Completely heartbroken

Okay, I will try to reword:

Good job telling her no when you thought that you needed to say no.

How is that?

I said no to putting makeup on me because I'm afraid of attention from people, not because I didn't want to try it or that I didn't want her to put it on me or that I was scared it would blur boundaries for me.

Thanks for your reply. I think that my point still stands: you did well in that you had a reason to say no and you said no.

lol I don't have a problem saying I'm not going to do something if I don't want to do it. I accidentally made T's intern cry yesterday because she challenged me not to drop any f-bombs in group. I told her I have no interest in participating in a game that involved censoring me. If my language was offending/triggering other clients, then I will chose to use different language out of respect for them, but she's going to have to come up with a better reason than for the sake of some juvenile game in order to convince me to conceal how I really feel. She was I guess shocked by the strength of my conviction/unwillingness to cooperate.

I don't actually really know what made her cry. She didn't do it in front of me. She held herself together and returned to the office before bursting out into tears. My T was in the office and she hunted me down and asked what happened because she instructed her to talk to me and then she comes back in tears. I can be a bit abrasive so her assuming that I tore into her wasn't a crazy assumption. I told her what happened, T thought her reaction was odd, we went and talked to her and I guess everything is fine. T and I briefly talked about that today and neither one of us can figure out why what I said made her react like that. I must have said something and I don't remember it or she has her own problems. I don't know. Anyway, I have very little issue putting my foot down.

Thanks! It sounds like your concern then is not knowing where the boundaries should be with T. In situations where you have figured that out, you don't expect to have a problem sticking to them.

Yeah. I'm not actually convinced she knows where they are. No, I think she does. She's just decided not to be conventional. I think she is very confident in her abilities and likes to keep boundaries where she just intuits they belong as opposed to following a book. She has different boundaries with different clients. She won't talk to one client about her appearance or food at all while she finds no issue in asking me to shower. She'll mess around and joke with me and ask me to do small favors for her like reminding her of the time while she wouldn't do that with another client. She said she would never EVER take one client out shopping when she would love to do that with me if we had the time. It might mean that she feels closer to me and more maternal to me, but I also think it is because she feels I need help taking care of myself and I need to experience having an older woman mother me unlike this other client who needs to not have any attention brought to her appearance.

Maybe she wants to be a partial mom and I have a hard time with that idea. Maybe I'm just confused by the boundaries when I probably shouldn't be. She doesn't seem to think that feeding into my maternal transference is a big issue while she does think that me talking to her 24/7 and relying on her to manage my emotions is. I need to experience a healthy, normal mother/20 year old daughter relationship because at this stage in life, a 20 year old doesn't rely on their mother for constant emotional support. They find that support mostly within and T wants me to try and follow suit. I really don't know. I have trouble asking her because I don't want her to stop playing this part and I feel like she's telling me every day how she is defining this relationship but I just don't get it for some reason. I'm either thinking too hard or there is some sort of mental block. Or emotional block because I don't know how to accept being cared for without blurring the boundaries.

I don't want to sound like a stuck record but your T's way of interacting with you does make me uneasy, ie the comment about 'doing what a normal mother would do'.

And as it happens, no a healthy 20 year old in a good relationship with their mother doesn't look to the mother for constant emotional support, but the thing is everyone is different and in different circumstances. A 20 year old with depression will be more dependent on their mum than a 20 year old without any mental health issues. Or any other illness, or rough time, or whatever. That's why I find what she's doing deeply uncomfortable - she makes these little throwaway remarks likening herself to your mother, and does these simple yet lovely and important things for you (like helping with the make up) but what I find incongruous is that that's ALL she can do - whereas, a 'real' mother would go to the ends of the earth for you and lay down their life to make things ok for you. Good mothers fervently wish they could do anything to take away your pain, and would gladly swap places with a beloved child and suffer instead of them.

Obviously, your T cannot (and shouldn't) do that - so it's not fair to play this cat and mouse game with you. I think it's really cruel to make references to being a 'mother' to you, when she is so, so limited in what she can do.

Just to reiterate, I am aware this is my opinion. I'm not saying it's right or wrong for anyone else, and am prepared to be educated on why I might be wrong in my view.

I don't actually really know what made her cry. She didn't do it in front of me. She held herself together and returned to the office before bursting out into tears. My T was in the office and she hunted me down and asked what happened because she instructed her to talk to me and then she comes back in tears. I can be a bit abrasive so her assuming that I tore into her wasn't a crazy assumption. I told her what happened, T thought her reaction was odd, we went and talked to her and I guess everything is fine. T a,nd I briefly talked about that today and neither one of us can figure out why what I said made her react like that. I must have said something and I don't remember it or she has her own problems. I don't know. Anyway, I have very little issue putting my foot down.[/QUOTE]

Good evening,

I see relationships being triangulated. In my experience it rarely ends well..... all involved can get hurt. Hoping it doesn't happen in this situation.

Sabra

I worry about her being a little bit careless about her words at times. I'm not sure if that is just me being excessively nervous of being really close to someone and then getting hurt or a legitimate concern. I don't know if it is really hurting me when she says something and then I wonder why she would say that in the context of the T/client relationship because I'm analyzing her as a human being capable of making mistakes as opposed to a mother figure. I'm not just blindly clinging to her every word like a child would actually do with their mother. I'm highly critical of everything I hear from absolutely anyone because my parents lied to me so much as a kid and I wonder if the fact that she knows I'm constantly doing (because she absolutely does know) that makes her feel more comfortable just talking because she knows I'll either take her statements as something to analyze, or confront her if I think she screwed up.

The thing is that I agree, a good mother would go to the ends of the earth for their child. I just don't know what that looks like. I don't know what that would entail. My mother didn't do these basic things like help me with makeup or comfort me when I cried. Simple basic things like that feel like her going to the end of the world for me because no one gave that much of a damn to do that in the past. I mean the fact that anyone would take time out of their life to try and make me feel better is a really big deal to someone who has only known worse if that makes any sense. I don't really know what I could expect of her that would be "going to the ends of the earth". She argued with my mother on the phone, trying to protect me, while throwing up with the stomach flu from her house on a sick day. No one has ever done anything remotely like that for me before. No one has ever actually tried to protect me.

I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't over intellectualize her as much and just take what she gives me.

Again, this is just my opinion - but now I have thought about it some more, I think she is doing you a disservice by bringing the 'mother' angle into it at all. She does some wonderful, precious things for you, but in my mind it is damaging for you, with your pain and your past, for her to hang this relationship on a mothering framework. Her poor choice of words ('like a mother') cheapen the profound care she has for you, imo. If I were you, I'd be agonized and confused, because I'd see how much she genuinely did care, but it would feel like she was playing mummy to me like kids in the playground, lightly picking it up and setting it aside on a whim, not quite realizing how deeply these isolated acts of 'mothering' affected me.

I'm answering from a position of someone who lost my wonderful mother who adored me utterly to cancer, when I was twenty five. So my loss is a different kind to yours, which is the 'never having had a mother'. Perhaps my kind of mother-pain is located in such a radically different place to yours I struggle to understand, so maybe that is skewing my perception, but I don't know.

Yes, sometimes I do feel like she is picking me up and setting me down without really realizing how much of a roller coaster it sends me on. The thing is that I could tell her about this. I could pull her aside tomorrow and tell her. I know she won't explain her behavior to me or try to make it right because both of us know that I'm obsessing over her solely to avoid obsessing over being afraid of going to Detroit. She'd much rather have me worry about our relationship than have me worry about facing my abusive family in less than 48 hours and if that means going slightly crazy thinking about my T, she is not going to take that away from me now. She also won't take away playing the mom role right before I have to go back. Why would she suddenly pull the carpet out from under me even further?

I worry that she'll forget about me over the break. I worry that she won't call when she says she will or answer my emails. She'll get lost in time because I'm not there to lend her my watch and she'll be 30mins late to calling me because she was talking to another client. Someone who is actually paying for her time. I worry that she'll move on to another client and forget me completely, leaving me alone in that basement to rot. I worry she won't set up times with me and she'll just disappear from my life completely like every other mother figure I've ever had. I don't want her to fade away.

I worry that she'll be happy that I left. I worry that I annoy her and she will appreciate the distance. I worry that she looks forward to being able to hang up the clock I made her take down in the meeting room over a month ago because I hated the ticking noise so much. I worry that in my absence, she'll realize her life was better without me and lose interest in me altogether.

I worry that I'll build her up over the break so much that she couldn't possibly live up to my expectations and I'll be crushed when I return. I'm scared of the relationship changing when we move to weekly sessions as opposed to basically constant contact. I know that change doesn't mean change for the worse, but it's still scary.

I probably should talk to her about the last three paragraphs I wrote because those are tangible things that she can actually address without worrying that she's robbing me of a potentially helpful coping mechanism that isn't as maladaptive as others.

If she doesn't realise how much of a roller-coaster her words and actions are sending you on then she has no business using them.
You can be reparented in therapy to an extent. But reparented doesn't mean you get to be a little girl and you get your dream mommy and you both go play-act shopping trips and mother-daughter moments. Reparenting in therapy is a really poor substitute for what it is you really want in your heart.
Reparenting if done right, can be very healing but it is all done WITHIN the confines of therapy, within the therapy room. It has limitations in that it can only respond to the parts of you that haven't been able to grow up emotionally and a compatent therapist will meet you where you are emotionally and respond in a healthy consistent way to let those parts of you learn and to grow up. It's not about rewriting history.
Your therapist/case manager is really not being clear about what the boundaries are, what the therapeutic reason is for going shopping with you- you are an adult and perfectly capable of going shopping for yourself, what was her role there? She's allowing you to indulge in this fantasy that she can be your "other-mother" giving you false hope, while at other times towing the therapist line about boundaries and bringing it all back to a therapist/client relationship and nothing more. Very confusing and very unfair.

You have a mother. She might not be a very good one, and clearly she has her own issues but a mother who doesn't care doesn't financially support her daughter thru college, doesn't advocate fiercely for what she thinks is best for her daughter (even if she is wrong and abusive or whatever is going on with her) let her 20 year old daughter come home, a mother who truly doesn't care kicks you out as soon as possible and has nothing to do with you. On some level no matter how screwed up she is, in her own limited way she is showing her love and care for you.

I'm not sticking up for her when i say that, i think she's done terrible damage to you but it's not black and white, there are shades of grey. And she thinks what she's doing is out of love. That's what mothers do.

No therapist will ever come close to fighting for you the way a mother (abusive or not) will. No therapist will ever fill that hole you feel inside, in fact no human will ever fill it. The only person that can do it is you. It becomes filled once you stop frantically avoiding the work that needs to be done, and find the acceptance that you had a crap childhood and have a crap mother. Once you face that, then you can begin the journey of grieving for the loss of it all. And the more you grieve and accept and practice self-care, the less that void becomes. You have a lot of hard work ahead of you, but it will only start once you stop looking for a new mommy and stop avoiding the real loss.

I was really good at that.

No. She advocates for what is best for her. Not me. If she advocated for me, she'd listen to what I want and what the trained professionals believe is best for me. She financially supports me so she can brag to her friends about what I'm doing with my life. She cares about what I can maybe do for her and me as an extension of her but she doesn't give a damn about me. She doesn't even know me. When prompted with ideas for structure, she recommended that I go to church support groups and walk dogs. I'm an atheist and I'm afraid of dogs after seeing my sister get attacked by a great dane when I was 8. She doesn't know me so how can she possibly care about me?

If she cared about me, why didn't she come see me in the hospital? She's not poor. She could have easily afforded a plane ticket and gotten out here. If she was so concerned and so distraught, why did she drop off the face of the earth and completely stop trying to talk to me? She wants to make herself out to be a martyr because she spends money on me. She has an abundance of that. She can spend all the money she wants, but at the end of the day she wasn't going to make an effort to come out and support me. Trust me, I didn't want her to. I didn't want to see her face. But I thought she'd at least offer.

She's not "letting me come home". She's forcing me to go back to her basement so she can feel like she is controlling me. You might come back with "oh well she can't force you to do anything". She said if I don't go back, she will completely cut me off, stop paying for my treatment, stop paying my rent, stop paying for my school. And I wouldn't be able to get a job fast enough to have a chance in hell at supporting myself in any conceivable way and I don't have a credit score so I can't get a loan. So she made my options being homeless and starving or going back. She's not "letting" me do anything.

I don't care if she thinks she is doing this out of love. I don't care if she does love me in some twisted way. I don't even care if she does care about me. If love involves physically hurting me, terrorizing me, guilt tripping me, emotionally neglecting me, mocking me, destroying my relationships with my other family members, etc, then I want no part of it. She can take her "love" and shove it because her "love" means **** to me. The woman that gave birth to me is not my mother beyond biologically. She is a bully who uses me to build herself up and loves watching me crash down.

Maybe this is black and white thinking. Maybe I should be more sympathetic towards her because of her obvious diagnosed mental issues and unresolved issues with her parents. But I honestly have no sympathy and quite frankly, she doesn't deserve it. I was a child and she should have known better. Having mental issues or a rough past is a reason for bad behavior and is in NO way an excuse. To me, this is very black and white. If someone is tearing me down and hurting me whenever they interact with me, they don't care about me and I want them out of my life. And I believe that it should be black and white in this case. People shouldn't make excuses for their abusers and shades of gray fade when someone is being hurt.

I hate this notion that people have that because she's my biological mother I need to have sympathy or patience for her or say that I have a "mother" who cares for me in dollar bills. "Blood is thicker than water". Well, maple syrup is thicker than both and I've gotten so much more emotional support from pancakes than my mother. "It's better than nothing". That's ********. I would much rather have had no mother at all than have a mother who made me live every day of my life feeling like a mistake.

I'm sorry to just suddenly lash out a ton of anger at your post. I don't really know what you were hoping pointing that out would accomplish and I appreciate that you are trying to help and that your post didn't warrant this much of a backlash, but saying that I have a mother who cares about me because she supports me financially despite being abusive all my life is kinda like saying that my father cares about me because he wires me money occasionally despite the fact that I think he raped me. I don't care if they "care". If they cared in an adequate way, they would have cared enough to treat me like a decent human being instead of some troll they regret having.

You've completely missed the point of my whole post. I suspected you might.

Nowhere did i write that what she does or has done is acceptable, nor did i say she deserves sympathy or anything else that you've just written. What i was trying to say was that no matter how bad a job she did/does, it's her way, she thinks it's love as twisted as it is. I read a quote once that really really resonated with me and it went along the lines of
"Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want, doesn't mean they don't love you with all that they have." Meaning people are sometimes very limited in how they are able to show or give love and some show love in the only way they can and sometimes that's via money. I have a parent the exact same in that respect. I too have pretty terrible emotionally neglecting and abusive parents and i've had to learn that they are just damaged people, limited in their abilities as a parent. But both would insist they love me or that they did their best. THey think they did, i know different. Some people just shouldn't be parents.

The main point which you've successfully ignored is that the healing needs to come from you. Only you can do it, only you can find acceptance and only you can decide how your life is going to turn out from here on in. Every decision you make or refuse make will only and directly impact you. You have to stop looking for mother figures, it won't make you happy and you'll never get what you truly want from a therapist. Trust me on this. You can rage all you want at me, or anyone else who challenges you on this matter but it does not change the fact that you need to stop indulging in a fantasy and start dealing with the reality, because until you do, you will flounder and you will feel miserable and desperate and like you're walking about with one big massive wound all the time. How much of your life you want to give to that is entirely up to you now.

So much tone. But it's to be expected after I just erupted at you.

I don't care if she loves me with all that she has. I don't really know why this is even apart of the discussion.

I also am dealing with reality. If I wasn't aware of the fact that a therapist can't ever completely fill the void in my life, I wouldn't have made this thread or expressed concern about some of the things she is doing despite how much I enjoy it. I don't know where the boundaries should be and I actually never said anything about any part of your post other than the part that made me angry so how can you conclude that I was raging at you for telling me that my T can't solve all of my problems when I didn't even mention her? I don't read things in order and I started reading your post in the middle and got so heated by the statement about my mom that I didn't really read anything else if you want me to be totally honest. I saw the words but couldn't read them because I was boiling too hot.

I'm also not actively seeking mother figures. It's not like I'm literally thinking to myself "hmmm I am going to start viewing this woman as a mom". This just happens to me. My brain does this automatically and no one has offered any way to fix that beyond "you have to heal through yourself. You have to care for yourself". How? I literally don't know how to heal myself because if I did, I wouldn't be in therapy for six hours a day and then on a mental health at night. My T is attempting to teaching me how to care for myself by showing me care. I'm trying to heal through myself. Don't through me under the bus and say that I'm running away from reality just because I can't just snap my fingers and get over my issues.

Growli, I've said it before, that I think your T is doing OK by you. She is fulfilling different roles for you because she is in different roles: T, case manager, residential, and, yes, surrogate mom. I don't see any evidence that she's surreptitiously undermining you psychologically to make herself your mother. Nor that she's being careless. I know there are those who disagree, and I respect their concerns, but I think those concerns come from a place of defensiveness and self-protection, rather than speak to your situation. I think her balancing of casual engagements like buying make-up with the expectation that you take on more of your own emotional self-regulation, shows both her care and carefulness.

There is little to nothing about your childhood and relationship to your parents that is "normal," yet there seems to be a lot of emphasis from them on putting forward a public image of normalcy. Money can go a long way to creating such an image. I know. But underneath the surface, it's all terribly, terribly wrong.

It's pretty clear that your family is deeply dysfunctional, and while I might be able to find some sympathy for your parents as individuals, their actions are inexcusable. The fact that your mother is acting the way she is now speaks volumes about how she must have acted during your childhood.

I'm pretty sure your T recognizes this, and I think what she's doing is trying to be a stabilizing influence for you on a number of levels. And one of those levels is that of daily, casual, normal, maternal interactions. Experiences you should have had growing up, but were denied. I think she wants to help you experience a foundation of normalized experiences that will help you to develop the emotional strength to disengage from the dysfunction of your family. You can't let go of the powerful negative tie to your family until you have something to replace it. What replaces it is a combination of practical experiences, emotional development, and psychological growth.

It's understandable that your emotional reactions to your relationship are going to swing widely. I think the best thing you can do is share those reactions in real time as much as possible with her. This will help her to calibrate how she is with you more closely. I think it will also allow you to build up more security with her, and quiet some of the doubts and fears about her failing you.

There is life beyond your family, and you will get there.

My dad used to tell us these old Italian folk tales, and i feel like i just figured one out recently. I remember being puzzled by it when i first heard it. He said this man had this donkey that he decided to train to live on less and less food, to save money. Then the man said, darn my luck, three days after i teach the donkey to survive on no food, she dies! Now i wonder if he saw that that was how my mother was treating me, teaching me to survive on less and less attention. Because honestly, the first few times i heard this story, it sounded perfectly reasonable to me. Just a little positive attention would have made such a big difference. What was wrong with them? And we are smart, talented women - thats what gets me. My t says over and over, most parents WANT kids like you, that study etc.

I get this! I've done the same thing. I couldn't snap my fingers either

I was trying to impart my knowledge and experience of what you are going thru, in the hope that it saves you years and years of pain. What i told you, i wish someone had told me at your age. I probably wouldn't have been ready to accept it either but just having that information to ponder on would have helped me so much.

I can see that you are actively seeking mother figures from your posts, you were the exact same way about your old therapist if i remember correctly.I can conclude that you are raging at people and me in this post because to quote your own words;
"I'm sorry to just suddenly lash out a ton of anger at your post" Plus i detected so much tone from you too. You've lashed out at others in your threads when you don't like what is being said. and you admitted it yourself
" I started reading your post in the middle and got so heated by the statement about my mom that I didn't really read anything else if you want me to be totally honest. I saw the words but couldn't read them because I was boiling too hot."
So yes, i think you have deep rage.

I don't expect you to snap your fingers and be over it all, i have said that anywhere, i think in fact i've empathised with the hard journey you have ahead of you. But i have also seen you actively ignore posters who have offered similar views to myself. It seems you are not ready to hear what it is actually going to take to feel better. I am not throwing you under a bus as you put it, i don't have that power. You can take or leave my offerings of experience and knowledge, completely up to you.

Feralkittymom; I am not coming from a place of defensiveness or self-protection, i am coming from a place of realisation, acknowledgement, acceptance and a ton of experience. I have been in that place of looking for mothers and i have suffered it and come out the other side (with a lot more work still to do ).
My problem with the therapist in question is that she is clearly not getting thru to the OP precisely what the boundaries are or what the methods are she's using, what the expectations are etc etc. But i also realise we are only getting one version of what is actually going on.

Clearly i am not of any help on this issue so i'll take leave now.

Asiablue you are very wise. I totally agree with everything you have said for this poster, I've been following growlithings posts for a long time. This isnt the first nor the last time she will be upset by advice given from people with years of experience and knowledge. I hope that soon she will choose not to be upset but open to these truths.

Feralkittymom; I am not coming from a place of defensiveness or self-protection, i am coming from a place of realisation, acknowledgement, acceptance and a ton of experience. I have been in that place of looking for mothers and i have suffered it and come out the other side (with a lot more work still to do ).

Asia, I should have said "some of the concerns" rather than imply that all concerns carried the same origins; I'm sorry.

I think there's a difference between seeking out someone as a mother, acting out in a way that manipulates them to prolong a fantasy, and a T who facilitates that, either knowingly or through incompetence; and recognizing an unfullfilled maternal need, examining it, and accepting the reparative actions of a T in the service of filling the developmental holes so that the need dissolves. My belief is that Growli and her T are pursuing the latter. Of course, that will involve moments of confusion and flexibility of boundaries. None of us can know for sure, but the program Growli is part of seems credible, and this T is not acting in isolation, so that gives me confidence, too.

Deleted. Can´t get my opinion across without sounding harsh and that´s not my intention.

This is coming based off Asia's and growli's posts:

My mom didn't do anything maternal really. She had high expectations that were set for me, and she is "proud" of me only in the sense that she can brag to others about how successful I am. She's never done any of the things that I think are traditionally given to the mother-role: she's never gave me advice (aside from telling me what to do when I had not asked), she's never listened to my problems, she's never comforted me, she's never been someone I could go to when I was upset at all, she didn't teach me anything at all about women's health, she in fact wouldn't allow me to shave or wear make up, and things like that. I can't even think of what else is traditionally the sort of thing that only involves mothers/daughters.

I grew up in a pretty emotionally neglectful environment - I didn't have a single family member that I felt safe around. I was either a non-existant entity or actually rejected by the whole lot of them.

My mom does not have an understanding of what a healthy relationship should be. I'm aware of that, but I was not aware of that when I was a kid. I started to figure it out when I was in highschool.

My mom thinks that she has done a spectacular job raising me, and thinks that she's an excellent mother. Has she been an excellent mother? No. I've learned things from her, some of which are even good things, but almost all of them I learned in a very negative context and they weren't what she was actively trying to teach me.

So growli, I relate to not having ever had a mother figure. I can at least say that I did not have any physical abuse, but sometimes that makes it hard for me to accept that what went on in my life actually was real. So.... I relate to your struggles.

I do not forgive my family for their actions. I never will, because it was wrong. But I accept that it happened, and furthermore, I accept that my mom really does think she did the best that she could do. Yes, her primary use for me is to be evidence to the rest of the world that she's done a good job as a mom. And as messed up as that is... she is in fact incapable of seeing it that way. Nothing I could ever imagine doing would ever make that clear to her. And I've been having to learn to accept her that way. I cannot remold her into something else, and I cannot replace her with someone else.

She's the only mom that I will ever have, and she's a **** mom, but that's how my cards were dealt. Until I decided that I was done trying to change things, I was not able to change things. I tried to change me - to the point where I don't really even know who I actually am, because I just kept changing me around to try and be what she wanted. ((You, on the other hand, seem to be trying to change things by getting yourself a new mother)).

After I decided that I wasn't going to keep trying to change, my life was able to start changing. Was it hard as f***? Yes. Did it cause even more issues with my family? Hell yes. But it has been changing, and it's still changing, and it's still hard. I still don't really know who I am, but I'm trying to get to whoever I was or am or might have been. I don't really know - there's a lot messed up in a my head and a lot of it contradicts itself. And my relationship with my mom? It's a lot more manageable. (Honestly, mostly because of distance!). I set up clear boundaries with my family as soon as I was out of their home, and my mom has learned a bit about how to navigate with them - because I will just not have any contact at all if it's going to be stressful. And that took a LOT of time and effort and it is still a struggle. But I had to just accept the situation as it was and not keep trying to make the sort of relationship that would have been seen as normal.

The point I guess is... I agree with Asia. My mom might have done a S*** job at being a mom, but she doesn't view it that way. It doesn't excuse her, but it does let me accept it. My mom tried her best, and her best was absolutely rubbish, and she can't even see that. Your mom is likely doing the same thing - she's absolutely f******* stuff up and what she is doing is in no way excuseable, but she likely thinks she's doing a bang up good job at being a mom - and she likely has no concept of how to be better, because she already thinks she's doing what she is supposed to.

It's totally something that deserves anger, but you'll never be able to move forward until you can accept that she has sucked at it and that you will just never have that relationship. You do keep trying to replace it, and it's sad that we can't replace it.... so I guess that is what you need to actually accept, inside, and not just on an intellectual level.

Anyway. This is massive and I don't know if my point has came across at all.

Well obviously I have a ton of deep rage.

I lashed out at others in the past when they accused me of basically just sitting on my *** and doing nothing to try and help myself or implied that because I hadn't cut myself off from my parents, the things I have done for myself don't count. Maybe that is something I just picked up in their posts and is completely unprecedented, but I don't know.