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Sibling problems. . Was this the right thing to do?

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Twoapenny:

--- Quote from: KayZee on August 25, 2012, 04:11:40 PM ---Thank you so much, Tup.


--- Quote ---the author compares it to expecting a pre school child to understand a book written for an adult.  Their brains just aren't ready for it and can't process the information, so you can read them the book a thousand times and it still won't make sense.  The N parent (or sibling/whoever) is in a similar situation - they just can't understand how you feel, no matter how hard you try to explain it.  Think of it as a kind of injury to the brain that stops that understanding being there.
--- End quote ---

This is an amazing and truly helpful analogy.  I want to, like, write it on a stickie note and keep it in a very prominent place as a reminder to myself.  I really appreciate the encouragement.  And I'm so inspired by the way you've come to accept FOOs limitations. 

It's the kind of healing work that's hard because it seems to require being in two frames of mind at once: On the one hand, I feel like I'm trying to work on some intimacy and social anxiety issues; you know, put myself out there more, use my voice, communicate my feelings to people (excluding FOO).  And on the other, I feel like I'm trying to build up emotional barriers between me and FOO; you know, be less forthcoming with NM and co-N family who will only narrow in on my weak points like snipers.  Blah...

Anyway, you all are amazing as always.  I'm so glad to have a community (you) that understands and relates.
Kay x

--- End quote ---

Hi Kay,

For a really long time I felt like I had three voices in my head - my learned responses to every single thing that was going on (largely negative and things I wanted to get rid of), my new responses (healthier but often felt 'wrong' and I'd have to have a dialogue with myself about every little thing) and me - what I wanted, felt, needed, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, okay or not.  It was exhausting, so I completely understand what you mean about trying to build yourself up whilst also putting up barriers.  It feels contradictory, but another nice analogy that I read (again, I can't remember where!) was to think of your boundaries as a fence around your home with a gate - you open the gate to let nice people in and for you to go out to meet nice people, but you close it on the not so nice.  That really helped me figure out who I wanted to be around and for how long.  I still find it difficult - I'm lonely because I got rid of a lot of the bad and I haven't got lots and lots of good yet - more than I used to but I still find long periods of time when I'm alone.  But I'd rather be lonely sometimes than put up with bad behaviour, so it's swings and roundabouts.  You get there in the end xx

KayZee:
((((Bones))))


--- Quote ---It really hurt to know that the ONLY time the NFOO "condescends" to speak to me is ONLY WHEN THEY WANT SOMETHING or to USE me as an OBJECT!  Now that they know that I'm not afraid to say "NO" to their demands, I don't expect to hear from NFOO anymore.
--- End quote ---

This is so painful and infuriating.  You did an amazing job being frank, and enforcing your boundaries.  You're right. We have no obligation to explain the personal reasons behind these boundaries to people who will not hear our explanations, respect our feelings and even consider for a second that they might not be anything other than 100% entitled and right.

I guess I'd forgotten the way Ns turn everyone else around them into N-bots--that FOOs literally adopts an N's heinous behaviors and attitudes.  Ns infect people.  And sis is infected.

This stuff has been a wake up call like a cold bucket of water in the face.  Sis keeps pushing via email.  Telling me she's leaving for LA in 30 days and can I set up this meeting for her before she goes?  And I just keep defending the boundary, saying sorry, I'm happy to forward this woman the work once you have a completed body of work.  But don't feel comfortable asking her for a meeting (based on nothing, just some vague idea you've barely scribbled down).  It seriously feels like she just wants me to ring this woman (who I barely know) up and ask her to take my sister on as a client (just because my sis is inherently wonderful).  AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH. 

You are very right about this family, here.  I'm seriously so grateful to be able to speak honestly about this to you all... And feel there are people in the world who hear me and relate.

Kay x

KayZee:
((((((((P.R.))))))))))


--- Quote ---I went out of my way to try to help him with the results of our shared trauma -- the way it affected him was different than what I went through. I mentored/mothered him to a pretty stable network of life support outside of the family -- friends, sports, school. He doesn't remember any of that. When he also turned on me - played the scapegoat game - that was kinda the last straw for me.
--- End quote ---

I am so sorry for your brother's selective amnesia.   You deserve a sibling/ally--regardless of everything you've done for him--but the fact that you have done all that, and he can't seem to show you the same amount of understanding and respect...  I feel your hurt.

I relate to that strange bind with your SIL too.  After I stepped away from my family a little bit--limited my contact and stopped giving them quite as much material they could scapegoat me about--NM and sis found a new scapegoat in the form of my sister's husband.  They were horrible to him.  Sis publicly raking him over the coals for NM's entertainment and satisfaction.  It led to sis and BIL divorcing, after which the way they abused him just escalated.  It was horrible to hear about, but then, really difficult to reach out to him.  Where NM is concerned, I feel like I'm endangering myself and my recovery the more I step in to come to someone else's rescue.  Anytime I have in the past, it turns into one of those situations where the person I'm trying to rescue from drowning tries to pull me down too.

I should preface this by saying I hate Sam Vaknin.  (I watched that documentary "I, Psychopath" on Youtube).  But anyway, I went looking today and found S.V. has this to say about non-N family members behaving like narcissists:

"Question:

Is narcissism "contagious"? Can one "catch" narcissism by living with a narcissist?

Answer:

The psychiatric profession uses the word: "epidemiology" when it describes the prevalence of psychopathologies. There is some merit in examining the incidence of personality disorders in the general population. Mental health is the visible outcome of an intricate interplay between nature and nurture, genetics and culture, the brain and one's upbringing and socialization.

Yet are personality disorders communicable diseases?

The answer is more complex than a simple "yes" or "no". Personality disorders are not contagious in the restricted, rigorous, medical sense. They are not communicated by pathogens from one individual to another. They lack many of the basic features of physical-biological epidemics. Still, they are communicated.

First, there is the direct, interpersonal, influence.

A casual encounter with a narcissist is likely to leave a bad aftertaste, bewilderment, hurt, or anger. But these transient reactions have no lasting effect and they fade with time. Not so with more prolonged interactions: marriage, partnership, cohabitation, working or studying together and the like.

Narcissism brushes off. Our reactions to the narcissist, the initial ridicule, the occasional rage, or the frustration – tend to accumulate and form the sediment of deformity. Gradually, the narcissist distorts the personalities of those he is in constant touch with, casts them in his defective mould, limits them, redirects them, and inhibits them. When sufficiently cloned, the narcissist uses the people he affected as narcissistic proxies, narcissistic vehicles of vicarious narcissism.

The narcissist provokes in us emotions, which are predominantly negative and unpleasant. The initial reaction, as we said, is likely to be ridicule. The narcissist, pompous, incredibly self-centred, falsely grandiose, spoiled and odd (even his manner of speech is likely to be constrained and archaic), often elicits smirks in lieu of admiration.

But the entertainment value is fast over. The narcissist's behaviour becomes tiresome, irksome and cumbersome. Ridicule is supplanted by ire and, then, by overt anger. The narcissist's inadequacies are so glaring and his denial and other defence mechanisms so primitive that we constantly feel like screaming at him, reproaching him, or even striking at him literally as well as figuratively.

Ashamed at these reactions, we begin to also feel guilty. We find ourselves attached to a mental pendulum, swinging between repulsion and guilt, rage and pity, lack of empathy and remorse. Slowly we acquire the very characteristics of the narcissist that we so deplore. We become as tactless as he is, as devoid of empathy and of consideration, as ignorant of the emotional makeup of other people, and as one track minded. Exposed in the sick halo of the narcissist, we have been "infected".

The narcissist invades our personality. He makes us react the way he would have liked to, had he dared, or had he known how (a mechanism known as "projective identification"). We are exhausted by his eccentricity, by his extravagance, by his grandiosity, by his constant entitlement.

The narcissist incessantly, adamantly, even aggressively makes demands upon his human environment. He is addicted to his Narcissistic Supply: admiration, adoration, approval, attention. He forces others to lie to him and over-rate his achievements, his talents, and his merits. Living in a narcissistic fantasyland, he compels his closest, nearest and dearest to join him there.

The resulting exhaustion, desperation and weakening of the will are fully taken advantage of by the narcissist. He penetrates these reduced defences and, like a Trojan horse, spews forth his lethal charge. Gradually, those in proximity to him, find themselves imitating and emulating his personality traits. The narcissist also does not refrain from intimidating them into compliance with his commands.

The narcissist coerces people around him by making subtle uses of processes such as reinforcement and conditioning. Seeking to avoid the unpleasant consequences of not succumbing to his wishes, people would rather put up with his demands and be subjected to his whims. Not to confront his terrifying rages, they "cut corners", pretend, participate in his charade, lie, and become subsumed in his grandiose fantasies.

Rather than be aggressively nagged, they reduce themselves and minimise their personalities. By doing all this – they delude themselves that they have escaped the worst consequences.

But the worst is yet to come. The narcissist is confined, constrained, restrained and inhibited by the unique structures of his personality and of his disorder. There are many behaviours which he cannot engage in, many reactions and actions "prohibited", many desires stifled, many fears insurmountable.

The narcissist uses others as an outlet to all these repressed emotions and behaviour patterns. Having invaded their personalities, having altered them by methods of attrition and erosion, having made them compatible with his own disorder, having secured the submission of his victims – he moves on to occupy their shells. Then he makes them do what he has always dreamt of doing, what he has often desired, what he has constantly feared to do.

Using the same compelling procedures, he drives his mates, spouse, partners, colleagues, children, or co-workers into collaborating in the expression of the repressed side of his personality. At the same time, he negates their vague suspicion that their personality has been replaced by his when committing these acts.

The narcissist can, thus, derive, vicariously, through the lives of others, the Narcissistic Supply that he so craves. He induces in his army of zombies criminal, romantic, or heroic, impulses. He makes them travel far and fast, breach all norms, gamble against all odds, fear none – in short: he transforms them into that which he could never be.

The narcissist thrives on the attention, admiration, fascination, or horrified reactions lavished upon his proxies. He consumes the Narcissistic Supply flowing through these human conduits of his own making. Such a narcissist is likely to use sentences like "I made him", "He was nothing before he met me", "He is my creation", "She learned everything she knows from me and at my expense", and so on.

Sufficiently detached – both emotionally and legally – the narcissist flees the scene when the going gets tough. Often, these behaviours, acts and emotions induced by the proximity to the narcissist result in harsh consequences. An emotional or legal crisis, a physical or material catastrophe - are common outcomes of doing the narcissist's bidding.

The narcissist's prey is not equipped to deal with the crises that are the narcissist's daily bread and which, now, he or she are forced to confront as the narcissist's proxy. The behaviour and emotions induced by the narcissist are alien and the victim experiences a cognitive dissonance. This only aggravates the situation. But the narcissist is rarely there to watch his clones writhe and suffer."

KayZee:
Thank you Tup!


--- Quote ---It feels contradictory, but another nice analogy that I read (again, I can't remember where!) was to think of your boundaries as a fence around your home with a gate - you open the gate to let nice people in and for you to go out to meet nice people, but you close it on the not so nice. 
--- End quote ---

I can't even begin to tell you how much hope and understanding this metaphor gives me.  It makes perfect sense (to my brain and emotions alike).  I hope the universe sends lots of nice people to your gate very soon.  Empathetic, honest, fun people who are ready for intimacy and relish two-way friendships! 

so much love and gratitude, Kay

finding peace:
Hi KayZee,

This summed it up for me:


--- Quote ---God, just when I'm beginning to feel happy/grounded/centered, FOO can knock me back down in an instant.  I'm beginning to feel like I'm just done.  Finished.  And I want nothing to do with them.  There's no humanity there.  They just don't see people as people.
--- End quote ---

That was exactly how I felt when I finally decided to go NC.  It hurt - a lot.  There were so many emotions rolling around in me .... pain, rage, guilt that I wasn't enough, mad at myself for allowing them to hurt me, feeling used, feeling used up....

If I am reading correctly, it was at that point where part of me said - enough - no more.

For me the only way to stop it was NC.  I truly hope that some can find a balance, but for me I couldn't.

((((((KayZee))))))

My family used me until I felt so dried up there was nothing left for me. 

Not anymore - I've changed my focus from them to my current family (H and kids).

And life is so much better.

Love to you - I am so sorry you are going thru this.

Peace

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