Last time I wrote about my mother: "I would like to feel compassion and not anger towards her, to accept her as she is and not try to change her. And then move on. But I'm not sure I suffer because we're trying to change each other, as my therapist suggests. I don't seem to be able to tell the difference between suffering for the irrational state she's in, and suffering because I want to change her. Is it wrong to wish she was healthy and at peace?"
I related this doubt to my therapist, along with 2 or 3
occurrences when I've felt panic (and shame, and rage) but controlled it. I jump to the ending: to clarify my confusion, the border line between sincerely wanting my mom to get better, and being oppressed by it, is rage. As long as I get angry at my mother for being irrational, our relationship is unhealty.
We didn't delve too much about my staying up at my folks' a lot, so from that side the situation is more or less unchanged. More interesting are the implications of having successfully fought panic in several occasions.
Minus: I'm never able to tell why exactly I've managed to resist; it seems random. I'm still afraid of catastrophic relapses like the infamous "Golden Age" crisis, the absolute worst in decades (I hadn't hurt myself like that since high school, I think).
Plus: it may seem random, but there's a ciclopic work behind it. And the reason for overcoming my panic is not a mystery: it's my oft-desired acceptance. Ok,I'm absent-minded, my mom mistreats me, sometimes the world seems to conspire to scare and hurt me; I accept it. I AM scared, hurt, frustrated; but what happens has no reflection on me. There are times I can't do anything; I accept that.
(Yay, one complete post written on my mobile. I can clarify something later, but at least it's self-contained.)