Shame

I started therapy again.

I find most of my emotions fit neatly into these categories: anxiety, depression, tenderness/gratitude/relief/love (blending into one).

My therapist suggested writing down situations and my emotional reactions to them, both in the present and in my childhood - and what I think my emotions could have or should have been, had I been free to express them and even feel them.

And immediately I said I think I started reacting in an appropriate way really early - which means "these people are my capos, it would be silly to feel emotionally hurt by what they say or do, I can only feel fear, anger, anxiety, depression, like I would in a concentration camp, not hurt feelings, like I would if someone I cared about said or did something hurtful".

So I tried with the situation I remember was a sort of trigger that got me to consciously detach from both my parents at age 8 - I have written about it but I'll go into more details now. Because what I realize is that the emotions keeping me from accessing all this stuff are not pain or anger predominantly, they're shame and guilt.

We were at a mountain cabin/hotel for winter holidays. My parents took the daughter of my father's coworker along. We went out to play in the snow one afternoon, all except my mother.

I don't remember exactly how it happened, but us two girls started playfully attacking my father and he started throwing us onto the ground. At one point, this got really violent and he really slammed us hard. The girl said she didn't want to play any more and we went back.

I felt I had the obligation to speak up - not for myself, of course. "Dad, I'm your daughter and you can do whatever you want to me (?! yes I said this), but not to someone else's kid. I think it's wrong to behave in this way to her".

He said something to the effect of making a violent threat.

Then I said "You are stronger than me now, but when I'm 30 you'll be 70 and I'll be the stronger one then".

Then he started slapping me in the face repeatedly, making denigrating remarks. I didn't cry or react, at this moment I was tough and had an armor on against him.

Afterwards, I told my mother I loved her more then. She rejected this advance. So I had no one. I felt shame for groveling, asking for her support and love.

So an hour or so later, he was shouting at some kids in the hotel to shut up. And I was around and I remember kissing him on the hand to suck up so he'll love me again (?!) and thinking at that moment "I'm kissing the hand that slapped me". And being disgusted at myself.

I feel shame about this. About the groveling. And guilt, about the violent threats I kind of made.

But at this moment I also feel some empathy for the 8yo who had no one to turn to, no one on her side.

I don't know what my actual feeling were at the time towards my parents in general, but I'm not sure any sort of personal hurt would have been entirely appropriate. Just sadness about the loneliness, which I can feel now.

I've come a long way and am not there yet

Though I haven't written anything in quite a while, I sometimes drop by to see what people dear to me are doing.

I think about upsi - what HAS happened there? I also wonder about Kiki, whose blog is gone as well.

I like to see Jonsi get back in the saddle and shoot. Where she seemed extreme (as not polite enough by my FOO standards) in the past, I now smile at all she has to say. In some ways, I have grown.

I love seeing what Mulderfan, Ruth, Jessie, Q and others are up to.

My father is getting - old. Less interested in us, less energetic and thus less pugnacious, less invested in anything. He's been barely noticeable lately, which is, naturally, a good thing. I've also been able to swap apartments with him, which means I now own the place where we live and he owns the place that he rents out and no one can hurt anyone in any real way. So stuff is good.

I allowed myself to complete my dissertation. Even though he is proud and boasts about it, I am still a PhD. It's a practical thing I did for myself and my FOC, and him being there at the defense is something like collateral damage. He didn't do much damage, actually - he only talked to ONE of the professors, also narcissistic, and I giggled to myself that they were perfect company for each other.

I also have a third child now - a boy this time. This was something I'd feared - that I'd treat a boy differently as a result of having a dominant narcissistic father (both better AND worse) - but I was over it before he was born, thankfully.

In many ways, I have the perfect life. By what the world values, I am successful because I have a PhD and three children of both sexes.

But I'll always be an ACON, I now see - never quite good enough, never quite happy, never quite at home. And it's OK. I don't know if others can really get "there" - be really content and happy and fulfilled. If so, good for them. But this level of "not being there" is something I personally will always be able to live with in honesty and authenticity. One of my most precious life goals is writing fiction - novels and stories - and this is where I can be in truth for the rest of my life, if I can but pour this truth into a novel.

All the best to everyone and keep fighting the good fight!

New Analogy

I have started to think about my early relationship with my parents in a new way.

I no longer - having, of course, first gone through such a long phase of anger, blaming, and analyzing, which I'm perfectly happy with - need to think about the "relationship" we had. Or them, really, too much.

I see it this way: yes, this early stuff, and love, and parents, all of this is very important. It's like developing language in children. If a child is not communicated with in early childhood, she will have trouble learning language.

Well, I realized recently that, no, my parents never taught me the language of love, but that, yes, I am able to speak it with others now. It's not easy, it's not my mother tongue, I make mistakes or just don't know how to express myself, but I'm slowly getting there. And this is all that currently matters to me. I don't need to think about the fact that my parents failed me in this department so much any more. I just want to focus on the department itself, because that's what matters.

Therapy helped with that. Mostly, my therapist helped me allow myself to not feel anything much for my parents. And be OK with that. Because I feel things for other people, which means I learned language later in life - which is harder to do, but not impossible.

My new version of the recurring dream in which I discover that I actually never graduated from high school and thus my university degree and graduate degrees are invalid? I go back to school, ask around and really, there are a couple of classes that I never finished owing to an error of sorts. I never really graduated. But, also, the administration overlooked this. They gave me a diploma. I officially and validly graduated, even though I missed some things. No one will cause me any trouble or blame me for not completing those courses so long ago, especially given how far I've come since. I can freely go on with my life and, in the dream, I choose to do so.

In my life, I choose to do so as well.

I'm where I am and will be focusing on that now. Working on my doctoral dissertation, embracing new career opportunities assertively, actively making friends with people I find interesting, enjoying my family.

At the core

I have people in my life that accept me and love me now. But I still can't accept and love myself. I don't trust them to actually accept and love the real me. They accept and love the adult me that developed after years of being molded by my parents.

I don't know any other me. I can try my hardest to be the real me, but I can't re-raise myself from scratch.

When I was a child, I wasn't accepted or loved. That was the core me, the one that could have developed differently.

So, I'm bad at the core. There's something fundamentally wrong with me. I hate and loathe this child at the core of me.

Sure, now that I'm a decent, articulate, generally well-behaved adult, people can accept what they see on the surface. But if they saw through to the faulty unlovable core, they'd hate the real me - the whiny, boring, annoying, weak, loud, pathetic, sensitive brat at the core - just as much as I do.

(I know this is irrational rubbish, but I've just realized after therapy that this is how I feel deep down).

Defending myself from love

I've used defense mechanisms against people in my life that could have been close to me.

I don't hide stuff, or lie, or refuse to engage. But it's like I enter every relationship with the idea that I can't be really close, that I can't expect anything from another person, and that I could easily be rejected at any moment.

Still, I've felt hurt and pain over some relationships with people who were not my parents. Boyfriends, friends. But I deny and minimize that too. I wasn't really all that attached. I don't need anyone. He never really loved me, so what's the difference?

Or, if someone is ready to end a friendship with no explanation for what later turns out to have been a stupid, stupid misunderstanding, then, you know, good riddance.

No, I don't mean that. This one hurts. It's fucking sad. And I feel a lot of shame surrounding it because I've been so stupid and lacked social skills and somehow it all led to losing a good friend over a fucking smiley in a fucking text.

So I'm telling the story.

I had a good friend. A female friend who was actually female and feminine and was into talking and sharing and not only drinking beer and discussing politics. Then we both fell in love with the same guy for a while, while we both had boyfriends. We were all friends. It was a crazy situation. They eventually got together. There were secrets involved. They broke up a lot. Somehow, I ended up talking to both of them about their relationship and listening to what the other did. There were inconsistencies and I'd point them out and this sometimes led to them getting back together. I somehow found myself in the middle. Acting as some sort of peace-maker, go-between, intermediary. It was stupid, but I never said "I'm not interested" to either one of them when they wanted to pour their hearts out. They were both good friends and people I felt things for. Basically decent people. I still feel that.

Then, they definitely broke up and it was nasty and the guy didn't want to talk to the girl at that moment and called me and begged me to simply inform her where she could leave his stuff, as she'd asked him that when they last spoke.

I didn't want to do this. He begged me and said "If I call her now, I might lose my temper and say nasty things I don't mean to her. This will be easier on her."

It was a stupid idea to begin with. I had no business doing that. But I didn't know any better at the time and trusted everyone's social skills were better than mine, and he knew what he was doing when he asked me to do this. 

I sent a stupid short text to her with just the information. And then it sounded too unfeeling, too curt, too formal.

So I added a smiley.

<:-)

That was it. It was supposed to be short for "I'm sorry and I love you" or something. Things I was unable to actually say, even in writing.

"You don't have to gloat," she responded. I didn't understand why she'd say that. By no means was I gloating. Really. I wrote back "Sorry, I'm just transferring information." See the lack of social skills? I felt something here, but could only function like a machine.

Then she called me and asked if she could bring his stuff to my place, instead of where he wanted it. I said "OK" and hoped that we were now fine. I still didn't quite understand what I'd done wrong.

When she dropped the stuff off, I asked her if she wanted to have coffee with me. She replied "Our coffee-drinking days are over," turned around and walked away. I didn't ask why. I didn't understand. I just said "All right then."

If she hadn't been so vulnerable, insecure, and dramatic, she might have explained; if I hadn't been so eager to defend myself by easily letting people go and writing them off, I would have demanded an explanation. But we were both too messed up to talk about the issue.

I only learned what the issue was from her ex, years later, recently, in fact.

Her phone had translated my "<:-)" into "he he."

Un-fucking-believable.

And I was suddenly hurt. Because I understood and could no longer write her off. I could no longer rationalize that "I don't really need a friend who was willing to end it just because I sent a stupid message that may have been misguided, but certainly not malicious."

I wrote my parents off decades ago on some unconscious level. I don't know what it would take for me to be able to feel hurt by them.

D-fense

I'm now irritated and angry that my therapist expects me to cry and express my hurt over what my parents did and who they were. That he sees my laughing and smiling over my discoveries and memories as a defense from my feelings.

I mean, yes, there's truth to that. But it's also a very real and sincere and only natural way to react.

I don't feel pain when I remember how I've seen the mask slip and the look of pure hatred and disgust in my father's eyes. I don't feel hurt when I remember the gloating glint in my father's eyes when he thought he had the power to frighten and hurt me.

The feeling I have is a pleasant one.

"See?" It tells me. "It's not your fault you feel nothing but fear, anger, disgust, and frustration for this man. He's a sadistic destructive malignant narcissist."

You can't be hurt by someone you have no relationship with, no love or respect for, nothing at all, less than nothing. I mean, you can get angry, or you can laugh at how crazy and bizarre a person is, but you're not going to have your feelings hurt and cry about it.

If a crazy person who clearly hates you for no apparent reason says something critical to you or looks at you in a nasty way, are you going to cry over your hurt feelings? No. You're more probably going to laugh about how bizarre it is.

This is a defense, that's true. We defend ourselves against crazy people who are never going to have a relationship with us and are only interested in hurting us. We don't let them near.

I've had that defense against my father for as long as I can remember. There was probably a time when I loved and trusted him, but I can't access that - this probably ended when I was a baby.

Since then, I've known one thing well, albeit not consciously: if I give him the pleasure of knowing he's hurt me, he'll hurt me more. If I am tough and show no reaction at all, he'll leave me alone. That's the only defense a powerless child has. And that's my power. The only thing I truly know as strength.

The only clear memory I have of childhood spankings is the realization that they're not going to happen again because I've won by not showing any pain or fear.

He almost admitted to me that he could never break me when I was a child, recently. In a roundabout way, and, of course, talking about my mother spanking me, not him, but it was there. An admiring sort of anger in his eyes as he recounted how stubborn I was as a child. How they couldn't break my will.

This went on with words as weapons. 

It's a battle, a war, a concentration camp. If you've been in a war, yes, you're likely to have been hurt and messed up in different ways. But you're not expected to cry because the enemy soldiers hurt your feelings, are you? If you've been in a concentration camp, there surely are many horrible things to recount. But you're not likely going to weep over how the guards didn't like you or how the Kommandant hurt your feelings. You wouldn't be open to having your feelings hurt in the first place. Because you're in the kind of situation where you're trying to survive against a powerful enemy. There's no time or place for having your feelings hurt by that enemy and wanting to cry over that.

So, yes, it's a defense. And it's a damned good one, one that works with sadistic narcissists. And it's one I've had in place since I was tiny. And I'm not hiding anything or even really holding anything back - I don't remember the last time there was anything there.


 

Tough

The tissues on the desk in my therapist's office annoy me. You think I'm gonna cry? No way. I'm tough.

When he says I had a very difficult childhood and many painful events in my past, I don't trust him to mean it. I'm wondering if he's being sarcastic, as in "Oh, poor you. You whiny brat." (I brought it up at the end of the session and he was able to convince me he definitely means it; that almost made me cry.)

Being vulnerable in front of others is dangerous and stupid. If you admit to any hurt feelings, ever, you will be attacked where it hurts AND you will be called ungrateful, whiny, and weak.

When you're hurt by someone, what you do is grit your teeth, clench your whole body, and bear it and just wait for it to be over. You don't even admit it hurts. You don't give them that pleasure.

My therapist asked me if I was aware of an interesting defense I had: whenever I talk about painful experiences, I smile and laugh. I wasn't aware of it. And I didn't mind I had it. I kind of thought that was cool. I'm aware, rationally, that this is messed up and actually weak, but I don't think I can help feeling this way. I don't even remember talking about painful experiences - just things my parents did. I didn't feel any pain.

I would loathe and disgust myself if I were to break down and cry before this father figure - not that I'm tempted to.

My husband is the only one I can cry in front of - and I loathe and disgust myself for that, too. 

Parentification

People who never had real parents tend to parentify their children. This doesn't just mean that they want their children to take care of them emotionally (and sometimes physically) the way their parents should have.

This is common, but there are other ways to parentify and mess up your kids.

You can treat them like your messed up parents wanted to be treated, thinking misguidedly that this is simply the best way to treat human beings.

You can try to do anything not to upset them. You can try to leave every decision up to them. You can  allow them to walk all over you (sometimes literally) thinking it's your duty to just bear it. You can fail to have any boundaries. You can treat their every wish as your command.

I've been guilty of this. And then I've sometimes snapped and said "What do you want from me?"

Authoritarianism and permissiveness are two sides of the same coin - a parent who doesn't instinctively feel where sane boundaries lie because his or hers were violated in childhood.

Sometimes even infantilization is actually a form of parentification. My father did many age-inappropriate things for me and sometimes behaved as if I were a princess and he were my servant (but there was sarcasm involved). For instance, he'd ask me if I wanted something to eat in my room, I'd say "OK", he'd bring it to me and I'd finish it and then go on reading or whatever. He'd come in, see the empty plate, and sardonically say "May I remove Your plate now, your Majesty?" or something like that. There was no right response. He was resentful about doing something I never asked him to do. I'd mumble "Yes" or try to take the plate back myself - he'd never let me.

He and his sister had to serve their narcissistic mother as the Queen she was. So he did the same for me, because I represented her somehow. She demanded this sort of treatment, I never did, I was deeply embarrassed by it.

I'm a bit down now and feel like whatever I do with my kids, it will somehow be wrong because I'm broken and can't get it just right. I'll just do the opposite of what my parents did, and the cycle will go on.

The Black Hole Swallows Me Whole

After I learned that I had messed both my children up, my husband was annoyed that I wouldn't stop biting my nails and cuticles, which were swollen and bloody.

So I screamed that biting my nails is just a defense from what I'd really like to do, and that's cut myself, stab myself, kill myself, really hurt myself. Then I slapped myself and punched myself in the face.

Then I shut myself in the bathroom and sobbed uncontrollably for two hours because no one has ever loved me and no one could, because if they feel something for me it's because they don't know the darkness in me, and my husband will never truly understand me and if he does he'll be disgusted at how weak and evil and empty I am, and yes, my children love me, because they're naive and innocent, but they shouldn't, they'd be better off without me.

I know none of this is true. But I feel it now and don't know what to do about it. Telling myself it isn't true doesn't really help.

I'm not sure where to go from here. Now I'm just down. Maybe up is next, maybe what's next is digging downwards through rock bottom.

Still shaking after a whole day

Here's something that still has me shaking after a whole day. I couldn't fall asleep last night. I am trying to figure out why exactly that is - because I'm so terrified of government institutions because I'm an ACoN and my NF was so much into doctors and teachers and all these authority figures; or because I'm so vulnerable and defensive about my parenting because I know at a deep level that I can never be an adequate parent. Anyway, feel free to point out my craziness out to me. This is what I wrote about it on a parenting forum:



So, I live in a post-Communist country. Public schools and certain medical check-ups for children are mandatory (and free, by the way; but still mandatory).

Today I had the pleasure of taking my 2.5 yo daughter for a first check-up with a speech therapist and defectologist AND getting information from them about my 5 yo's check-up that was conducted in her preschool class.

It was a real treat.

I was told my (wonderful, sweet, smart, almost bilingual, introverted) 5 yo is "socially impaired" (because she's shy in large groups and with strangers), "behind" (because she apparently didn't know all the arbitrary things expected from her at that age), and needs help from them.

The (pretty mean-looking, intimidating, crabby) lady told me it was obvious my daughter wasn't used to a "collective" - she'd been at home with us all her life before preschool and never went to daycare, something they obviously saw as neglectful and somehow evil - and she needed institutional help so she'd catch up with other, "socialized" children.

When I asked exactly what techniques and methods she thought she could use to help my daughter adjust to a school setting with more ease, the woman frowned at me and said "That's for me to know!" I replied: "I can't give my consent unless I have information on what you propose to do to my child" and she still wouldn't tell me! So I declined - the lady was giving me, a grown woman, the creeps, I certainly don't want to expose my sensitive child to her!

She said my child had cognitive issues. When I asked for examples, this is what I got:

- "She couldn't name all the body parts"
"I find that hard to believe," I replied. "Which ones couldn't she name?" I asked and got NO REPLY. My kid knows how to name body parts in two different languages and this was absurd.

- "She couldn't count to ten"
"She can count to one hundred," I replied. Perhaps she was terrified of this lady.

- "She couldn't name the days of the week."
OK, this one is true. My kid doesn't know the names of the days of the week. Those are seven words that she can cram by heart in two minutes, but what's the point of it in a 5 yo's life? She's just never been interested. She can tell time, though, but that doesn't matter, because the guidelines say that a 5 yo must know the days of the week or be deemed cognitively impaired. (Added: I actually taught her those seven words yesterday and it took all of 90 seconds.)

I said my child was fluent in two languages, and she reprimanded me for that, as it is bad for a child to be bilingual - a child must first learn her own language well before she's exposed to another one. I immediately got scared and defensive and said I couldn't prevent her - she just picks up languages effortlessly!

(And, only after writing this, I actually find the courage to say that this is baloney! I studied language development in uni and there's nothing wrong with being bilingual!)

Then it was my baby's turn. She was, to begin with, speech impaired - yes, she develops verbally a bit slower, but she's got a good ear and is catching up quickly. She just started showing an interest in learning words later. She's more interested in her motor development. (She speaks more than 200 words at age 2.5, and is learning new ones every day.)

They were concerned and seemed to blame me for not "working with her" enough. See, I have to actively teach my child speech, not just talk to her in a normal way.

One horrible oversight on my part is not teaching my children onomatopoeic words. You see, a child will never learn how to speak and will forever lag behind if you don't drill into her when she's two years old that a doggie says "woof" and a cow says "moo" and a sheep says "baa". Or whatever. I told them I wasn't sure I knew them all and I am a language and literature teacher at a university.

(I just remembered - she does know that a mouse says "click" )

It was problematic that my 2.5 yo was still not "part of a collective" - i.e. at daycare 8 hours a day. (I have no reason or desire to put my child in daycare).

And it was shocking to them when my toddler asked to nurse. They asked me why on Earth I was still nursing her. I answered "Because the WHO encourages it until at least the age of 2, and then further if both mother and child are happy with it," to which I was given a lecture about the bad quality of my milk.

My milk has great quality, by the way. It has just been used to cure conjunctivitis in my toddler and myself, and has warded off strep throat for my toddler.

Then she said I was attaching my toddler to myself by nursing so long, and she won't be able to be a part of a collective and learn well in the future because of it!

I asked her what research she has to back that claim up and mentioned that experiments in attachment psychology (Harlow, Ainswhorth, Bowlby and others) have demonstrated that securely attached children actually do a better job exploring and learning.

To which she replied that I can have my theories, but it was her job to tell me what the consequences of my actions were.

All this time, they were talking to me and asking me questions, never even looking at my toddler. The poor kid noticed toys in a box and tried to get them, which I attempted to bring to their attention, but they ignored it, and she gave up and headed towards the soap on the sink. I got up and took the soap away from her, as it looked yucky, and the speech therapist had the nerve to reprimand me for not listening to her, but paying attention to my child instead!

I've been sad, angry, crushed, all day long. My husband told me we should just ignore it all and keep doing our thing. But I can't help feeling both reprimanded as a bad mother AND afraid for my child in the future, if people like this ever get to her. Trying to turn her from an introvert into an extrovert. Trying to make her into a neat case with all the right boxes ticked. Knows days of the week? Check. Detached from parents and adjusted to the collective? Check. Fully "socialized", i.e. institutionalized? Check.






Really, feel free to comment honestly. Am I being overly narcissistic and defensive? Part of me believes I truly am an inadequate and neglectful mother and that my children really are better off with anyone else; and part of me wants to protect them from these people; then the other part of me tells me that's because I'm trying to keep them for myself and from the people who'd love them more and do better by them because I'm a neglectful narcissist; then I go insane.

For Quercus Garryana - The Black Hole

I owe you several posts, but I really wanted to do this one that I never even promised. :)

It's my list of reasons why I love the discovery of the black hole. The one caused by the absence of parental love that will never be filled.

1) I've always known it was there. I was just never allowed to feel it, acknowledge it, know about it. See, my life and family and everything was perfect. But now I consciously know the black hole is part of who I am.

2) I finally have a right to who I am and what I feel. I've been angsty, dark, cynical, depressed, black, at different points in my life. I was not just being an ungrateful poser. It was me.

3) Pain, sadness, loneliness, anything, feels better than the empty denial of it. Much better.

4) We're all different and have different crosses to bear. We don't have to be happy or fulfilled or fucking perfect. That's what the narcs demanded from us. That's not what being human is all about. I never have to be happy or whole or perfectly content. Just truly honest and human, thank you.

5) Everybody hurts.

It's OK to hurt and feel sad and incomplete and like you're missing something. It's part of being human. I feel like I need to make this point again, even after 4)

Even people from wonderful families have thorns in their sides. It's what being human entails. It's kind of beautiful, really.

6) Finally seeing that black hole face to face, being broken and vulnerable - leaves you open to the really good things in life. You're a Christian, right? Leonard Cohen has some of my favorite lyrics about Christ:

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

only drowning men could see him

he himself was broken

It makes me shiver, every time.

7) My favorite insight: the real me doesn't need or want perfect, non-messed-up parents now. No, they wouldn't truly get the real me. Nor would my actual dysfunctional still-messed-up parents.

What the real me now wants and needs and gets is other ACoNs - the ones who've been there and understand and offer support and empathy.

How I got myself to finally cry: I imagined asking my therapist if he'd been loved by his parents; I imagined him replying, calmly, slightly sadly, but mostly with empathy: "No". And I felt like someone could understand the hell inside and not judge me. Know it's real and I'm not a wimpy liar making it up. That gave me the permission to feel it and own it.

And that's me and that's really OK.

The Bad Heart

I recently realized what the "bad heart" my father's family suffered from meant.

I'd worried I'd inherit their cardiology issues - my N Grandma, SG aunt, and NF all had "bad hearts."

Except that my N Grandma spent several decades trying to fill the black hole in her heart with junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes and died of a fourth heart attack, after she had used her "bad heart" to manipulate her husband and children into quivering obedience.

Except that my aunt never had heart issues - when she claimed she did, she was just blind drunk. When she claimed she couldn't have kids because of her "bad heart," she just meant that her evil mother had forbidden her to have any other children to care for but her and that she had made her abort the child she'd conceived with the man she loved but wasn't allowed to marry. She died of cirrhosis of the liver after several decades of trying to fill the black hole in her heart with alcohol and cigarettes on an empty stomach.

Except that my NF just suffers from manageable high blood pressure after several decades of trying to fill the black hole in his heart with junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes. He's actually surprisingly healthy for his age, activity level, and diet.

The bad heart transmitted in my family is a metaphor. It's the heartlessness of the parents and the broken hearts of the children. None acknowledged, none made conscious, none properly mourned.  


 

Poor Little NF

I have my father's childhood photo album. He is not interested in having it, I am.

One of the first pictures shows him as a chubby, happy, smiling baby. In the next picture, he's pouting. In the last, he's weeping.

The cute story behind it? He was such a happy baby and always smiled. They had no photos of him crying. So they shouted and yelled at him and told him he was a bad boy until he broke into tears.

So cute, right?

In the next several pictures, his smiling grandpa is letting Little NF ride him. When I asked NF about his grandpa, looking at these photos, all he had to say was, darkly, "He was a strict man." It sounded eery. Wasn't he a darling, playful, sweet old guy? I mean, look at the pictures! Apparently, far from it.

He had lots of people to teach him how to stage a perfect family photo shoot. How to manipulate reality and emotions. They started when he was an innocent little baby.

He was sweet then, you know. I feel perfect love and empathy for that poor little baby in that old photo.

Connecting the dots. And finding my way.

I did it. I'm in.

I've been able to feel and cry for two days now. I have cried for the little girl who was never loved and was never allowed to even understand and feel that simple fact. I have cried for the frightened, terrorized, and abused child who had to play the role of the happy, grateful daughter, even to herself. I have cried for the adult who is still largely living in this hell and will forever be left with this black hole. 

I was able to do this after I connected all the dots of why I didn't allow myself to feel my feelings.

I realized it wasn't fear of pain, or mere detachment, or simple protection of myself. We ACoNs can take pain. We're not wimps. It really was not about that.

It was the opposite. It was the compulsion to be strong.

It was fear and obligation and guilt. The terror of betraying my parents by proving, through my feelings, that they hurt me. What I was never allowed to do as a child.

I remember being told "You're so ugly when you cry" and "Don't cry or I'll give you something to cry about" and I remember that the moral of the comic I drew - described in The Torture Chamber For Babies - was that if you severely beat your children because they cry, they will cry more. Crying was forbidden because it made them look bad and because it annoyed them.

The only moral defense I ever had was not reacting to any way they hurt me at all.

Crying and feeling hurt by them is the ultimate betrayal. It proves it was real. And once I realized this, I wanted to rebel more than ever.

And I feel real now. I've taken a huge step that cannot be undone. I've felt more for everything and everyone, too.

I even feel more empathy for my parents - like feeling truly sorry for them as children, too. And it's the opposite of excusing anything. They excused and idealized and obeyed their parents.

It didn't drown me and the world didn't come crashing down. There's pain, but I've never been afraid of that, and it feels much better than being dead. It's everything I'd hoped it would be.

It's a first step of many, and I know I have a long way to go still, but it feels like the most important breakthrough for me yet.

Stuff that always made me cry

I was given this homework assignment by my therapist as I can only afford therapy once a month: think about the music/films/books that make you cry and connect that with what you never had as a child.

(I had admitted that I can cry at music and films, but not about my own life)



These are the first few things that come to mind:



The Cranberries: Ode to my family

Why: The lyrics "My mother ... she'd hold me ... My father ... he liked me"

What it has to do with what I never had: My mother wasn't allowed to hold me - at least once I was old enough to remember. This part leaves me cold, to be honest; anything pertaining to mothers tends to; but "my father ... liked me" just blows me away. It's so beautiful and simple and real. No one liked me. They doted on me, loooved me, did so much for me, but it was so damn obvious they didn't like me.

I think my mother's stepfather liked me. I still cry when I remember him. I also think another distant relative did - the one I thought was my biological father. This idea of him as my biological father moved me emotionally too. These two older men liked me and seemed interested in me and seemed to have been able to have a conversation or two with me. This in itself is incredible.

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah

Why: There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken hallelujah

...

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

What it has to do with what I never had: I was never allowed to be ordinary, imperfect, human, or just wrong. It's amazing to me that God doesn't require perfection or holiness - brokenness and truth are all I have right now, too. And that's fine.

Schindler's list

Why: Pretty much anything involving concentration camps deeply moves me on a seemingly too personal level. I'm not just talking about the general human reaction to other humans being inhumanly treated - it's more than that and it's personal.

What it has to do with what I never had: It may sound crazy, but I'm sure other ACoNs will understand: a narcissistic family is a bit like a concentration camp. The golden children are the capos, the scapegoats are all the others. You are afraid and insecure and vulnerable all the time. You are someone's property. Your basic humanity is denied. You are (often) physically deprived and hurt. Your owners get to define reality in which you're somehow to blame and they're just defending themselves. And there's no way out.

Tangled

Why: From Schindler's list to a Disney cartoon... yeah, I know. The scene where Rapunzel's hair is cut off and she is liberated from being loved for what she can do for others is incredibly cathartic to me. It made me sob the first time I saw it.

What it has to do with what I never had: I still don't have the guts to trust my family of choice to love me for who I am instead of what I do. If I don't make enough money and buy everyone's favorite food, I'm afraid I just won't be worthwhile to them. This is not always true and I'm working on it, but I sure wish someone could just fix me in one fell swoop like this.

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Why: Maggie invests a great deal of time and energy into suppressing her immoral feelings, while still not managing to avoid the wrath of everyone she loves without really ever having done anything wrong. Finally, the river Floss floods and she drowns rescuing her brother.

What it has to do with what I never had: Wow, I sobbed while reading this book ages ago and never made any connections with anything at all - I just saw myself as a sentimental girl. I still wasn't sure what it had to do with anything until I wrote the above description.

I suppress my immoral feelings towards my parents too, and still, just by virtue of not thinking about them as wonderful and perfect, I constantly risk incurring wrath. It's easy to forget that I have never done anything wrong to my parents - really, truly, I haven't. I have merely questioned their actions and mindsets and have felt a few fleeting negative feelings towards them - much less than most normal kids do.

Water will not be put down. The river will flood. My feelings will not be suppressed forever. I hope they don't drown me.

Heart of Darkness

I don't blog to gather a supportive crowd of people. I don't blog to complain about my childhood. Though both these have their good sides, it's not what this is about for me. I blog to expose to the light the heart of darkness that gets passed on in my family from generation to generation. I want to continue growing into a more authentic, honest, real, and truly loving and vital human being.

Communicating honestly with other people who get this and want the same thing is an excellent way to do this. There are people in this community that I have grown to deeply love and respect, although I've never met them. I don't want to name any, simply because I'm afraid I'll forget someone. You know who you are.

I don't want to feel safe here. I don't want to never be questioned, analyzed, reacted negatively to. If you point out my narcissistic defenses to me, I'll thank you for it. If you call me out on any BS, you'll be helping me achieve my goals. (If you, however, just tell me that I'm an asshole belonging to a pack of evil bullies, I won't be able to do anything constructive with this information.) 

My last post really wasn't meant to be about taking sides - I wrote about my emotional and cognitive processes and reactions to different people. There were potentially negative things there about several persons involved in the conflict.

Here's, however, another interesting observation of a couple of facts, that does in itself differentiate between individuals, or, even, if you will, "sides":

Jonsi's here self-reflecting in an awesomely brave post.

Caliban's Sister is gone.






(Was I the last straw? Would she have stayed if I had continued to talk to her in a nice way, pretending not to have noticed anything I found disturbing in her comments and posts? Would she have wanted me to? I'll never know. But I know, if the shoe was on the other foot, I wouldn't have wanted that. From her or anyone else.)

Ready To Kill

I'm actually not afraid of conflict as such. Either I have changed in the last day or so or I had misinterpreted my feelings or I had temporarily regressed to an earlier stage of development.

I was afraid of being asked to "pick a side" in a black-and-white, should-always-and-shouldn't-ever, right-or-wrong-behavior ideological conflict. I was never asked to do this, of course. I wonder why I always ask myself to do this - perhaps it's safer to think in ideological terms than in personal ones.

Yesterday, I realized that I could actually respond to this conflict in personal terms, if I chose to. I could write a long post expressing my thoughts, reactions, and feelings about every action of every blogger in this entire conflict. And I could be wrong, as I often am. But those would be my personal errors in judgment that I could take responsibility for and own.

I wouldn't be afraid to do this and I'd be willing to accept that I might easily be wrong. Because it would be just me speaking personally for myself, and not taking an ideological stance - which used to be safer.

I almost wrote that post. I might still do it, if I choose to. No one's asking me to, for sure.

Part of the reason the whole conflict upset me was that I still wasn't ready to kill narcissistic parts of my personality. I was afraid someone would disturb them in me. But now I realize this is precisely what I need and precisely why I'm here.

I'm ready to kill now. Really. To kill my own inner narcissist.

Staying Out

The post-Charity-earthquake-tremors have shown me just how far away I am from healthy in my healing journey.

Today, I did something I'm ashamed of. Something I don't remember ever doing. I deleted some of my comments on a blog where a long argument has developed, an argument that has me feeling scared and sad and anxious. I deleted my comments primarily because I am still not in a place where I can say something that can be seen as taking a side in an interpersonal conflict.

I have liked different people in that conflict for sometimes similar and sometimes different reasons. But that's not the only reason I feel I must Stay Out.

I always Stay Out. Still. Whenever anything personal transpires that even smells of potential conflict. I can only debate and discuss general ideas. Never have anything even remotely to do with any confrontation about anything personal. I have no idea if this will ever change.

In my family, conflict was simply forbidden. We were to be nice, polite, and civil to each other at all times, even in the privacy of our home. Of course, the only way to do this in a family is to completely keep its members from being emotionally involved with each other. I'm still somewhat trapped there. I feel safer in my FOC, and can now even sometimes have a bit of a fight with my husband. Friends, family, others? No way.

I used to deal by not being emotionally involved. Now I've changed that. I've somewhat unblocked the ability to have feelings for people. I "even" have feelings for people in this community. It only makes my problem worse. I used to think, while I was still largely narcissistically defended, that I was somehow "above" personal conflicts. I realize now I'm still much, much "below" them. I feel like a child whose parents are fighting - helpless, sad, unable to do anything but hope it'll be over soon.

Hard Work vs. Easy Work

There are two ways to break the cycle of narcissistic abuse in your family.

You can do the hard work - realize your parents were abusive in some ways, understand how this has affected you, take a long deep hard look at yourself, your thinking, your feelings, your relationships, change, stop defending, start truly loving. It takes years of being bare, exposed, helpless, lost. You're likely to carry some problems and some fleas forever, but you're determined to be open and honest and vulnerable about this.

Or you can do the easy work - realize your parents were abusive in some ways, do things differently because you're better, feel good about yourself as a great parent because you don't even do x to your kids, and your parents did xyz to you. You're still largely narcissistic, although not as abusive as your parents.

Only today did I realize that I didn't have to think of these two "options" in black-and-white terms.

Both actually deserve credit - to differing degrees.

My parents consciously refused to engage in some forms of abuse, manipulation, and parentifying that their parents used liberally. I remember this. I picked up on it. I can now give them some credit for this.

Which doesn't mean they weren't narcissistic enough to majorly screw me up. But I'm still happy I didn't have to be raised by exact carbon copies of my extremely narcissistic grandparents.

(Still) Tangled

Disney's Tangled reaaally hit a nerve. I cried throughout the first time I watched it. It doesn't really matter which personality disorder mother Gothel can be diagnosed with (although, of course, I believe it's NPD), the important thing is that she symbolizes the parent who is not "real" because she is unable to love her child unconditionally.

She keeps Rapunzel trapped solely because her magical hair provides her with an ever-fresh source of youth and energy and narcissistic supply. Rapunzel has learned well that she is only needed and loved for her hair and the services it provides.

Which is why Eugene cutting her hair off is such a cathartic moment. He refuses to use her magical hair to save his life and cuts it off, setting her free.

Although "love will save you" and waiting for a prince on a white horse to rescue you are dangerous concepts because a person or a relationship will not do your hard work for you, I do believe we ACoNs need someone - a spouse, a friend, a relative, a therapist - to show us that unconditional love and acceptance exist and what kind of work we need to do. Someone who won't leave us when we say "no."

Someone who'll cut our magical hair off.

My husband is here to do that for me. I just don't seem to completely be able to let him. I still hold on to it. I don't want to upset him. I want to do stuff for him. I want to be useful to him. We're both aware of this problem in our relationship and his current method of fighting it is gentle humor.

Here's to cutting our magical hair off!