Gabby's Reply:
Hi Hilda: There are two paths
to take.
1) Surrender to your
programming and do the best you can to survive. Ninety percent of the
population deals with abusive parents and in-laws this way. This decision, to put up
with abuse, serves as a barrier to creating, and recreating at will,
the experience of joy and happiness. It also teaches your son to put up
with abuse and bullying.
2) Opt to transform your life. To do this you begin
by formulating an intention for your mother to behave exactly the way
she has been behaving. Mastery is intending what's so to be
so—otherwise, one gets what they resist. Next, and most importantly,
decide to not interact with people addicted to abuse, and then make that
choice* with each instance of abuse. For
you to continue to interact with her after reading this reply is proof
positive that you also are addicted to abusing and to being abused. BTW:
She cannot heal as long as you keep interacting with her; you have no
choice but to start arguments with her, unless of course you don't think
you start the arguments you "find" yourself in. "Victims always blame
others for starting the arguments.
This second path, opting to
transform your life, includes committing yourself to 3-hours of
free coaching or 25-hours of
individual therapy, and then 25 more hours with you and your
husband. Then, you and your husband would need to agree upon estrangement from
your entire family (except those members who complete the same amount of
coaching/therapy at your insistence).
Note: If
during therapy you discover that she is in fact an "angel," and you
realize that you have been the cause of the friction all along, then
the estrangement will have worked; it will have supported
enlightenment. You can clean things up later. Until you estrange
yourself from her you'll never be certain which of you is addicted
to creating abuse. Even if she drove you and everyone out of her
life we don't know if she'd then ask for support in
healing—experience tells me the mind would rather die alone, being
right that it was everyone else. It's an ego thing.
Re: [formulating an
intention for your mother to behave as she does]. Intending
another to do and say what they do is a powerful place to come from. For
this to become second nature you will have to engage the services of a
communication-skills coach so as to complete dozens of childhood
incidents (interactions-communications between you and your mother) that
were not mutually satisfying, beginning with the very first incident.
Each of these incompletes (now barriers
to communication) trigger automatic reactions. Your mother
does not need to be present for you to recall and complete these
incompletes.
You have dozens of lies
stored away in your mind. Your memories of what happened—who started
it—are inaccurate, so much so that you've lost the ability to accept responsibility for
causing the fights you get yourself into. Read: fights you unconsciously
intend (start psychically) so as to be right that she starts them.
Firstly: You need to be willing to acknowledge that you, and your
husband, and your whole family are addicted to abuse. You have no choice
but to create arguments at family gatherings. You are programmed to do
so. Keep in mind, the "nice" relative who seemingly doesn't argue is the
unconscious leader/starter/supporter of these "squabbles." Your story
suggests that you are addicted to this drama and that this letter
will merely allow you to see that you have no intention of resolving
this problem. Proof of this will be in five years when you'll notice
nothing has changed significantly. What's worse is you'll notice that
your son has begun acting up; he'll be dramatizing his
collection of incompletes due to your inability to get into
communication with him (see
Clearing Process for a Parent and a Young
Person/Teen).
Picture if you will the
ludicrous image of you arriving at a family reunion with a
huge club in your hand. This is you. You not only can't see the club,
you swear that you're the peacemaker, but everyone knows you're there to
fight. We know this is true based upon the results your
leadership-communication skills produce.
An abuse-free environment for
your son, though a noble enlightened thought, would require estrangement
from your entire family. Because you don't yet have the
leadership-communications skills it takes to inspire every family member
to do therapy you're confronting the choice of creating a new familial
paradigm (a new lineage). It's a challenging but awesomely rewarding
curriculum. I'd be remiss if I didn't share with you that I have the
thought that you will continue to submit your son to her abuse.
Secondly: You need to acknowledge that you have been out-integrity. It was
both unethical and
inconsiderate (abusive) of you to dump your relationship with your mother in
a date's (now your husband) space. You were supposed to have resolved
this one way or another—through counseling or through formal responsible estrangement.
For example: "Mom, I
won't interact with you ever again until you have completed 25-hours
of therapy. Good by."
However, the horse is out of
the barn so all you have to do now is;
1) Issue the ultimatum to
your mother and all family members.
2) Acknowledge that you and
your mom (you having empowered her) have been abusive to your husband.
To submit your husband to
such behavior detracts from his aliveness. It's not a
gift of love. What's worse is you have invalidated him as a
supportive person. He'd prefer to know that he has been the catalyst for
healing the rift. Instead he now has to acknowledge to himself, you, and
all others, that he has been supporting (empowering) you both in abusing
each other. This reveals his addiction to abuse. A man who is whole and
complete would never attract a woman with such stuff going on in her
life. Being whole and complete would allow him to know that all stuff
between him and his mother would be his
responsibility and therefore he'd know that you are
the cause of the friction between you and your mother. As it is, he
irresponsibly and unethically takes your side, (evidenced by his silent
support of you abusing your mother) therefore revealing that he has
something similar going on with someone whom he blames as you do your
mother.
L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, is reported to have said,
(paraphrased here) whenever you see two arguing abusively there's always a third
party in the wings pretending to be an ally to one or both combatants,
but in truth is unconsciously intending the friction for his/her own
survival. That is to say, your husband has been unconsciously intending
this mess. We know this by the results he's been producing using his
leadership-communication skills. His passive aggressive support of this
abuse keeps everyone's mind away from whatever he's hiding.
You
already know what's best for your son. You either want him to grow up
being influenced by the woman (your abusive mother) who trained you to
be abusive, argue and fight, or not. You either want to teach him to
blame you for the fights he starts with you or not. You either want to
train him to put up with abusive relationships or not. However
infrequently she would see him she still has tremendous power. One
conversation (actually, one non-verbal communication, one look) with her
every year is all it takes, such is the power of grandparent-imprinting.
It's even possible that eventually you would intend that she, the angel,
drive him away from you.
You need to get clear whether or not
your husband can totally support you and your child in complete estrangement
from your mother and all family members. Each family member
unconsciously supports her in abusing you. Estrangement means, neither
of you interacting with her until she has completed your therapy
requirement. If you elect estrangement then you (alone)
must begin therapy immediately because you are programmed to be your
mother. Once you send mom to her room for a time-out (estrangement) you
will have to create another sparring partner, mostly likely your
husband, or your son. You'll have to turn elsewhere to get your
adrenalin fix that now comes from abusive interactions with your mother.
It's a drug.
One last thought. Who in your life would say you are
ignoring them, someone who is similarly hurt? —Thank you, Gabby
* The
difference between a decision and a choice: At the very beginning of an amusement
park roller-coaster ride one has a choice, to go for it or not. Instantaneously, the
choice turns into a decision, one no longer has a choice; a decision
murders the alternative. This is what's going on with you. You, after a
specific childhood interaction with your mother, unconsciously made a
decision about her, and so you, in the middle of a conversation with
her, no longer have a choice. That decision runs you to this very day,
not only with her but with anyone who looks, smells, thinks, dresses or acts
like her. You're literally on the way down and have no choice but to
keep producing the same results. You'll have to recall that incident and
discover the lie your mind has manufactured so as to be right. Your mind
will hide that incident from you, that's the benefit of engaging the
services of a coach, one whom you can't con. Once you tell the truth
about that incident you'll no longer be at effect of her. It won't
change her behavior but it will put you in choice about submitting
yourself and your son and your husband to her machinations. More
accurately, you'll have a choice, whether to continue setting her up to
abuse you or not.
BTW: She too
is dramatizing a childhood incident from which she started acting the
way she has been. Most parents need to drive their children completely out
of their life so as to begin the healing.