Feeling worse after estrangement?

I recently became estranged from my mom and I've been feeling really depressed and anxious, like much more so than usual. The focus of the depression and anxiety isn't really my mom; it's mostly feeling isolated, relationship problems, disability, and poverty. I've had worse sleeping difficulties recently too, which I thought would cathartically get better when I was away from my mom for good because she used to tamper with my sleep cycle all the time. And I've been really really suicidal

Is it normal to feel WORSE and really empty after you cut off an abuser? Was anyone else here like this? I guess I was more of a wreck right after I got away from a DV situation too, and that was a few years and not a lifetime. How ought I to deal with this?

-- Sat Oct 29, 2016 3:42 am --

Something else not helping is that she's pretending she has no idea what I was talking about in the letter I wrote her saying I didn't wish to speak any more. I'm 90% sure she knows what I meant and I don't want to engage further, but it makes the whole thing vague and confusing and unacknowledged like everything bad that happened to me as a kid.

Dear PastelBlacks:

I too cut contact with my mother, May 2013. Before that, I daydreamed for years, decades, really, how wonderful it would be for me to no longer have her in my life. It was a dream! I felt like I will be finally free and the freedom would feel like I was a bird flying in a clear blue sky.

Didn't happen like that. There was no ... flying in the sky, no such feeling of freedom or happiness. Not for a long time. When I did feel happy it was for moments here and there. Over time, I became calmer. It was a slow, gradual RELAXING. It was the first step toward freedom.

But the fantasy of a happily-ever-after life I had if-only-I-cut-contact never happened and I believe, never will. It only seemed that way.

It is like a prisoner set free who doesn't feel that free, misses prison and commits a crime just so to go back to prison. Or a slave set free but still feels imprisoned. It takes TIME and healing work to sort of, update the brain with the new information.

My mother has a mental representative in my brain, so even though I cut contact with her, her representative kept abusing me. Takes healing work (started with my therapy) to heal from this inner-abuser.

And then there is this: our mother, no matter how abusive, sometimes was a source of comfort, be it by merely holding us when babies, or feeding, or putting a coat on us when cold.. or smiling to us that one time. When cutting contact with her, we miss that little comfort. Sure, it came with lots of neglect and abuse, but there was some comfort and we got attached to her. So it feels ALONE when you cut contact.

Write me anytime, if you'd like.

atina

I guess I am a little disappointed that I'm not skipping around freely or anything. I'm the same C-PTSD mess I was before, only instead of justifiably looking over my shoulder for my mom to come to my house and harass me, I'm looking over my shoulder with no-one there.

And my mom was really overinvolved, like she never wanted me to be a real adult and wanted to know all of my private business and be my confidant about everything (and vice-versa), so it feels like there's a void there. I always hated bringing her up every other word because she made herself such a part of my life when I was an adult, but now that I don't have constant mama drama any more I do feel like there's a void there. I don't have a job for the time being and there's a big hole where the last two years of my life went because I spent it mostly being really really sick, physically and mentally.

Sorry if none of this makes any sense; sleeping problems eat my coherence

Dear PastelBlacks:

In regard to your last post, regarding your void. I don't think you are experiencing void because of the lack of over involvement by your mother, the lack of mother-drama. That probably provided you at the time distraction from your void. I think the void is the lack of enough of YOU because she didn't give you space to develop more of you, hence the void.

atina

atina wrote:
I think the void is the lack of enough of YOU because she didn't give you space to develop more of you, hence the void.

atina

That is so good.

We get robbed of trust, do not develop good social skills, and so do not have other sin our life. We get isolated, by our abuser. Makes it very hard to leave.

It gets better, but takes work. Staying the way it was in my mind often gets worse.

The very first time I left my mom, we separated on bad terms. I was 18 and I ran away. She was hurt and missed me and yet she still put up a front that she was the mom and I was a bad kid and she was mean and hurtful to me when I had to come back because I was suffering from a terrible depressive episode. She never forgave me and still hasn't. People like my mom never change as I've seen now 23 years later. We were on much better terms this time and it's been a short while maybe 3 days that I said to myself that I missed her but then my own sister who sees her all the time tells me that it's good I don't talk to her, then I am reaffirmed that I made a good decision to have no contact with her. I remind myself not to lie to myself about what a bad person she is in my life.

It is hard to be on your own. I left at 18 years and I felt great at first and free and had a job but I was away from friends and family. I was homesick. I don't know if you're homesick but that played a big part in my depression. I went through a lot. I was manic too as I have bipolar. It was overwhelming and so I went back home only to find that about after 2 weeks she became the same "monster," as I will call her, that she had been before.

I guess the reason abusive parents never acknowledge their abuse is cause acknowledging would mean their years have gone waste. like at the end we look back at our life and hope to be proud of our achievements.

our parents are mostly old and if they accept they've done bad stuff, then they'd have nothing to look back to and be proud of.

so they LIE to themselves that what they did was
normal
others have done worse
that's how all parents are
that's how their parents were
they did it for the betterment of kids

my caretaker often says 'get over the past' i feel like punching her.

* Dear jaus tail: Excellent reply, if I may say so. I agree that abusive parents "LIE to themselves that what they did was normal" and they do often state that "others have done worse" and that "that's how all parents are" and the worst lie: that "they did it for the betterment of kids." I understand how these lies on top of the abuse make you, understandably angry at your abuser.
atina

[quote="jaus tail"]

my caretaker often says 'get over the past'

/quote]

that along with "I know (understand) what you went through" are maybe the two worst, most hurtful, things anyone can say to me.

we need to try and understand, we need to reconcile, where we are now, where we came from, and where we need to go, but the above is from someone who has no understanding at all..

I am so here right now.

I know that's rather millennial to say of me, so to clarify, I relate to this topic at the moment. It's also a personal play on words for me, because I used to keep a journal entitled "I'm not here right now" where I used a sort disassociation to cope.

When I was first cut off from my abusive mother, it was horrible. The night it happened, my brother had to hold me in his car to keep me from running back inside to apologize to her and make things "right" again. For a long time, I went over that moment in my head and wished I had been able to. I wanted "normal". I wanted the silliest, smallest things from my old life. Which honestly, I think was more just wanting actual normalcy. I missed... I missed the smallest moments. Not the common, day to day stuff like her yelling or fighting with me. I missed the brief, rare times I was just her daughter and not her punching bag.

Right after I was taken from her care, I fell into the worst depressive episode of my life so far, even including where I'm at right now. I literally stayed in my room for months. Often I didn't eat or sleep. I had horrible nightmares. I used to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, I kid you not, to dig a hole in the ground. I literally dug a hole big enough to sit in, and I would just sit there and cry in a hole. Its so weird, its almost funny looking back at it.

Things got better after that for a long time. It was hard, but I went to go see her every once in a blue moon while I was still a minor. Sometimes I felt guilty if the visits weren't good. But High School was fantastic, and I started feeling hopeful. It felt like, while it was horrible, that being forced from her home had freed me and given me a chance to recover.

Now, in my last year of college, I feel almost as bad as I did at 17. Our relationship has been all over the place, at times I stay connected, then we slowly grow apart. Or worse, I push her out of my life because I can't handle it. She'll recontact me, I'll panic, I'll recontact her, then panic. Its a vicious cycle that keeps our relationship freshly mangled. For a long time I tried to completely block her from my thoughts, and in the process managed to stuff a lot of memories (the good and the bad) deep down inside.

Her birthday was the 30th.
Which just washed a tidal wave of the same old emotions over me again. I hate myself for not being in her life. I fear the idea of contacting her. I fear even more, the idea of contacting her again just to make things harder for both of us all over again. But what if I just...keep not saying anything? How can I do that? I can't, not without guilt. As much as I want to block her from my mind she's still my mother. She will always be my mother, my only mother. And its an ache in my heart. Because I love her. I can't stop loving her, no matter how I've tried. I want her to love me too. I cling to the moments where I felt like she did.

She used to read me this book about pigs in a puddle when I was little and let me sit with her. It was something special we did together.
I still remember one day when she was really nice, and how she made plans for us to just spend the whole day together.
I remember climbing trees with her in the backyard.
I remember the few times she sang to me.
These thoughts make me break down into tears.
These thoughts make me want to call her right now and tell her how much I miss her.

I also remembered out of the blue today that she stopped hugging me after I was five. This thought has chased me around all day. After I was five I was suddenly "too big", and "too heavy" and if I ran at her like I used to to hug her she would tell me I was hurting her. I was five, freaking five. I had forgotten it. Pushed it away. But I can remember a tiny version of myself desperately trying to get her to hug me until I just gave up and a part of me was permanently crushed.
The next time she hugged me I was 17 and it was for show in a court room.
These thoughts make me so angry, for a child version of myself I wish I could defend.
These thoughts make me want to forget she ever existed so she can stop hurting me to this day.

To make it worse the estrangement isn't just with my mom. My family is just a big mess. Once upon a time, my mom and dad were married, and my two brothers and I lived in their house, all united. Then my dad got a divorce. Then it was me, my two brothers, and my mom. Then my oldest brother Elliott ran as fast as he could. Then my middle brother Glen ran as fast as he could. He went to go live with my dad, which my mom created a whole thing about. Then dad was the enemy more than he'd ever been before. Glen came back, probably because being estranged makes things 100 times worse. The cycle continues, of people coming back and leaving over and over. What's different is that there are sides. At first, we were all on the same side. Then it was "dad" or "mom". Then it was "Elliott", "dad" or "mom". Really, its more complex than that. But I can't talk to my dad and be talking to my mom. I can't talk to Glen and be talking to Elliott. I can't talk to Dad and be talking to mom or elliott. Its just... Awful. Throw in my grandfather and some aunts and cousins, and I literally have to chose who is estranged at any given moment in order to talk to even 20% of the people I love.

I'm sorry I'm ranting, this website in many ways is turning out to be a way for me to journal where no one will know who I am in real life and just get things out.