Mother Problem.

Question:

I try to be the best person I can. I go to yoga for my mind and body, and have taken meditation classes and Raj yoga seminars to help support and strengthen my beliefs. I feel I am doing well and try to grow and learn. I have wanted to ask your advice on a situation in my life.

My mother abused me as a child. She was given to a very violent temper, which caused her to physically abuse both me and my sister. My sister had a long heroin addiction, which she is now recovered from after rehabilitation about 15 years ago, and then a twelve-step program. In fact, the whole family is in twelve-step, my father a recovered alcoholic, my mother a compulsive overeater, and my boyfriend is a recovered alcoholic as well.

I have never had an addiction myself, but I am telling you this to show that the family has a belief system based on a higher power.

I have  forgiven my mother for the anger and fear she put into me as a child, understanding she was abused and knowing it would be the best thing for me to forgive. I have been in therapy on and off for over twenty years. I have dealt with a lot of fear/anger issues and anxiety due to the fact that I never knew when I would get screamed and or hit growing up, and for very mild things and sometimes for no reason. I wanted better for myself and I work on these issues.

Now I am forty, I have a jewelry company and a good job, I am very creative and so is my boyfriend, who is a kind and intelligent and growing person, who brought me to you.

The issue is that I have put out boundaries with my mother in the last few years. It is no longer the past, but the present I am dealing with. She says cruel things at whim and is extremely judgmental. Since I have started to defend myself and set time limits and she has decided she doesn’t want to contact me or see me or my boyfriend. I think she is threatened in some way and decided she does not like him. She also tends to say cruel things to insult him because he is still in school earning a masters and freelancing and not working full time as of yet. She has insulted him in a passive-aggressive manner during dinners. I set my boundaries and told her not to say these things and she won’t see me now. I have called my parents to say hello and try to get-together but my father does whatever my mother decides and so I have not seen them in over eight months, although they have become closer to my sister. I feel this is a co-dependent situation and they are using the relationship with my sister to not feel badly about shutting me out, and although my father and I have always been close he says he doesn’t want to see me without my mother because that has damaged his relationship in the past.

It all seems very complicated and dysfunctional with people siding and not being loving or accepting. And I cannot do anything because my mother has decided it is mean of me to set boundaries.

They are getting older and I feel guilty although in reality I don’t feel I have really done anything wrong.I feel very angry. I feel it was enough that I lived in terror as a child, and that I have practiced forgiveness, but now I feel abandoned because I defend myself and my boyfriend.

It is upsetting me very much and although I am in therapy to discuss the feelings, I feel powerless and sad and I was wondering what you might think about the situation.