Tired of being in fetal position....new mission for me

BusynMember1

Well-Known Member
I dont mean this in a mean way or that I will ever just say anything on my mind or be rude.

Kay has made me see that she has a mission, which is to spread the horrors of vaccinations and traditional medicine to the world and open the eyes to as many people as she can and that I am her victim of all the people who won't believe her. I have to believe her or I am no more in her life. It isnt enough to tell her I am fine with it. I have to believe it and I am too bad a liar to fool her if I said I did.

I have a mission myself out of sheer necessity and I feel good about it.

All my life I have shed tears and felt broken like a dropped glass cup any time a loved one was mean to me. Because this happened often to me I was often in fetal position wondering what I could do to fix myself for them. I have an extremely.challenging family of origin and a first husband, whom they loved, broke me into little bits and I never challenged that maybe this was them all more than me.

Kay is doing this to me and even after the great meeting I am feeling in fetal position and asking what I can do to fix my ineptitude. To make her approve of me and love me.

The answer is not one thing and that I should not care so much. She is acting badly on purpose and specifically targeting me and I dont need to take it.

So I am on a hard journey to heal myself. Al Anon twice a week and a Family Group for parents of mentally ill children on Saturday. Therapy continuing. Forcing myself to be with people and doing things. And I dont feel like going out when I am broken. But it helps me once I do it.

Books on codendency will be aplenty. Some I have read before.

Sounds like a lot, I know, but I need this much help to get well. It will be my Recovery and take up a lot of time. I will be relentless in recovering though. I am tired of being in fetal position even over Kay, my daughter.

I am starting the heavy lifting today. If you want to see what triggered this, read my last post.

I cant live this way anymore. In fetal position. I want to walk tall like a soldier and learn that sometimes our loved ones are abusive and that we need not take that even from a child.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Hi Busy. I could have written so much of your post, about myself. But I am not so self-aware. I see several important points in what you write.
I am her victim of all the people who won't believe her
You are implying here, that you are her scapegoat. I see another side of this. You are her safe place and for her, an organizing principle in life. She knows that your love for her is unconditional. This is not to let her off the hook, but I do not think she is aware of how damaging is this for you. I think you can set limits with her, to protect yourself, but also understand that her intent is not primarily to hurt you. You have the choice to hold her in this way. Apart, but not fundamentally wanting to hurt you.
All my life I have shed tears and felt broken like a dropped glass cup any time a loved one was mean to me.
I am like this too. There are times when I feel shattered by what I feel is the withholding of care and acceptance by others. The shatteredness is something in me. And I see as my primary purpose in my life now, the rebuilding of myself, so that I understand when I am in this place (instead of dissociating by self-destructive behavior),not to paper over and to avoid the pain, seek connection and support of others, and learn to nurture, tend, and support myself in ways I lacked as a tiny person and the adult I became.
Because this happened often to me I was often in fetal position wondering what I could do to fix myself for them.
So. What we are doing here is fixing ourselves for ourselves.
Kay is doing this to me and even after the great meeting I am feeling in fetal position and asking what I can do to fix my ineptitude. To make her approve of me and love me.
This is the problem. The sense that Kay does this to you. The brokenness is in us. Kay is just being Kay. We do not have to "own" her stuff, or the stuff of others who act this way. It's like people are out their throwing around their :censored2:, wily nily, or even, trying to aim at us. We have a choice to catch it, or to run.

This is what I am trying to say: There are parts and pieces of each of us, in our personalities, that are not well-developed. And as such we are vulnerable. And that vulnerability is our responsibility to address. Other people have their own vulnerabilities and direct to us their own futile and maladaptive ways to manage it, control it, to suppress it. And this is usually NOT because they want to hurt us. It is because they are hurting, and want to escape their pain. It is OUR responsibility to get out of their way. And to not make it into more than it is. If we get out of their way, we do not have to make them BAD. We can see them as hurting, or fragile, or misguided, instead. I see this as your choice with Kay.
The answer is not one thing and that I should not care so much. She is acting badly on purpose and specifically targeting me and I dont need to take it.
I don't think she's acting badly on purpose. But I do believe she is responsible for her behavior, and that you are correct to hold her as responsible. And put that on HER. Not you. Yes. I believe she is hurting, misguided, and out of control. But it is true you do NOT need to take it on.
Forcing myself to be with people and doing things. And I dont feel like going out when I am broken. But it helps me once I do it.
Good for you. I want to tell you I do understand what it feels like to feel (and be) broken. And I want to tell you how much I respect you, and identify with your quest. Maybe we can support each other.
 

BusynMember1

Well-Known Member
Thank you.

I know Kay is hurting. She made an unpopular dec ision and is very upset that she isnt getting much support outside of her online believers. At a restaurant she was talking to a friend about it and a lady in the restaurant walked past her saying "Not vaccinating is child abuse." So she has this going on. She also has been very depressed and suicidal at times. So, yes, she hurts. But she is pushing me away.

And I am wilting under her abuse and I have to be stronger so that is my mission. I would be glad to support you if only I knew how.
 

RN0441

100% better than I was but not at 100% yet
We have to love ourselves first. That is very important.

Too bad that most of us are in our 50's or go through something horrific before we realize this and start practicing it!
 

BusynMember1

Well-Known Member
You bet!

It takes not being able to take the pain to do the heavy work on ourselves. I wonder if thats exactly how it is for our kids. And here WE are 50 and 60!

I think Kay is mentally ill as well as obviously addicted to pot, which is not as minor a thing as I once thought it was. She is adopted from another country and I wish I knew more of her background. There was almost nothing. She is currently trying to find her birthmother. I wish she would because I think some adootees absolutely need to have answers and I think Kay is one. But her birth country, which I would rather not name, does not have detailed records. So she has this going on too.

Kay has been a mess since very young but she was a sweet mess. She is now a horrible, angry, bitter mess and I don't want to lose her whether or not she is a mess. But I may have to. Her tirades have made my illness worse and my husband's diabetes and blood pressure are high.

I won't let her kill us. Not even our kids should have the power of a bullet.

We are going to write her out of our will if she doesn't stop this. If so, she will kill us with no gain. She thinks we are rich! After all, we spent so much on her, she probably does think we have a secret fortune somewhere. Cars, a small house, a mobile home after the house, rent after the house and mobile home...fools, we were. Trying to make her happy. She destroyed all of it.

The truth is, because of what we chose to do for her and Lee we don't have much left. So if she kills us she will be surprised to find out that nobody got rich.

I sometimes wonder if adopted kids dont have the same bond as biological kids do. My other two kids would never threaten to leave me no matter how angry they were. We work things out.

I would not adopt again. I have friends I met through doing this adoption and it seems like none of those kids are content. And we all got them as infants. I'm sure some adopted kids do great, but I haven't seen that in my life.

Time to go back to my mission and be a stronger person. Join me!
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
My other two kids would never threaten to leave me no matter how angry they were.
All adopted children begin their lives abandoned. They do not realize this for a long time, even if they are told of their status, young. Because they do not have the cognitive ability and maturity to really grasp it. When they do grasp it there is a deep hole, that cannot be filled, except little by little at best, over the course of a lifetime.

If you look at it one way, you and Kay are dealing with the same thing: a sense at the deepest level of being broken. I think this is why I was triggered so badly by my own son's distress. Because he mirrored to me my own distress which I was trying oh so hard to escape.
Kay has been a mess since very young but she was a sweet mess. She is now a horrible, angry, bitter mess
I think what must have happened is that she was confronted with herself. As long as she was in your family and helped directly by you, and supported by the family, this part of her was buried. Now she can't bury it anymore. It is a reality she must deal with. She is doing so badly but this is how she is functioning: by externalizing, by deflecting, all of her distress outside of her onto you.

This is not pretty. It is unbearable. But it is not personal. She would be doing this to any mother. It is not about you. You feel it. I feel it. Because we have brokenness in us too. In this way, this is a gift. If we are motivated to deal directly with our broken pieces, instead of running.
because of what we chose to do for her and Lee we don't have much left.
This is terrible. And it's got to stop. You deserve to be comfortable and secure. That is your priority and your responsibility. Not her. Not Lee.
My other two kids would never threaten to leave me no matter how angry they were.
They do not have to deal with what Kay has to deal with. It is like apples and oranges.
 

BusynMember1

Well-Known Member
Copa, yes, what you say is right, I think. It has always been a challenge to find interests in common with Kay although we tried so hard the other two kids felt left out and told us we spent so much time with Kay and her interests. For example, we are a DNA of fantastic athletes and Kay is very uncoordinated, but she is a wonderful artist and musician. Many times my other two kids didnt have us in the stands while they played basketball because Kay was doing a recital and we felt she needed us more. And none of us can play a note on an instrument! Her gifts,which she wasted, fascinated us. Still do.

We also tend to have a certain dry sense of humor that Kay doesnt appreciate and rolls her eyes at. Her sense of humor is just out there and she is loud and boisterous while the rest of us are quiet, very cautious about our manners and embarassed when people look at us because Kay is SO loud!

All those years with us, in our environment, did not make Kay anything like the rest of us or us like her. This surprised me. I thought nurture over nature was the way it is. I no longer think so.

Now we loved and love Kay the same as the orhers. Sometimes I even think her pain made me love her the most. Yes, this shames me, but life was so hard for her and she needed us so much. Life was smooth and easy for my others.

It is ironic now to me that Kay is threatening to cut us out of her life. We were there when she had nightmares, when she showed us that she cut herself, when she needed homework help, when she had no friends. Now she is throwing us away.

I do not think my other two are very understanding of her. They hate how she is treating us and tell us to let her be. Well, I have to let her be. But it is the hardest thing I have ever done. Thus my mission. I hope my husband joins me. Kay's drama is making his health deteriorate.
 
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Blindsided

Face the Sun
Good for you! You sound proactive and determined to reclaim YOUR life.
"Everything is possible. When you make a choice, you change the future." ~ Deepak Chopra
 

RN0441

100% better than I was but not at 100% yet
I think the points that Copa brings up are very good. She would do this to any mother and it really has nothing to do with you or how you raised her.

Focus on yourself and your husband. Set boundaries and let her figure herself out. That is something we all have to do in life.
 
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