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.

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.

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.

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.

My only session (so far)

I feel like writing down a few snippets from the introductory session with the therapist I'm not going to see any more, not only because she just got a desk opposite mine at work. The therapist is young, ambitious, optimistic. She was happy about the blogging and the support we give each other, but said something kind of silly:


T: You can also see on those blogs that people with similar backgrounds to yours become all sorts of successful professionals and that's a positive example.

PA: (thinking WTF?!) Many of us indeed are quite successful outwardly, some only too successful, but...

T: So people can overcome bad childhoods!

Another annoying snippet:

T: What you need to do is accept yourself unconditionally.

PA: Sounds good, but how does one who was never accepted unconditionally for the first couple of decades of her life learn to accept herself unconditionally?

T: Don't give me that excuse!

PA: It's not an excuse. (Thinking later: A sentence beginning with "how" is, at least officially, a question. It may be a rhetorical question, but it is not automatically an excuse.) It's my reality. I don't know what you mean by your words. Imagine being born in Plato's cave, and being told you just need to go live in the sun. You don't even know what the sun is. You don't know which way to go.

T: But you can't use this as an excuse not to be moving out.

PA: I'm moving out. I've been slowly moving out for a couple of years now. But it's not going to just happen if you say it should.

(Thinking much later of the perfect analogy: You tell me you can see I'm hungry so I should just go to the restaurant across the street. I tell you I was raised in this room in absolute darkness and have never ventured out. You tell me that's an excuse - all I need to do is get out, go down the stairs, cross the street and enter the restaurant. I tell you I've heard these words before, but I don't know how to recognize "stairs," "street" and "restaurant," I might fall down the stairs, or a car might hit me, or I might get lost. So you have to show me, not tell me I need to get there or even how to get there. Telling me I just need to accept myself is cute, but won't produce any results.)

REBT is really not for me. The main technique seems to be constantly challenging the client's views, feelings, and perceptions. ACoNs DON'T need more of that, even if our constructs need changing. I noticed myself acting in a narcissistically defensive way and/or resorting to JADE a lot during the session - behaviors I thought were somewhat behind me.

Incredibly, I found a great therapist with a lot of training and experience online. He even has a blog, in which he reveals himself as empathetic, intuitive, extremely flexible, only too ready to admit he'd been thinking too rigidly about something before, but a client or a trainee challenges that and he accepts this... and also, he recommends Alice Miller's books. I wrote to him and he accepted me as a client, even with the condition that I can only afford one session per month.

I was so happy with the exchange, especially because I'd written to 4-5 other therapists and they all replied in manners which had red flags all over them ("What do you mean if I've worked with children or the personality disordered? I don't know, my clients don't have the expertise to diagnose their parents." "I'd ask you what it means to you that your parent is disordered, how you have accepted and interpreted and constructed that in your life" etc.)

Just the fact that there is a therapist in my country who's very much into Alice Miller and seems extremely open to understanding and validating and helping me truly experience my insights has had a huge positive effect. I've felt more in the last few days. I've relived some moments from my childhood, actually feeling them this time around. I felt betrayal, anger, and sadness. I have a pretty good feeling about this - I hope I've developed enough intuition and gut feeling by now. 

motherless daughters

She lost it again. She was in her daughter’s face, having a toddler-like temper tantrum. Except that she was thirty and a mother and should be able to control herself. And should be able to control her daughter’s behavior, at least a little bit. This was all she had left after about three hours of reasoning, begging, and sternly, but unpersuasively saying “Calm down. Now.” Three hours of threatening, pleading, and even hitting her. Twice.

The little girl was angry. Or scared. Or both.

“You’re not my mother. You stole me from my real parents. Admit the truth!”

Poor little Rapunzel. Seeing mother Gothel for who she is. At last.

***

Later, at night, her dead mother pays her a visit.

“You know,” she says, “You thought your father was sterile and we used a sperm donor to make you.”

“We did have a donor. We used donor eggs. I’m not your real mother.”

She’s smirking cruelly as she says that.

***

I don’t remember that cruel smirk from when she was alive.

I do realize this now makes three generations of motherless daughters. The sins of the mothers.

Bad daughter

My father fell down and broke a rib a couple of days ago. He's OK, was told to rest and take pain medication and all would be fine. He calls once a day and says briefly he's in pain because he's not taking the medication and he doesn't go out and his GF does all the shopping. I say stuff like "How are you? Hope you get well soon. Take that pain medication!"

I'm sure I should be feeling and doing something else. My MIL told me today we should go visit him and bring him something. She's right. That's the decent thing to do. It had just never even occurred to me.

There's something horrifying about that.

If it was someone else, it would have occurred to me.

I don't know if he wants us there. Even in health, we've only visited them at their place two or three times in the 6+ years we've been married and they've been living there together.

And he's the "strong, silent type" narcissist who needs no one and takes help from no one. If I offer to visit and bring him anything, he'll probably decline.

But, on the other hand, his insistence on not taking medication and being in pain and repeating he's not going out might be a message that he'd at least like to be offered help - an echo of his own narcissistic mother's constant manipulations in which she used her illnesses to enslave her children.

My father, to his credit, has always done the exact opposite - the stoic "I can handle it and don't need you or anyone, you just go on with your life" - which always made me feel like a cold-hearted bitch, but I actually had little option except to take him at his word.

So, we decided to at least offer to go see him tomorrow. I'm disturbed that it hadn't even occurred to me. It should have. He's a human being of my acquaintance, after all. I'm disturbed that I'm apparently that kind of person.

I can't really bring myself to be disturbed about being a bad daughter. That part of the equation sounds kind of weird.

Luxuries

I have a problem with clothes. I hate spending money on clothes and shoes for myself. I feel like it's a selfish, luxurious sin to be buying new clothes. Getting clothes second hand from friends and relatives is a sinless way to obtain them. For years, in my teens and adolescence, I only wore my grandfather's and father's old shirts, pants, coats, and wore the same shoes for years, until they fell apart. I looked like a hobo and though of it as my "style". I certainly didn't want to be a "lady" like my grandmothers, so that worked out well.

It was a source of weird pride for me. I needed little. I was ascetic.

Now I have a weird thing where I'll sometimes feel so starved for clothes, while at the same time feeling horrible about giving money for them, that I'll buy tons of dirt cheap stuff that will fall apart after the first wash.

And I've felt for so long that my parents gave me sooo much, that I only realized last night that they bought me almost no clothes after I was 11 or so. I was made to feel incredibly grateful for everything I was given, even if it was used. My father would give me an old coat of his, tattered and worn out, and make me seem ungrateful and unappreciative if I didn't like it. Like I was a spoiled brat. I had to justify needing anything and it had to be cheap. Things like shoes. My father glued my soles back on with superglue several times before acknowledging that I indeed did need new shoes, after, say, 5 years of me wearing the same pair.

I was too proud to acknowledge it even mattered. I never needed anything from them. There was pride in wearing old stuff and being a hobo and needing little.

When I was a baby, and in my early childhood, though, they dressed me up like a doll, in expensive dresses and shoes and bought only the best finery for me. And then, abruptly, it stopped, and I actually fondly remember getting a pair of stockings and some underwear, because it was such a rare, incredible treat.

And I only really understood this last night! This realization happened after I shared with my husband the fact that I never had a bed.

I never had a bed.

When I was little, I slept in my crib, and then on a couch.

Then, when my grandparents died, I inherited one of their old beds. With a mattress that was falling apart.

Only now do I realize how wrong this is. Now, when I've bought beds and mattresses for my family and seen how it is indeed possible to wake up without pain in my back.

Reactions to death

Watching my father react to death all my life was enough to make me believe I was heartless and morbid and unnecessarily cynical, all at the same time. But now I'm able to See him for who he is, I realize it's not me. It's never been me. It's always been him.

The first time death was seriously mentioned in my home was when ummm... my mother's birth father's second wife died. My mother's parents had divorced when she was 10, her father died when I was 4, and I'd only seen this woman a few times in my life. I was seven. My father summoned me with "We need to talk to you about something". That was the "something's wrong and you're probably in trouble" speech. So I immediately asked "Is this about me?" (see why I thought I was narcissistic? It usually WAS about me. It's much akin to the old question: "If you're indeed being persecuted, are you still paranoid?" If it's usually about you, are you narcissistic for thinking everything's about you?) He said "No. It's about Auntie C." Relief. The first serious news of death I received was accompanied by my relief that I wasn't in trouble, that nothing was my fault. My father proceeded to very cautiously inform me of her demise, sighing, acting very tender towards me, all the while looking me straight in the eyes, as if examining me. Would I break down and cry? Could I handle it? Or am I insensitive? I just said "OK." I was sure I was cold and evil for feeling nothing but relief, and my father obviously thought I'd be shaken to hear the news, like a normal person would be.

For years it was the same. With each death in the family, my father acted in this solemn, sighing manner about it, he was all official mourning and saccharine telegrams with condolences, all the while treating me as a child who needed protection from the harsh news. And I went along, certain that people will find out I'm really not devastated by this death, but not faking anything. I really thought of myself as the most morbid and cold of people.    

It was only later that I realized my father wasn't devastated either. He didn't seem to grieve at all after his parents and his sister died. In fact, he seemed to blossom psychologically after their deaths. Which, of course, I understand now. It's hard to really miss a controlling, dysfunctional, narcissistic family. Back then, I again only felt relief that I wasn't the only one who was cold and evil. Maybe I started believing most people felt nothing when their family members died, but they had to fake it. Now I understand most people's family members aren't mostly narcissistic, and people do miss warm, loving, real people, for real.

Lately, I've had the privilege of Seeing more. When our next-door neighbor died, I informed my father, who'd known him for years and seemed close to him. His reply was "I'm sorry you had to be near when it happened. I hope you won't have to help the widow with anything." To his girlfriend he said (she reported this to me later, in shock): "He died because he wasn't getting any from his wife" (he died after a horrible battle with lung cancer, through which his wife nursed him).

This was finally bizarre enough to help me understand I'm the normal one and can trust myself. 

A few days ago, my father called to inform me that my cousins' mother had died. They'd lost their father just a couple of years ago, and their mother was pretty young, and I asked him "How? What happened? She was so young, wasn't she?" and he had no idea and it hadn't occurred to him to ask. Each instance of death was, I now understood, identical to him, an occasion for solemn, sighing formalities, and nothing more. He sent a telegram, he told me, expressing his condolences and saying she was a devoted mother and a few other disgusting commonplaces. I should send a telegram too, he said. I asked if he was going to phone, and he said "No, I don't want to bother them, they must be busy now with the funeral and everything". I finally realized he was just clueless and awkward and the really cold one. An alien among humans.

So I decided not to listen to him. I phoned. I talked to my cousin. Asked him questions, told him I was really sorry, told him I really thought about them a lot, sent my love. After I hung up, I cried. I like my cousins a lot and they're sane and I haven't seen them many times in my life, but we can connect and we did and I actually do feel sorry that they lost their mother. I had no idea that was all there was to being human.

I know this preoccupation with my own feelings and reactions seems narcissistic. But to me these are such weird discoveries - the capability to feel and trust and express normal human emotions - that I have to treat them in this way.

Ugh. No social skills.

This is a part of me that's completely undeveloped. I gave up on it very early in my life and sort of just tried to manage by being completely honest as much as possible, while trying not to actually hurt anyone. That's all I know. I have no idea how people work or what their reactions are going to be.

So, yesterday, I had a friend yell at me for 20 minutes, telling me I've abused his trust. Because I repeated something he'd said to another friend in an effort to help their communication over a business project. Because they both talked to me about it and were frustrated about not being able to understand what the other's problem was and I saw where the gap was and filled it. I didn't even know I was told anything in confidence. I didn't realize there was a secret there.

The friend who shouted at me said I was acting like a "5-year-old Good Samaritan" and he needed no mediation and I exposed his private thoughts and put him on the defensive. I apologized. But I still honestly don't know what it really is I did. Or if I in fact did anything wrong.

Another thing. The friend's mother is diagnosed with OCD and paranoia. This was his upbringing.

My upbringing involved a narcissistic father who shared all my intimate details with complete strangers. I got used to anything I did or said being repeated anytime, anywhere, and acted accordingly. I made sure I had nothing to hide. And if I did something I was ashamed of or felt bad about, I shared it with others immediately. I thought of this as honesty and integrity. I thought everyone was like this, give or take. I only thought secrets were things people started with "Promise not to tell anyone this".

The fact that we're both messed up, albeit in different ways, makes it impossible for me to realize, on my own, if what I did was actually wrong. Like something a narcissist would do. Or if he really badly overreacted. Like something a paranoid person would do.

What confuses me even more: people I talked to about this told me telling the other friend wasn't immoral at all, but telling him I told was a foolishly bad move for the friendship! Whoa! I can't function like this! I can't hide stuff! I can't lie to friends! I want to crawl into a place where there's just being kind and honest and moral and that's all it takes to deal with people! I don't want to have to consider all this stuff I can't even begin to understand!

I told him, after the lecture and the apology, that I don't want him ever telling me things like this again. Have a problem in communication that involves another person I'm friends with? Please, don't tell me about it. I don't want to know and be in the middle of it! I might try to fix it...

Parenting is a hard and thankless job

And you can do everything perfectly and be the best parent anyone could ever wish for, and your kids will still dislike you and be ungrateful.

At least those were the implicit messages I got and the conclusions I drew.

When I was three, I hugged my father and told him: "You're the best daddy in the universe!" He chuckled bitterly and said "You won't always think that. When you're older, you'll say you hate me".

Actually, I never did. But I remember being shocked to be accused of something that I was to do in a decade or more from the moment I expressed adoration of my father.

Later, though, I did believe him. I never told them I hated them and was a polite child and teenager, but I never actually truly loved my parents and never felt close to them or shared anything with them. And I thought how cruel that was to them - they were such wonderful, involved parents, whose only crime was spoiling me so much, and this is their thanks. I concluded that being a parent is horrible and all you can hope for is distance and contempt from your children.

I had PPD after my first child and saw the whole thing as a hard duty I must go through the motions of, but would rather be dead.

Having a good relationship with my husband's parents and, I hope, developing a real one with my own kids, I'm slowly starting to change my ingrained irrational thoughts on this.

How did you approach parenting after being raised by narcissistic parents? Did you have problems? Did you decide not to have kids at all? What surprised you in your own parenting and relationship with your kids?

It's Hard to "Be Yourself"...

...when you have no idea who "yourself" is.

Here is a very insightful post on how the presence of a narcissist in your life negatively affects your sense of self and how it is sometimes only possible to assess the damage after the narcissist is no longer around to minimize it. (Here's hoping PWC doesn't mind being paraphrased. Do read the entire post.)

Getting your sense of self back after a relationship with a narcissist is hard enough. But what about those of us who had no "self" to talk about before the narcissists in our lives? What about us whose characters and ideas about ourselves were shaped by narcissists? What about us with narcissistic parents? What do we go back to?

If you asked me just a month ago, I could tell you things about myself. I "knew" who "I" was. I was an over-achiever who was never quite satisfied with myself. I was masculine and not very motherly. I was rational, cold, and unemotional. I enjoyed discussions with intelligent people and eschewed talk about emotions and relationships. I wasn't necessarily happy about who I was, but I tried to accept it and spent a lot of time and energy defending and justifying "myself" to myself and others.

Then I ran across a few articles such as this one, where who I thought I was was simply explained away as an armor that some children of narcissists develop to shield themselves from the narcissistic abuse.

I don't really lack empathy. I thought I couldn't understand others and others' feelings. Actually, I couldn't understand my father's reactions, moods, and the dissonance between his words and his actions. I couldn't relate to his antics.

I'm not unfeeling. When I let myself realize that the self I thought I knew was shaped by narcissistic parenting, I unlocked the emotions that I'd kept under key. I used to stop every emotion in its inception, telling myself "Cut the crap. You know you're not really feeling sorry for that person. You just like trying to make yourself believe you're so sensitive, and emotional, and loving, just like your father and his mother did, but it's fake. You're not fake. Neither are you a really warm, loving person like your mother." I don't block emotions any more. I trust them. They're slowly and cautiously coming back.

I'm not truly unmotherly. I was very insecure about becoming a mother because I had a deep-seated belief that mothers don't matter, because mine was forced to take a back seat by my narcissistic father.

I'm not only interested in discussions. My narcissistic father, who had no religious, political, or philosophical convictions, allowed any abstract discussion to take place in our home. But little more than that. So discussions always felt "safe" to me. Also, before I admitted to myself that there was something profoundly wrong about the way I was raised, I didn't feel completely comfortable talking about personal stuff with people. Every personal conversation somehow felt superficial and fake, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I don't really need to achieve the things I thought I did. Sure, I have ambitions career-wise, but they're normal and healthy. I used to envy people who worked at a place that sounded more prestigious to my father and a few others of his generation, although it's a horrible place to work and the people there are miserable. If I was honest about it with myself, I would have actually liked to have refused to work there, so I wouldn't seem Not Good Enough for that place, but I couldn't accept it and still claim to love myself - it's a bad place to work at if you value your sanity. So, no, I'm actually not truly envious either.

So now I know a little bit about who I'm NOT. I still have no idea who I AM.

The armor that was molding me into shape is gone, and now I'm exposed, vulnerable, and - mostly formless.

I know one thing - I do enjoy being kind to the people around me. I'll take it from there, I guess.

How did you discover your authentic selves after realizing you were raised by a narcissist or two? Any advice? Please share!