Hi Brooke,
I forgot the call wasn’t a live call where we pop on and video with you, so sorry about that! I’ll post my models in response to your questions here.
C: Confiding in mother
T: I want her to validate my feelings
F: Needy, insecure
A: Tell her thing I was feeling guilty and insecure about
R: She tells me I did something wrong, my feelings are still invalidated
Next is my model on my thought about my mom telling third party.
C: Mom telling 3rd party thing I told her
T: That was not her place to discuss with anyone
F: Anger
A: Confront her, ask her why she talked to 3rd party, tell her it was not her place
R: She gets angry and defensive, I continue to think it was not her place to discuss
My response to your question: “What were you wanting that conversation to be?”
I wanted her to admit that she should not have said anything. I wanted her to explain why she felt the need to speak to this other person about what I told her. I wanted to have a conversation about the situation and have her tell me why she thinks I did something wrong rather than decide it is her job to fix it behind my back.
I now don’t want to tell her anything that I want kept secret. But I also don’t want to interact with her at all. Our relationship is one where we walk on eggshells around each other, something happens and there’s a big fight, there’s a period of not talking and then we start interacting but never really deal with the issue that caused the fight. I’m so tired of it, I just want peace.
You asked me: “why do you want to do anything with them now? What is the thought driving it?”
Because it’s my mother and I feel like I have to. I feel like I’m supposed to forgive her and move on. I feel like I am at fault somehow and if I don’t move on from it, our relationship will be ruined and it will be my fault.
I wanted to take a couple of days to process this (this all happened 2 days ago) but she sent me a text at 6am telling me something she ordered from my website got returned because the address was wrong (she put the wrong address in) and asking me when I would fix it. I was very friendly and dealt with the issue right away, but just by the way she was interacting with me, I can tell she is still mad at me.
I don’t know what to do about this, my chest feels constricted and it feels hard to breathe. I don’t want to have this kind of relationship with my mother but I don’t know how to create one that feels good to ME. I’m not worried about how she will react to my boundaries, but I want to have a relationship with her that at the end of the day (and at the end of her life) that I will feel good about. Right now, it’s all guilt and pain and anger.
Can you help me?
