Monday, Jan. 04, 2021 - 10:19 a.m.

I asked about relationships with parents in the RA group...most comments were not that helpful, assumed a level of direct attack that’s seldom actually present with my mother...but this one was good so I’m going to put it here.

“I think it was/is a unique in that it was a situation where I have extremely low emotional security and in all other cases would just walk away, but in this one I can't. So because I have no (...) emotionally connected relationship I have to take full responsibility for _all_ of my emotional safety with zero dependence on the other person understanding that I'm doing that or being involved in that process. If I don't do that, I am, as you say, just extremely uncomfortable and at risk of it getting emotionally 'violent' extremely quickly which was what most of my interactions with my Mum were like for ~20 years. So, I think what I was trying to get at above is that, to make that better, I have to pull far far back from the conversation and put up as many barriers and create enough distance until I'm happy, and when *I'm* happy, the interactions are just happy because *my* deep discomfort and emotional-unsafety is the main thing that introduces tons of unhappiness in the interaction. So for her, it is 'genuinely happier', and for me it's a whole mess of pretense, distancing and unhealthy one-sided over-compensation by me in order to massage me and mum into a place where there is, at least, not massive discomfort on my part.”

So especially this part: “ I have to take full responsibility for _all_ of my emotional safety with zero dependence on the other person understanding that I'm doing that or being involved in that process.”

And the last sentence or two.
It’s a matter of realizing I can’t ask her to do anything, really. I can’t ask her to respect my boundaries, I can only structure our interactions such that they are protected. I have to put on an act in order for things to hopefully not get out of hand for me internally, and I need to structure our interactions so that’s possible. Not sure it gives me any ideas I don’t already have, which is to limit the interactions to be as short as possible. She’s not happy with that, but I can’t give her what she would like without driving myself off an emotional cliff what with one thing or another. If it’s not her spouting pitying ableist nonsense or talking shit about cousins with mental illness or whatever, just having to direct my attention and pretend to be participating is a major source of distress for me.

Anyway. What do.

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