Posted by Racer on May 24, 2006, at 18:28:03
In reply to Re: My mother - Trigger maybe » Dinah, posted by All Done on May 24, 2006, at 16:32:21
Another daughter whose mother has "forgotten" here. In my mother's case, though, she remembers a few things wrong, in ways that make her MORE culpable, rather than less.
In fact, the one time we spoke about her ex-boyfriend molesting me, she remembered being in the room and watching him do it. Uh, no. He would catch me alone, there was no safe place or time in my life for years because of it.
I think in that case, she had to rewrite it so that she can say two contradictory things: "It really wasn't so bad, it couldn't have done much damage, because I was there, I know what happened, and if it had really been bad, I would have stopped it;" and "I'm so worthless, I allowed my daughter to be victimized in order to keep my boyfriend."
Hey, I didn't get crazy in a vacuum, you know...
And then there are other things, too, of course, but that one shows a pretty good example of what she does with events.
Interestingly, I recently asked my mother about a couple of events in my life, things that were very damaging to me (lasting damage, that hangs on today), and neither of us disappeared into a puff of smoke. Major progress, for both of us. The answer seems to be about what I thought it was -- a sort of narcissism, where she couldn't step in to help me, if it meant that she might face some unpleasantness herself. Much easier to tell me it was my fault, or I needed to do something differently. As she put it, when I asked about another instance of medical neglect on her part, "It wasn't my body, and I didn't want to face my family's reaction to it."
I think it is an ego defense mechanism, that their self-images cannot hold on to reality, so they modify the memories in order to survive.
And I'm not doing well, so I'll stop before I set myself off...
poster:Racer
thread:647919
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060517/msgs/647993.html