(((SkyWhite)),

I am glad you ended up having good support from your friend. You really did deserve that, it was long overdue.

It was a good idea to write everything out, express the anger you have storred up, anger is an emotion that really pumps adrenaline into the body, so I bet you felt like running around or getting physical somehow.

Yes, you were a good child and your mother didn't appreciate you. However, what that really meant was that your mother simply could not tap onto her emotions. She locked you up or hit you because she could only get frustrated or angry, and really did not know how to fill your emotional needs, could be and often is because a parent did not have that themselves.

A parent will feel, "oh, my child doesn't love me, must be something genetic. Well, what these parents don't realize is that while sometimes it is because of Aspergers or another disorder that disconnects a child from their emotions (except for anger), it can also be that the mother is not "emotionally available" and is missing the "nurturing needs" of her child and isn't really connecting. Sitting and cuddling and reading a story is a good way to connect "emotionally" to a child, I began doing that when my daughter was an infant. Children's stories tend to have "emotional" things in them that are "age appropriate" and therefore the child and mother can follow along with the emotions that are being shared in the book. I can remember my daughter's favorite story, "Panda Bear's Paintbox", and while we read other stories, we always had to read that one too.

Oh, my daughter used to have to walk half in front of me and I found it annoying because I almost kept tripping over her. One day I got frustrated and told her to stop walking in front of me and why do you do that? She looked up at me and said, "That is because I love you mommy and I like to be as close as I can". Awww, I never expected that and felt bad I was sort of scolding her.

So, while you review what your mother did not provide and how she hit you or emotionally abused you, it is also important to see if you can get the "why" and if you look, the answer is usually there, only that child part of you didn't know what it meant. When you get these emotional pieces expressed and see some of the whys, it will relieve bad dreams which come from trying to process at night and struggling with that emotional part of "resolving".

Yes that little girl did deserve to be loved and nurtured better, all little girls deserve that, but not all little girls get that need met. The same thing also can happen to little boys too, and many of them block of their emotions too, yet become abusers because they are so uncomfortable with emotions or they may be too needy or lost and don't understand "why".

Complex PTSD, and most PTSD has a lot to do with the emotional part of the brain, not the intellectual processing part. There tends to be anger, fear, tears, and deep feelings on unworthiness involved. People who develop PTSD want to "not feel" again, to remember how to "block it out" like they used to. When we used the processing thinking part of our brains, for example concentrating on math, we disconnect from our emotional part of the brain, many things we do that may seem OCD almost, are functions that distract from our emotional/empathetic part of our brain. That is why those with Asperger's tend to be drawn to math and some are high functioning, however, they cannot connect to their emotional part of the brain, and yet they experience one emotion, anger or have a rage. It depends on the degree of autism that presents itself. Also I believe Schizoaffective disorder struggles with the emotional too, they often abhor cuddling or showing affection both giving and receiving.

So, now you are resolving your "emotional" challenges, getting much needed validations, and the Ghost of your mother will only be the confused part of your emotional mind that you can have validated and learn to understand better and grieve with the help of your therapist.

((Supportive Hugs)))
OE