QA150 QUESTION: I have a problem with this woman I work for, because my fear of her is so inordinate. I realize, through my mind, that it must be a mother situation in some way, still it feels to me too different. I see all sorts of things why I shouldn’t have this fear, and yet I have this terrible fear of her and I’d like to go on beyond this.
ANSWER: Yes, what I would like to say here is this. This fear you experience in connection with this woman is the fear that you have repressed regarding your mother – and not only the fear, but also the resentments and the hate. That creates the fear in you even more than the fear itself of that person.
Now, you are not yet quite at the point where you can permit yourself to acknowledge the strength of the hate and the fear you once had as a little girl in regard with your mother – that still sits in your psyche. But at the same time you are far enough in your self-discoveries where it is possible for you to experience it in connection with someone else.
The general, vague anxiety spells you had all these years were a product of not pinpointing the fear and the hate, in addition to the love and the need. It is now becoming more concentrated and in the form of this person. This is exactly where you are.
I can promise that the fear will dissolve exactly to the extent that you can admit that the fear does not belong there, but belongs to your mother. And that the fear, even of your mother, is a result of your resentments – specifically the conflict of the hate and the love and the need – and of the rebellion against the ties that make you want to obey all her rules and her laws, and, let us say, the disinclination on your part to take responsibility for your own choice, for your own conduct.
There is where you are hooked, because there is where you violate your integrity. For your unconscious, emotional childish self says, “I want my mother to be responsible for me. I do not want to have to be taken to account for my own actions and choices. And therefore I’m tied to her, but at the same time I rebel when she does not do what I want for me.” And that is where you’re hooked with hate and fear.
Now when you can bring all this into consciousness, you have the possibility to make the decision that is necessary, the decision that has the integrity to be a self, with its full responsibility for being a self. That will bring the integration of your conflict and dissolve your difficulties in your emotions here. Do you understand?
QUESTION: Yes, but I always have a fear – not a very new discovery – that if I have it good, she has it bad, that I can only do this at her expense.
ANSWER: Well, this is precisely because you demand of her to live your life, to be responsible for you – to take away the bad things in your life and solve them for you so that you can have it good. That is precisely it. This is your demand of her. And because you demand this of her, you cannot stop resenting, hating, feeling guilty, fearing and complying – and hating your compliance.
Now these are very general factors, in one way or another to one degree or another applying to everyone, but it is, nevertheless, a completely different experience when one finds it out for oneself, as you do now.
