One should not stare too long into the abyss lest one become it, I know, but I am benefiting from the morose series of posts I am writing because they are helping me excavate the sources of the pain I am in, shine some light on it and ideally, dry it up and brush it away like dust.
1. I see why I feel so guilty when people tell me how good I am in field, and that I should stay. I learned early on that if someone liked you, you had to do exactly as they said — especially if you felt ambivalent about them. If you liked them as much as they you, then you could negotiate on activities, as equals. But if you were less sure you wanted to play with them, but they wanted to play with you, then you had hurt them. You were in their debt and had to do exactly as they said.
2. I also see that when I decided to stay in field so as not to hurt a certain person, this was not entirely true. I stayed because I feared the destructiveness of hir wrath, not really because I cared how ze thought.
3. I was warned I would fail as an academic. I feel that if I leave before I am a major star, my warners will have won. I still also feel at one level that becoming a star academic is a prerequisite for entry to life. Only these people were valid, back then.
4. If I leave before becoming a major star they will pick over my cadaver like crows, caw, caw. The uppity one failed, they will say. See, see, she failed. It was not worth trying, I told you so. Now she is doing something else, and she will fail again. She is not even worthy to be a Wal*Mart greeter. Uppity.
5. This is why I do not really know what to say about career goals, since my own life goal after Reeducation became recovering from it. If, by the time I die, the kind of pain I am in now is years behind me, I will have accomplished a great deal in life. And yet it seems there is more to life; there is so much more I could do and enjoy beyond manage this pain.
6. How much pain until I have at last made up for doing the PhD? How hard must I try to repay my debt to the field, for having allowed me into it? When will people realize that this kind of pain is not necessary or normal? When will I no longer need confirmation of this?
7. We had to be in enough pain to be disabled. We and perhaps especially I were possible competitors for love, so we had to be destroyed. He had to abandon us to demonstrate his loyalty.
8. And I am uncomfortable in some academic settings, and ashamed of that. This is twisted. I feel guilty about feeling unsafe in places that, for me, are actually unsafe, even if the person in them loves me.
9. I fear disapproval for feeling legitimate fear. I feel guilt for not letting people just do their perverse will. I fear violent reprisals for accurate perceptions of reality, and I am on watch for these all the time.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Point out: it really is very simple. She plays that primal scene again and again, and does not want to let us out.
We are to be destroyed and abandoned. He obeys and then she feels guilty about it. So she tries to convince us it was our fault. So we are destroyed and abandoned again, and on and on.
How to break this cycle is my question. With self love perhaps and right now, gratitude to my aunt which I am finding to be very relaxing. 🙂
So what I can do is really simple, actually.
Say: you no longer have power over me. This is really calming.
Think of my direct relationship with my aunt. Be grateful to her for her support. Allow myself that; stop feeling guilty about that; start appreciating and respecting it rather than berate and resent it as my parents always did.
Rather than identify with my parents who feel her support of me hurt them, and try to convince me that it hurt me as well, think of her. Her support was love and it was unconditional. I understand that my parents’ experience was different but I am so grateful for my aunt.