Day 063 – Fear of Missing Out

Welcome to Day 63!

My mother called me because she was in a bit of a tiz. She had worked herself up into believing that she had been shunned by my husband and my father-in-law.  You see, mum has an acute fear of missing out, or these days FOMO.  Mum feels the slightest rejection as a judgement; deeming her not good enough.  This then triggers her insecurities which include: her thick Swiss-German accent, to her being too old, too boring.  All adding up to her not feeling worthy of belonging, and then manifesting in a sense a self-fulfilling prophecy, which then validates her insecurities.

These same feelings are also present in me. However, through meditation and mental self-talk I’m beginning to re-route that patterning into something more constructive for myself.  At first, the self-talk is haughty and condescending.  From there, I overlay this with some ego levelling by comparing against others but not those more fortunate but those that have a tougher time than me.

While assuring my mum that the ostracism was a lack of awareness on our part that she lacked the details. Here was the situation:  as you may have read my father-in-law and his wife recently visited.  The visit was for my husband’s 50th birthday.  Over the past two years, there have been a multitude of plans in place for celebrating his 50th.  The primary plan was to visit New Zealand (NZ) with the invitation extended to family and friends who were invited to our wedding.  COVID-19 put an end to the NZ plans.  At one point, we thought just husband and I could go, alas, COVID-19 cancelled too. 

The borders were constantly opening and closing in response to random outbursts of COVID. This made it difficult to put anything long term in place. Father-in-law was flexible enough to seize an open border opportunity.  In amongst chats with mum and my sister (sometimes two hours long), it was assumed that husband or I had mentioned that my father-in-law was going to visit.   The situation was, my mother not knowing this was happening. 

The build up of misunderstandings then occurred based on that fundamental assumption.  For clarity, I need to backtrack to January and my father-in-law’s birthday which my mother rang to congratulate him on. Apparently, during the short discussion he hadn’t mentioned he was going to visit his son for his birthday (perception of slight – 1).  The topic hadn’t come up or it was simply assumed that my mother knew and didn’t mention it.  Alternatively, probably not given it much thought.

During the visit on my husband’s birthday, my mother rang my husband.  When asked if he had anything special planned for the day, he mentioned that we were going to dinner. Because my mother didn’t know that my father-in-law was visiting, she assumed that “we” meant my husband and me (perception of slight – 2).

In conversations with me over my husband’s birthday, about him getting flowers delivered, him spoiling me because of my broken ankle.  Again, the topic of my father-in-law visiting hadn’t been discussed (perception of slight – 3).  Finally, I made a comment to my mother that the father-in-law had left on the same day I had my cast removed.   

A snowballing of my mother’s insecurities and feelings of rejection and ostracism plagued her.  Believing it was something she had said to my father-in-law during his birthday conversation.  Her anguish was to the point where she couldn’t sleep because she was trying to figure out where she had gone wrong to not be told of the visit.  There was a conspiracy theory being worked into the mix too. 

Aside from the logical perspective, you might say “it’s not really any of her business”, who we have visiting or why and that can be without deliberately excluding her.  Nonetheless, in our family, we tend to communicate the visits made by family and friends.  They all know and like each other so they’re happy to have news of their health, wellbeing and travels. It would be out of the ordinary for us not to advise her.

My mum’s insecurities stem from growing up in a “home” as a bastard, in a time when being a bastard was not a wanted being in the family.  My grandmother appears to not have been able to look after her, my grandfather didn’t have the means and when he did he had another family.  

When my mother was young she was shuffled between her uncles and aunts because she was an inconvenience in their lives.  At that age, she had limited control of her environment and what was going on.  Finally, she was moved to a home (orphanage) where they had wonderful caregivers but it didn’t change her feelings of rejection.   It’s understandable why my mother suffers FOMO, particularly if you know her history. A question, for another day would be why do I have it?

Where did it go wrong?  Why hadn’t we told her?  Quite simply, two weeks before my father-in-laws birthday I broke my ankle.  It’s been the topic of conversation for many hours and possibly eclipsed the topic of my father-in-law’s visit. If you met my husband and his father, you would realise they are practically incapable of deliberately ignoring someone – particularly my husband. 

Husband was the only child to loving and attentive parents – he was unlikely to be ignored.  My husband, his father and his grandfather have reputations for having incredibly easy-going personalities.  Any effort to ignore someone would put a chink in their “easy-goingness”.  Even when talked out my mother realised that for herself.

As for me, there’s way too much effort involved in ignoring my mum and avoiding a topic, she has a pretty good sixth sense.  My sister had been advised of “X” and asked me not to tell our mother. Within an hour of the conversation with my sister my mother rings and asks if I’d heard anything about my sister.  A strategic sidestep saved the day that time.  Seriously, way too much effort – sheesh!

Okay, let’s see what the cards have to say!