getting to know myself... I talked about ^^ with IC today. Also about my not tapping into/giving recognition to H's feelings about 2009 medical issue. She says it sounds like lack of empathy. I'm thinking, no, I am very empathetic. But am I? I understand other's pain & feelings, but I've noticed recently that I am really insecure about how to react to H's expression of feelings (even though they're minor right now). I don't deal with feelings well, I just put my head down and soldier on.
Why? Because I was the emotional sponge for my narcissistic mother for the first 25 years of my life. I was used for her emotional dumping grounds (trigger! same words I've used for what I did to H). I was never allowed or encouraged to have feelings of my own, but I had to be there for mother's feelings. And she had lots of them.
Then when I had enough of that co-dependent relationship with my mother, I cut it off. I didn't speak with my mother for 6 years and haven't talked to her in the last 6 months. I feel myself getting sucked into the same patterns with her whenever we do speak. Even last summer when we were speaking a little, she had to relate everything, all of my pain and experiences, to the betrayals she had in her own life.
That contributed to my 'get it done' mentality because I had to suffer through many things in life/R with H/family because I shut off empathy to others including myself!
Now what to do with this new understanding and how to use it...
