FireSprite

I know I'm not the only one to experience this (thank you all for validating it anyway), but I do think it's pretty significant when it's coming from your mother at such an impressionable age/time of life. It's something I only just recently (in the last few years) even realized WAS affecting me on such a deep, deep level.... that it had such a profound impact on my self esteem now. That is was still true now! But again, there's never an easy way/time to hear this kind of hurtful statement.

I'm really glad that I started this conversation because I felt SO much better just getting it all typed up/thought out. This is where "journaling" helps me slow down & process in a way that conversation/therapy doesn't.

Interactions with my mother used to end the way you describe - even just phone calls were tremendously upsetting. (Especially once I started setting boundaries & no longer allowed her to call me just to rant about my sister for hours, about things she'd never say to her face... I was a key player in her ongoing triangulation.)

I cannot agree with Bernadette more about things like massage, acupuncture/pressure, reiki, yoga, meditation, breathing exercises. And crying it out - at the end of those conversations I would just WEEP from the exhaustion of the interaction & the new feeling of independence that felt a lot like isolation at first. All those feelings & thoughts I couldn't express directly to her (my side of the street + she wasn't receptive) still rose up & I still needed to let them go. I've used mantras, mudras, colored mandalas, distracted myself with exercise or junk tv, reached out to a good friend to talk it through - whatever it takes.

Basically, it gets easier the more you keep factoring YOURSELF back into things following those interactions. At first all I could manage was reminding myself over & over - out loud - "I am in control of Me, I can choose my reaction to this" - in some way. I talk out loud to myself because I slow down to talk vs. think & I "hear" it differently that way a lot of the time. Sometimes I hear myself say something I didn't realize I was thinking!