Free The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections by Lucy Danziger, Catherine Birndorf

‘What else do you expect from her?’ but I can honestly say that it became the vision of myself that I couldn’t get away from, even as an adult.”
    —Arianna, 35; Deerfield, Massachusetts
    Arianna is a makeup artist who believes in the transformative power of makeup and hair styling to help you be whoever you want to be every day. And yet she doesn’t allow herself that luxury, at least not on the inside. All her life she has felt like the black sheep who could never do the right thing, never make the grades, and certainly not live up to her mother’s version of being the perfect daughter.
    In high school she skipped class, hung out with all the wrong people, and got into drugs and an alternative rock scene. One day she jumped ona bus for New York City and started doing makeup for bands there, and she never went home again. “I thought, fine! I might as well rebel, since that’s how they see me anyhow.” Her sisters and brothers (all older, since she was the last baby her mother would ever have) all made good, worked in the local community, and raised families. But Arianna stayed single and, in her mind, was forever the rebellious teenager.
    But now she wants to grow up and move on and have kids. “I’m thirty-five and it occurs to me that it’s now or never, and though I’m happy, I think I could be happier if I started a family. I have the kind of business that would be ideal for a working mother. So how do I get to the ‘mother’ part of the picture? My mom and I don’t really talk anymore.”
     
    It’s clear she is stuck in her childhood and needs to stop reacting to what her mother told her all those years. Catherine says that as long as she believes she is that teenage “black sheep” she will be stuck. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but she can stop it at any time.
    First she needs to recognize the unconscious patterns and look carefully at the screen memory playing over and over in her head. Arianna is feeling both angry and guilty and no longer wants to let these memories define her role in the family or the world at large.
    There are several ways for Arianna to tackle this issue. Perhaps she could consider her mother’s perspective and what it was like to nearly die. Her mother’s fear and inability to cope with that scare may be why she kept “joking” about it, unwittingly hurting Arianna’s feelings. Or perhaps, on some level, her mother did blame Arianna.
    But what happened was not Arianna’s fault, and she needs to believe that. One method to reprocess this traumatic experience is called rescripting, giving new language to old events in order to make sense of them. She can tell herself, “What happened was not my fault. I was a newborn baby and I didn’t mean to hurt my mother.” Additionally, Arianna has to stop trying to change her mother’s view of her as “the problem child” and focus on why she allowed others to define her this way. As she thinks about it, she needs to realize that guilt played a major part in this family dynamic. And rebelling completed the picture.
    Arianna’s key process is the relationship equation: A + B = C. She has to realize she’ll never change her mother but she can change herself, thereby changing the outcome.
    Catherine explains that although Arianna was just a baby when this trauma occurred, she has taken on the responsibility for what happened to her mother. Once she decides to move on, she can pack away those memories and get out of the basement. Arianna, like every woman, gets to define or transform herself, be who she wants to be, and make her life her own. Her challenge will be to figure out who that person is and what makes her happy.
    NO MAN IS THE BOSS OF ME!
    “I watched my father be so demeaning to my mother that I will never forget it and as a result I won’t let any man be the boss of me. I knew I had to be financially independent and never cared if I got married, though I want to be in a loving relationship. Actually, any