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I am struggling
with a month long severe depression over an angry verbal outburst I unleashed at my mother
where I said words I deeply regret and can’t forgive myself for. She forgave me and I
went to confession, but I can’t forgive myself.
My depression began with me trying to cope and be loving and prayerful,
helpful whenever I came to nurse my dying father, in the face of a dysfunctional family.
My mother, whom I love, but who has been a huge part of my depression over the
years—and has brought me to me knees in despair through rejection, abandonment, throwing me
under the bus for my brothers, competing with me like I was one of her many sisters, showing me no
empathy—and hot/cold in her love for me. It was always me under her, her never apologizing.
I was constantly having to run from my brothers’ mistreatment. My mother would
stand back and watch it and my father would call out, “Please! I want peace! I’m dying”, but I
couldn’t stop the abuse I was copping from my brothers. Only my mother could, but she remained
silent and even supported my brothers.
My father had often been a target for my mother’s aggression, anger, controlling
behaviour, perfectionism, narcissistic personality disorder. But we love mother immensely and would
only try to make her happy at all costs, her wrath was that great.
But we had good times over the years. She’s religious and loved prayer meeting,
and I’d go with her as a little girl. She was also very sociable. She had lots of friends, but I
didn’t growing up. I was bullied at school, and she never knew it. A lot happened to me that was
horrible but she never knew it as I would have felt ashamed to tell her. But I really loved her
still.
Anyway my mother is a very tough stoic woman and I tried hard to help her with
dad. I was very close to my father and I would defend him, but again we all loved my mother and
would only want to please her at all costs. She ruled the roost.
Anyway, my father died, and my mother completely rejected me. So I felt I didn’t
matter at all. My mother didn’t even want to be with me on the time we had off to grieve, not
even one day together. So I was ashamed when people asked me how she was. I was only allowed to
“text” her, she said. I would sob and feel so excruciatingly hurt by her.
So upon my return to work I felt like it wasn’t just the grief I was going
through regarding my father, and my heart was broken with him gone as now it meant
I would not have him to help me and balance my mother out when she was being horrible to me. So I was
urged to just call her as she had ignored my efforts and texts. I was desperate. I couldn’t get her
on the phone so I called her friends for them to call her to call me. And she did.
But in that 30 min I was plunged into a very dark depression, where I didn’t
want to live anymore. I even screamed as I didn’t know how to express what I wanted to say to her.
I was at my end. It was like, “My father died and you kicked me to the curb...,.. how could you??” I
was just sobbing and crying.
And she was worried but not apologetic for having ignored me etc. And I told her
when she came over to see me that she needed to get help for her narcissistic personality that treats
me as a scapegoat and throws me under the bus for her boys, and competes with me, but I have
nothing but love for her.
Still no apology - she just wanted to get me help or medication.
I then let her have my anger. I said she was “to blame for dad’s illness as his
body said “No” to all the emotional abuse he copped, and that she should never have had a daughter, and
that she doesn’t have a daughter anymore, and that “it would be lucky if I went to your funeral.
Get out!” And she left the house.
A relief of 2 seconds lasted, then immediate remorse and shame.
I called her up and apologized, crying saying I loved her and didn’t mean it. She
forgave me and said it wasn’t like me etc. She never apologized to me.
I went to confession. God forgave me.
Why can’t I forgive myself?
And what can I do to be released of this self hatred and ruminating over my words
about not going to her funeral..... disgraceful. The regret and guilt and shame I feel over that
is too much.
A month since then and I have lost all joy. I can’t function, can’t face the day
when I open my eyes. Can’t have any peace. I read millions of articles to try to find answers and
watch videos to help but I still can’t forgive myself. I tell myself to do so, as God has forgiven
me. But the words I said to my mother are too bad.... no one should ever say that to their mother.
When I see my mother I feel worse as she’s so beautiful and how could I speak to her
like that?
What is wrong with me? Do I need meds? I tried Zoloft was it almost had me in
hospital as it made me feel like I was going crazy - massive anxiety and depression. I sleep a lot
and have no energy. I try to function for work and then collapse.
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 our experiences are quite similar to thousands
of other women around the world. You are tormented by a narcissistic mother, you cannot
“forgive yourself” for your confused mistakes, and you’re desperate to hide the truth that you
hate your mother. It’s all because you have been deceived by liberal theology into believing
lies about the nature of forgiveness. Let’s work through the matter to help you understand
it.
A Narcissistic Mother
You, like many other women I have seen,
have a mother with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Women such as your mother
give the appearance of being pure and noble—and holy, if they have any religion; and,
if they have any religion, they make themselves into the pillars of their parishes, and
priests love them for holding the parish together. But in their hearts they are religious
frauds and cruel monsters, especially to their daughters.
They were humiliated in childhood by their
parents, and they fear the pain so much that they lack empathy for themselves—and so they
lack empathy for others. They hate themselves for being weak, and so they are arrogant
and haughty to others to make themselves feel bigger. They envy anyone who might get what
they did not get in childhood. They exploit others to get what they believe they deserve.
They do it all with an air of nobility—sometimes even religious nobility—that perniciously
hides the poison in their hearts.
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Narcissists enjoy causing
pain to others because the narcissists feed on the suffering the others
experience. |
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Thus your mother beats you down to prevent you
from receiving the admiration she did not receive when she was a child.
The Real Battle
You really are in a battle with the masked
evil of a narcissist and a spiritual fraud. But the liberal, watered-down
Catholicism of your mother cannot recognize evil. Instead it propagates a “meek and mild”
sentimental misconception of forgiveness. “Be nice.” “Everyone means well.” “Keep the peace.”
“If there is any tension, it’s your fault.” This is not forgiveness; it’s political correctness
that is as far from being “correct” as hell is from heaven. And it leaves you helpless, confused,
and unable to think clearly about the world around you.
Your Symptom
Whenever you feel distressed, you believe that
your peace of mind requires that you must make others do what you want them to do.
This need to make others do what you want them to do is your symptom; that is, it’s
an unconscious defense from childhood against the abuse inflicted on you by your mother. In
childhood, your mother’s abuse was so incomprehensible that you believed your safety depended
on making her admit that she was wrong for not loving you and for abusing you.
Recently, your symptom manifested as wanting to make
your mother apologize to you. To do this, first you reasoned with her, and then, when reason failed,
as an act of ultimate desperation your hysterical crying was a way to bribe her by
sending yourself to hell in order to prove to her how much she had
hurt you by not doing what you wanted. And when that failed, you got angry and yelled at
her.
But your anger set off a new dynamic: you were the
one who needed to apologize. Yes, she accepted your apology, but she still refused to apologize
for her original behavior that offended you. Her refusal has now sent you into a desperate
emotional frenzy as an unconscious way to bribe her to apologize to you, as if to say to
her, through your depression and dysfunction, “I’m falling apart, and my destruction will be
your fault if you don’t do what I want you to do!”
Real Forgiveness
Real forgiveness is not meek and mild; it
requires a clear, tough-as-nails resolute conviction of God’s justice.
In real forgiveness we approach God and say, “God, I have been hurt. What was done to me is
wrong. In my anger I want the justice of making the one who hurt me
to admit the wrong. But I leave the justice to You. I trust that sooner or later the one who hurt
me will stand before You in judgment and will have to account for any wrong done. If that person
is innocent or repentant, then You will show
mercy; if innocence or repentance is lacking, then Your justice will flare.
But none of this is any of my business. I relinquish my anger; now guide me in what I can do from
here.”
Forgiving Yourself
Contrary to what you falsely believe, there was no
sin in telling your mother the truth about her cruel behavior, telling her that she is a fraud,
and telling her that you want nothing to do with her as she is.
Your sin was only in the way you told her these things; that is, you told her with
anger, and that means that you told her these things with the intent of
hurting her rather than calmly stating the facts about how her behavior hurt you.
Your other sin is in using depression
(which is anger at yourself) as bribery to influence your mother. That is, you are angry at your
mother because she is abusive and doesn’t love you, but, because you have not succeeded in making her
apologize for her abuse and lack of love, you’re angry at yourself for failing to make her apologize.
That anger leads to mental confusion. You insist on saying you love your mother because it’s all a
way to hide the truth that you hate her. Therefore, in your depression you fail to take personal
responsibility for your own confused behavior. And in that hiding of the truth, and trying to undo
it with bribery, you commit a sin.
Therefore, it will be necessary for you to confess both
the anger with which you spoke to your mother as well as your using depression as an
act of bribery. Making that confession, you can trust in God’s mercy on
you. That act of accepting God’s mercy, rather than punishing yourself, is what it means to
“forgive yourself.”
Fear of Forgiving
You do not understand real forgiveness because you
fear admitting that your mother is a cruel narcissist and a fraud as a Catholic. You fear admitting
this because you unconsciously want to protect your mother from facing judgment for the truth that
she is an abusive parent. And behind this you fear admitting that your father
failed you for failing to protect you from your mother’s abuse.
Yes, even though your mother’s abuse is wrong, your anger
is also wrong. But, rather than hiding the anger in shame, it is important for you to admit that anger,
first to yourself and then to God. It must be confessed and relinquished. Nevertheless, your mother
and your father will have to face the truth of their behavior—eventually—before God. You cannot protect
them from God’s justice.
The Matter of Reconciliation
Note carefully that your mother’s failing to apologize
to you for her cruel behavior is not any impediment to the process of your being able to forgive
her. Your forgiving her means your letting go of your anger at her by trusting in God’s justice. Her
failure to apologize does, however, affect the matter of reconciliation.
Reconciliation refers to the process of repairing
broken trust in a relationship. To repair that trust, both parties in the relationship must apologize
for any wrong that was done. Thus, without her apology, you will not be able to trust your mother, even
though you can forgive her (i.e., relinquish your anger at her by trusting in God’s justice).
Impediments to Healing
The liberal Catholic Church will not aid your
healing because, it, along with the secular culture in which you live, holds out the false
belief that being nice and accepting anything will bring utopia to
earth. But no, that is all just an open door to demons who bring hell to earth.
To find the peace you seek, you don’t need
medication, you need truth. So begin with the
truth. You hate your mother because she is a spiritual fraud.
Admit it. She is a fraud. Then bring that pain to God. But also admit that your anger is wrong.
Relinquish it. Then leave the justice to God. Then, secure in His justice, set about living a
holy life yourself to protect yourself from the evil, fraud, and
lies attacking you.
Related pages:
How to become
a good Catholic despite emotional wounds from an abusive mother
Finding love when
love was missing in childhood
Estranged from a narcissistic mother
Anger at a parent
Sending yourself to hell in order to prove to others how much they have hurt you.
Wanting to undo past sins
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