quiet because that's the way I'd get love in return. How much I hid my own "bad" emotions and was always cheerful and upbeat, while being used as a receptacle of all the sadness, anger, and irritation from my mum.

*TW: SELF HARM*

How, when I was 16 and wrote a suicide letter to a friend, who understandable got worried and show it to her mom, who showed it to my mom, all the acknowledgment I got was a laugh and "Every teenager is like that".

*END TW*

With time, I started seeing how much my mother was blind to my and to her own truths, and how much our "great" relationship was based on her doing and saying whatever she wanted and me being silent and going along to avoid even harsher reactions. It took me a WHILE to get to that point. I wish OP all best, and I wish their mom a lot of "get fucked".

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Oh god. This ending — nothing is harder than blaming everything on yourself — (I can’t quote, only paraphrase, because I’m on my phone) made me cry quietly and gloriously with relief, even though I’m almost two decades older than LW and have been on this journey for a while.

also: the sentence about your most important job as a parent, to show your child how to love and enjoy being themselves, made my parent delighted. I think I’ll write that one— or both— on my bulletin board.

LW, you are going to have a kickass life full of love and adventure. And from your writing, I can see your intelligence. What a treat to get to discover its nature exactly and celebrate it.

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Letter writer, take this all to heart. Everything she said is true, I promise (sincerely, a 28 year-old bb who was once in very similar shoes).

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I wish I could give the writer a long, long, long hug.

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

4 she changed my name to a Cinderella-type nickname. No reason. Treated no one else like that. She only knew gaslighting and denial right up to her death. cowgirl

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Sep 6, 2021Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Great answer Polly. Best wishes to you LW. I was raised by the same mother. When I

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