Where do I start? Throughout my childhood I was just surviving, not attempting to make sense of what Mother was doing or why was she doing it. With all of the physical and verbal abuse, I quickly learned to distance myself, dissociate, although I was not able to label it as such until as an adult, my therapist pointed what I had done was a legitimate and useful defense mechanism, enabling me to survive.

About defense mechanisms and dissociation in specific:
Defense mechanisms are psychological functions that protect a person from extreme anxiety, thoughts and feelings which have resulted from outer stressors and internal conflicts. Healthy people use these defenses throughout life, becoming pathological only if persistent or leading to maladaptive behaviors.

Mild dissociation (mind in an aware dream-like state) is a coping mechanism for persons in immediate surroundings of trauma or extreme anxiety. This helps the person master, minimize or tolerate stress. The person lives in reality, it is not a psychosis. Neurologically, it is theorized that oscillations in the brain cortex disconnect brain regions from interacting.

Recovery methods include: mindfulness, meditation, narrative therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and family therapy to understand familial patterns.

By the time I was caring for Mother at the end of her life, I was totally aware of her manipulating tactics. I could see it in her eyes, facial expression and body language, those cold calculating, staring eyes, reserved for me. She could completely change her persona and verbiage so that others never saw what I saw. This led to many difficulties, especially with my siblings.

I developed the ability to keep my emotions neutral as much as possible. I will admit, she sometimes got past my calm unresponsiveness, but most of the time I was able to process the situation and move on. Although she never gave up, Mother never attained her goal of crushing me. What she did do, is push me to careers that I loved as I strove to make sense of what had happened to me so that I could help others.