unexpected mother's day reaction and financial worries

[smg]

Hi everybody,

This is about my fourth year of very-low-contact with my family of origin. I wasn't expecting to have a hard time on Mother's Day this year, got but in the days leading up to Mother's Day the rash on my hands pretty bad (after months of almost healthy skin), and I woke up on Mother's Day from a nightmare.

I think that I've been in an ongoing flashback ever since. I feel very worried about my financial situation too, and that's all entangled with doubt and guilt over separating from my family. (I left my old, lucrative career at the same time that I separated from my family.) It's hard to carry on with efforts to bring in more money, and to judge whether those efforts are appropriate/adequate to the situation or if I need to take more drastic action. (By drastic action, I mean sell my house and find cheaper rented accomodation so that I can pay my bills without eating away at my savings.)

Possible trigger warning. The dream includes some violence, although my family was not physically violent. The text is in white, so please highlight the seemingly blank space to read it.
The nightmare was set at the family dinner table. There were two strangers there. A young man and woman of a type you could describe as "at risk." My sense was that it was my mother's idea that they were there. Suddenly the young man got up, hit my brother and knocked him into the corner. My mother got into the young man's face and told him how bad he was. Then the young woman punched my mother in the face. The dream ended with two visuals, the first of my mother's face with blood on it, and the second of my dad sitting motionless at the end of the table looking drunk, very very sick and very angry.

I think the key points of the dream are
1) that the young woman attacked my mother back, rather than being humiliated into submission, and
2) that having had no choice but to submit to my mother's idea of bringing these young strangers into the house, my dad just sat there radiating his fury with her and letting bad things happen, even revelling in them as a validation of his position.

I've written this in the order that the thoughts came to me, and I see it as disjointed. Do any of you see connections or interpretations that link my mother's day reaction with my worries about money? there may or may not be something there.

Thanks for reading
smg

[keepfighting]

Hi, smg,

sorry that you've gotten into an EF after mother's day. 

I don't know if there's a connection between the severity of your EF, mother's day and your financial situation but I find that for me (due to the legacy of my childhood home, so it might be totally different for you) financial insecurity increases the severity of all other triggers for EFs. Not so much being financially tight in itself, I can live on a small budget, but insecurities like you mentioned: Do I need to sell my house and rent? Do I need to find another job that pays more, even though I won't like it as much? What are my options and what are the guarantees that if I choose this or that, it will turn out ok?

Once I've weighed all my options and actually come to a decision, the EF disappears quickly, and so do other symptoms like eczema and insomnia.

Your dream - unpleasant though it was - was also a bit empowering: Your subconscious opened a dialogue with your mother and called her to halt. Maybe that strange young woman was a person who stuck up for you, fought your battles for you, when the persons who were actually in your life at the time the abuse happened were frozen in helpless anger? - Not meant as an interpretation of your dream. Only you can interpret it correctly. I just remember at a certain stage in my recovery I had many of those kind of dreams: At first, it was the grown up me entering the dream stage and protecting the child/teenage me; later it was the child/teenage me who stood up for herself. For me, though they were nightmare scenarios, they also felt empowering, since they gave me a chance to confront my parents - a chance I never had face to face.

I do hope you'll feel better soon and your rash will go away. Sending you good thoughts! 

[smg]

Hi KF,

Thank you. Yes, it's the insecurities that are difficult. In my case I doubt the decisions that I've made, and myself (and the whole direction of my life) because I made them. The dream shows pretty clearly where that doubt comes from: my mother labelling a person as bad when their behaviour is bad, and my dad acting like a person deserves every bad thing that happens following a decision he disagrees with (and leaving them to suffer the bad things).
The dream does validate the idea that getting really f-ing mad at my mother and fighting back (just not with fists) is a normal, natural response.

smg