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It strikes me that these cancer-cell words are not one bit ORIGINAL! I bet if we all just dump those words that we have all had someone dump on us into the comment section of this post we will all begin to see the ones WE received repeated in the ones that OTHER PEOPLE received – mostly in childhood.
Don’t want ’em? DUMP THEM IN COMMENT SECTION HERE! (you can change your name to anything you wish if you want to post anonymously!)
If you hear the words in your mind, chances are 99.9% certain that at one time or another you heard someone say them to you. List ’em! Come back again when you think of more and add ’em!
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Stop the Storm 
You are ridiculous.
Your feelings are ridiculous and unacceptable. You must be pms-ing or need sleep.
You are selfish and ungrateful and lazy and cruel.
Your body is so perfect and you are so young, you couldn’t possibly have substance as a human being.
You’re so forgetful and unconcienscious. Not very bright!
You’re so beautiful, smart and talented, you couldn’t possibly need or deserve support or attention. How could you have problems?
There’s nothing inappropriate going on; you’re being a drama queen. You just want attention.
Thoughtless and incapable of compassion. Completely insensitive!
Selfish and lazy, insensitive and stupid.
A loner and a loser.
Not worth anyone’s time or energy.
Full of hot air.
You embarrass us with your childish neediness. Grow up. Be mature. Be responsible.
YOU ARE SUCH A BURDEN for needing us.
Why can’t you be more together?
I’m sorry you gave it away so easily. You are a slut.
——–
I want to puke in remembering the weight of all these messages I received. These are the messages that turn into the core beliefs that sabatauge from the unconscious. They are like a giant parasite. I am filled with sorrow and compassion for myself — my life makes sense when I see and speak the parasite.
The title of this post made me laugh, and think, “This is fuck**g awesome.”
Let us witness ourselves and eachother, which is the greatest healing on earth.
I end feeling great love.
This is a good idea. Words I hear in my brain: I’m useless, bad, demanding, selfish, ungrateful, a tyrant at 3 years old. She also
believes that I have a learning problem and has helpfully diagnosed me as also possibly having aspergers!
I also feel as if I’m
dangerous.
Should be invisible, can’t sing, can only do things well that she’s ok with. And only if they’re things that are similar
To the things she’s good at. The good one when I’m kind to her. She had many relationships with men and they were
Always available to her. But I had to be her foil – I was pure and innocent or a flirt – when she decided. She often subtly
Humiliated me. Blamed me for being apple of Dad’s eye. Popular (said with envy). Unfeeling, cruel, if I didn’t continually treat her
With due care and sacrifice my needs and sense of self for hers. She has also told me my memories – so I’m not sure which are mine.
She criticised people I was fond of, wanted/wants me for herself – her source of attention.
Often I wasn’t told things directly – that’s her last resort when most threatened. Often it’s in hints and warnings – through criticism of others.
Very covert. I’m remembering more now.
I realised the significance of all this only recently. I’ve never been able to be close to anyone before. Then developed a best friendship.
She had to go away for a time and last year after many stressors I found myself reacting very strongly to her perceived abandonment.
The reactions were so physically and emotionally strong I knew something was up. All the old issues were triggered – as they are when
We find ourselves in a significant relationship.
Oh yes, I wasn’t beautiful but.. I was allowed to be cute. Also my neck wasn’t as long as hers, my legs shorter. And I looked like an evil little
Chinamen
(sorry – her description not mine) when I was born. Many little barbs, nothing too obvious..
Wow Linda, I read your last days at home.. Can’t believe your Dad said exactly what your Mother told him to say.. He was so subjugated. X
I’ve just read some of your words Linda. Very abusive, violent. My step-mother was the more verbally abusive to me.
That’s where I also got the “you caused the problems in our marriage” part. I went from one environment to the other
– shuttled between two angry women. My dad also preferred not to see/hear most of the time. My stepmother told me
I was a worry to my parents, thoughtless, rude, troublemaker. Told me recently that I’d been a horrible child. In the past:
A liar, naughty, bad, didn’t make an effort.
My parents played out their angry divorce through me initially.
Last year I began reading a book called Reinventing Your Life – about schema therapy and the lifetraps we have developed to cope.
Interesting, very painful to work through but now and then I use it if I feel blocked and frustrated. But not too often – can’t handle it
Too much.
Thanks Linda, it helps to read and see that the comments we have been on the receiving end of are NOT ok and especially are NOT
‘Normal’.
These ‘words you hear in your brain’ in this comment – which of the evil women are they from? TWO evil mothers! Something had to have been wrong with your father to choose TWO of them!
Were there any siblings?
Yes, these are the cancer-cell malignant cancer words given to us that do not belong to us — NEVER belonged to us! Hate-full people!
Being the mother of three astoundingly wonderful children (now ages 41, 35 and 26) I cannot even begin to imagine using one single one of these kinds of words as weapons against them — EVER!
I just had a conversation with a friend who says my mother CHOSE to pass on the abuse she received and I CHOSE not to. I realized that just as I do not seem able to hold Mother responsible for the evilness she perpetrated against me — I also do not seem to hold myself responsible for my own goodness, for MY own choices for goodness. My friend and I agreed that there are many mysteries that only God knows the answers to! We ask all kinds of questions, though — and the kinds of questions that my readers might be asking are probably ones that I do not have the answers to!
But I am always learning — learned a LOT today! When I learn something new, helpful, useful — that feels true and right to me, I always feel glad I am making progress! More progress! YAY for progress!
These miserable burdens we have been given to bear!
I notice I listed the cancer-cell words in relation to my mother as they came out of HER mouth. I didn’t feel I own any of them. I remember them being said to me by her – millions of times — but I did not ultimately buy into any of them. If I did, I have forgotten!!
Thank you so much for commenting. I hope having the words captured here on these pages helps deplete them of any power in your life whatsoever! I found as I made my list that it was actually much shorter than I would have anticipated. There were only SO MANY words – repeated over and over again along with the physical abuse, isolation, confinement, etc. But NOT THAT MANY WORDS. I feel good having them contained here in the toxic word waste bin!!
Sending love your way!!!! Linda – alchemynow
Its hard to know where the words come from, my mind goes blank when I try to remember, even what words were used. My mother often said things as a ‘joke’ and I had to take it as such. The first sentence I wrote at school
Was that I am very slow! My mother described me as clumsy, dozy, forgetful – to emphasise how I needed her. Strange mix of ‘caring’ yet smothering and also tinged with envy. I became implicitly aware that we were in
Competition with one another – I couldn’t develop separately as this was a threat and at the same time I had to make sure I didn’t upstage her and make sure I was there for her. Great recipe for codependence!
I have 3 brothers – big age gaps between us. The older from my mother, 2 younger from my father and stepmother. Mother kept telling me I was so demanding as a toddler, stepmother how spoilt I was and would re-hash
This every visit. I think what people don’t understand is the cumulativve effect of subtle abuse. And the fact that kids just know when they’re not wanted. They are sponges and abuse makes us hypervigilant, picking up on nuances
– in my case parents split over adultery, I was in dad and stepmother’s care from 4-6 then handed back to mother. Kids make sense of things by making themselves the bad ones to keep the love of a parent or ensure that they’re not
Abandoned further. I had to love my stepmother or risk losing dad’s love and had to subdue myself in order to prevent mother from rejecting me and leaving me withno maternal support. Linda, how you survived is a mystery and I
Hope you praise yourself for surviving and for choosing a different path with your kids and for working through the hurt.
I’
m in therapy now and only fully starting this all now. It gives me such hope when I realise that there is another reality out there. Progress is possible!
People don’t realise that its not just words that hurt but also exposure of kids to for example my mother’s affairs. I don’t remember what I saw but my
I’m sure was exposed to things. Then some people experience an absolute lack in terms of mother-love, becoming instead a souce for her to nourish herself on.
I really encourage people to love themselves enough to face their hurts and give themselves the gift of truth and hopefully some peace. X
Good morning! I hear in your description the kind of cancer I have been thinking about where the parent is like a malignant tumor that sends – in words, nuances, attitudes, actions, etc. — their cancer cells INTO their children. Then THOSE cancerous cells grow and grow inside of us — and when it all begins when we are SO YOUNG – with NOTHING to fight back with, no ability to ‘reason’ things out on our own — we are overwhelmed with all the traumas that had NOTHING TO DO WITH US!
I am hoping to heal myself enough from the crash I have experienced during my book writing that I can get back to my story. It is important to me that I at least finish this first book that goes up almost to my age eleven. What I have found is that as I have gone back to every memory I have from my childhood is that in the middle of the horrible MESS that was going on because of my mother’s abuse, as I pull the memories apart and untangle what was her part of the memory (including the harm she did to me) from who I was in the middle of each experience — I find my own self standing in the midst of the hell just SHINING SHINING SHINING!
I did not develop the mental illness Mother had. This means to me that I CAN go into those memories and find my SHINING self — and that she could not do this.
I attribute this to some divine Grace that I cannot understand in this lifetime. I have so few answers that satisfy my own questions like why was my mother able to so abuse me — why did I not pass that on to my kids — did I have choices that Mother did not have, etc.
I don’t ever applaud any goodness that I might have just as I don’t condemn Mother for her badness. I think all of these kinds of distinctions belong to God. I am of course grateful beyond words that I have been ABLE to make better choices than Mother made. I guess I believe — perhaps naively — that if my parents had been able to make different good choices — THEY WOULD HAVE!
In the meantime what I will cope with as consequences from that abuse for the rest of my life is very, very real!!
But I am finding I DO have choices I can make with what I do with the WORDS – the cancer-cell verbal abuse words and all that went with them — as to how I handle them when they appear in my thoughts. I can now for the most part completely DISSOCIATE my own self from what Mother said I was, who she said I was.
I was and am NONE of those things!
Sending much love and thank you for your courage to share your own words and experience here!!!! Linda – alchemynow
You tried to kill me when you were born.
You are a curse upon my life.
I curse the day you were born.
I wish you had never been born.
You are the devil’s child.
You are an evil child.
I despise you.
You aren’t my child. They must have gotten the babies mixed up at the hospital and sent me home with the wrong one.
You are more trouble than all the other children put together.
You are the cause of all the problems in this family.
You are the cause of all the problems in my marriage.
Trouble should be your middle name.
You have never been anything but trouble to me.
You have been nothing but trouble since the moment you were born.
If it wasn’t for you this would be a happy home.
Look what you made me do!
It’s all your fault!
You always ruin everything
We were having such a nice day (time) and Linda ruined it again!
Why do you like making my life miserable?
Why can’t you ever do anything right?
Are you deliberately trying to make me mad at you?
Do you enjoy making me mad at you?
(with beatings) This hurts me more than it hurts you.
I only spank you because I love you.
It’s your fault I have to spank (slap, yell, etc) you. If you would only be good like (so and so and so) is.
Do you want me to knock some sense into you?
If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times….
How many times do I have to tell you (blah blah blah)?
Why can’t you be like (so and so and so)? (She/he) never causes me a moment’s trouble.
You are asking for trouble.
Do you like being in trouble?
You make trouble wherever you go!
You must like being in trouble.
You have no common sense.
There is no mother in the world who could put up with a child like you.
Every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie.
You are a liar.
Why are you trying to get your (sister/brother) in trouble?
Why are you blaming (blah blah) on (blah blah)?
(She recorded in my baby book among my first sentences at 20 months old “Johnny did it” (because he probably had and she blamed me) and “I didn’t mean to momma”)
You are a filthy, dirty child!
You are a filthy pig!
You are a selfish child.
You want to be an only child.
You turned your grandmother against me.
What am I going to do with you?
Your kindergarten teacher had taught for 35 years and NEVER had she had as much trouble as she had with you.
I could have had a hundred children and not have had another one that gives me as much trouble as you do.
(These words do not reflect fully the abuse litany that is listed at the top of this page under the link to my childhood.)
You are a trouble maker.
You are a tomboy.
You are lazy.
You don’t appreciate anything you’ve ever been given.
You don’t appreciate anything I’ve ever done for you.
You never take care of anything you’ve ever been given.
You are greedy.
You always want more more more.
You always want what everyone else has.
If I give you an inch you will take a mile.
I’ve tried everything I know how to do and still…..
What more can I do to make you……
I can’t trust you to do anything right.
Why can’t you ever do anything right?
You are such a stupid child.
You are so slow!
Are you just trying to irritate me?
You are as slow as cold molasses.
++
Don’t whisper when you walk away from me.
Speak up when you are talking to me!
Look at me when I am talking to you!
Don’t call me SHE!
Don’t smirk.
Wipe that smirk off of your face!
(or I’ll wipe it off for you)
Don’t pout. You are always pouting.
Wipe that pout off of your face!
(or I’ll wipe if off for you)
I saw that look on your face!
Don’t you walk away when I am talking to you!
(All usually accompanied by brutal face slapping.)
You are just like your father’s sister. (she hated)
Get out of my sight!
I can’t stand the sight of you!
We have to move again because of Linda.
I can’t trust you out of my sight.
You just want to be a baby.
You don’t want to grow up.
++
In my teens:
You are too skinny.
The blood vessels show through at the top of your bony chest.
Your bottom wiggles when you walk.
You have too much hair on your arms. You look like an ape.
Your head is too small.
Your neck is too long.
You are boy crazy. (This accusation began before my 6th birthday and was my Bostonian-raised-‘proper’ Mother’s term for slut/whore.)
You are a clothes horse.
You are vain.
You are conceited.
Sit up straight. (Often accompanied by book-on-head walks/standing against the wall.)
I hope God never sees fit to give you children. You would make a terrible mother (unlike my sisters). (This one REALLY hurt!)
I hate you.
You are no better than a snake in the grass. (This one REALLY hurt!)
You have demons in you. (My senior year in HS, she brought Assembly of God people over to ‘lay hands’ on me to ‘pray the demons out’ so they would jump into swine and go over the cliff ‘like in the Bible’.