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Hello - need support

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Hopalong:
Hi Ernie,
I think everything Tupp said is genius.

As to family, I can't add much. My Nmother was toxic but I loved her, and took care of her needs for 10 years. You can imagine the cost. My brother was a bully and a sociopath, which culminated in a court fight over my mother's estate, which I won.

I've come out of it now, and mostly focus on one thing: I want reality. I want to know what is real, in me, in others. I don't want romantic/victim/monster/savior delusions. None of it. Real people.

I valued the labels of Narcissist, Toxic, XXX diagnosis for a loooooong time because they were powerful tools for me to untangle my guts from the damage. Heal the wounds.

But I didn't get off scot free. My own D, who has her own set of labels, has enforced No Contact with me. So I've had to suffer through agonizing doubt, guilt, and fear that I am _____ (a whole 'nother label set) or that I caused it. It was agonizing.

Where I am now is that kindness trumps everything. Compassion. I must have it for myself first. And from there, I can look at others with less fear and more understanding and forgiveness.

I do think it's critical to avoid sociopathic people who savor hurting you (you can tell by micro-expressions of pleasure or triumph when they say something that cuts you to the heart). But the larger thing is, to me now, this is not most people.

Rebuilding my faith in that, which I believe is true, has been key to my healing. Accepting foibles and failures in myself has made it easier to accept them in others. Plus, learning the difference between guilt (a healthy emotion that can be relieved by available amends when you realize, "I have made a mistake so will do what I can to amend it") vs. toxic shame ("I am the mistake.")

I'd be into the weeds if I responded in more detail to your story, but I'm glad you're telling it.

Hops

erniec:
thanks guys for your responses, it means a lot.  I'll kind of address what comes up for me.

Tupps I totally identify with this 'completely numb state' you speak of, that was it for me as well.  I didn't know how to identify feelings because I got so used to pushing them away.  I can't tell you how many psychologists have asked me where I feel something in my body and I can't tell them. I know I feel it, but where? That's like asking me to fly to the moon by flapping my arms, completely beyond my capacity. That question even now still confuses me - you mean, I'm supposed to feel something in a particular place? A couple I got angry with, and said "how the hell am I supposed to know where to feel something? why are you pressing me on this, I DON'T KNOW!!! followed by, nobody has ever told me this, is there a book you have access to or something that I don't that can tell me how to do this?".  I felt like it was some secret information everyone else knew but me and the way they would react - by totally dropping it, never bringing it up again - made me feel horrible, like I was unworthy of being taught how feelings are felt, and that I should be ashamed because I couldn't do this, and I'll *take the hint* that I should be ashamed and never bring it up again.  I'll tell you where I live - Edmonton, Alberta, Canada - so you can PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell EVERYONE you know NEVER EVER EVER EVER live here and need the help of a competent caring psychologist because THEY DO NOT EXIST HERE.  The compassion tank in Edmonton I think drained itself dry sometime in the 1980's. 

I have to cycle back quickly as thinking about this as you can see really triggers my intense distrust of psychologists in this city.  I feel like I am stuck in this alternate reality where I read in books written by professionals like Dr. Webb about people who have issues like mine who are treated and helped profoundly by truly caring and compassionate people who "get it" but my direct experience in my life has taught me these people are either useless or destructive.  I remember this one with a buddhist slant laughing at me in session as I shared some of the struggles I've had as if my problems were so absurd they needed me to know the existential silliness of my problems.  And the sickest part is that my feelings in my life until that time had so consistently been negated and devalued I thought she was right.  I understand now that I was programmed by my father's decisions to continually decimate any sense of self I could ever have, coupled with my mother's decision to let him do this unobstructed from such a young age that invalidation of self goes right to the centre of who I am.  How would I even know what I felt if the message I received from before the time I was able to even speak was that what I felt was invalid, wrong, bad, or unworthy of basic care and concern from his/her caregivers?  The pile of those who don't act this way towards me has expanded by a couple but man oh man I was surrounded by so many poisonous, toxic human beings for so so long I'm surprised Im still a carbon based life form and not like that little creature living on the bottom of the ocean that became an arsenic based life form scientists think was due to continually being subjected to an otherwise lethal living environment.   

I understand the parts about trusting yourself and compassion and forgiveness in my head but I'm really still in the triage stage.  There had been no acknowledgement of my feelings over anything over my entire life by anyone in my family or friends or anyone else for that matter and I'm still just getting used to feeling things about these people - mostly anger, sadness, hatred, disgust, contempt, with washes of the occasional calmness that's usually the result of meds working that day.  I've started to identify and accept my own feelings around a wide variety of topics and speak them to myself once I identify them.  So, yes, thank god, I've started doing that too myself, and it helps, and it helps ground me.

I really identify with the reality part, craving it, but there's a side issue to that, that I suppose is common to everyone - where the hell do I find it with so much unreality swirling around me? - Most of the time all I see are people who are asleep, sleepwalking thru their lives or who think they are awake but they aren't, who live in a state of perpetual illusion or delusion, whether due to some obsession with the protestant ethic, mindless consumerism and achievement or competition via some sporting activity or exerting power and control over others to feel better about themselves or the biggest one, this astronomically insane need by people in our world to prove their worth constantly to everyone else around them - as if it's not a basic right or a self evident truth.  If that they were something of value was self evident, people wouldn't act this way, right?  Despite my own atrociously low self esteem, the result of being emotionally battered senseless from such a young age that the only mechanism my self could come up with to cope was to completely shut down to it, I have this value....so why don't others?  Despite all I've been through, for a reason I don't understand, no one's been able to kill this off in me.  I don't need to advertise on Facebook or virtue signal to others during some momentary moral crisis when someone in the public eye does something wrong that "look at how good I am, I would never do something like that", I automatically have value, and I know this, deeply know this and feel this way.  So why are there so many people who do no value themselves at all and are not even conscious that that they do not value themselves or those around them?  How am I supposed to navigate such a place without buying an island in the remote south pacific?  So part of me craves reality, sure, but also I'm coming to terms with the fact that it's in shockingly low supply on this planet. 

Feeding into the compassion comments, I get that, on some better days I do understand that these people who have hurt me are not to be feared but to be pitied for the above reasons.  But when I'm in a more reflective mood, I take a step back and think, what exactly does the concept of forgiveness have to do with this?  As I'm thinking right now I'm not sure it has anything to do with it.  It seems a bit spurious - my reaction during my more lucid moments on this subject are, to think, did this person ever consider my feelings in what they did? The answer: No.  So why should I waste my time investing in this "forgiving" thing regarding this moron? Right now, the answer for me is I should not.  Where I'm at is why should I validate what they did by acknowledging it, when I know very well that it happened and how it made me feel, and all I really need to do is to validate it and acknowledge the destruction to myself, all while tossing this person into the dustbin of my life?  I can do this without "forgiving" them. 

What I do struggle with and may likely for the rest of my life is the anger and the loss as the result of the destruction, whether intentional or unintentional, these people brought into my life.  I had a real hard time acknowledging mothers day this weekend, but I did, and my mom eats this stuff up, because its attention right, and while part of my reaction in part was "well, let's hope I get something out of this, I really have a hard time with this unidirectional giving stuff now".  It worked out, she ended up buying my daughter a bunch of stuff, so I was like *fist-pump*. With my sister, I was polite to her, but in no way was I going to wish her a happy mothers day, no f****ing way.   

More on the forgiveness subject.  I have a GP who is an evangelical Christian (from South Africa of all places, there are loads of South African doctors in this part of Canada) and he is one of my biggest supports and he told me flat out I need to forgive these people.  When he told me this was about a year ago and I needed some relief for sure.  I was really touched he cared enough to even bother sharing such a thing with me, so I tried a bunch of exercises he gave me.  I felt relief and some peace for awhile, and then it was like I used it all up, and the anger, pain and despair resulting from trying to "forgive" came back and started causing me more grief and trouble than ever.  With my mind the way it is I'm not sure its healthy, it gets stuck on stuff then goes out of control, like a guy hopelessly stuck in a ditch yet still hammering the gas pedal to the floor trying to get unstuck.  *tap on shoulder*, hey man, you really should just put it in park and wave for help.  I also found meditation unhelpful as well, I would try to describe to others that meditating for me was like leaving my house and crossing the street to passively observe my mind light my house on fire and burn it to the ground.  To me, it's completely pointless.  You are telling me to passively observe chaos?  The point of this, is, what exactly?  It doesn't have one, it just another bottle of snake oil that I'll be dropping off tomorrow at Goodwill after work cuz I discovered its useless.   It's presented in our society like its some panacea but I tend to think that the only thing it does well is helping people detach from the world, which is the last thing the world needs today.  I find if I can focus / distract my attention away from the subject, it helps distance it for me and make it easier to rationalize or come to terms with.  The feelings are so intense I'm not sure engaging them directly in that way would be terribly productive.   I know very well how it all made me feel, the pain of reliving it all seems like that that's only thing it would accomplish.  I find myself heading in the direction of Stoicism, kind of a like a detachment from the world around where you've come to accept most everything around us is flawed in some fatal capacity and expecting creatures in it to act altruistically, while not unreasonable, is highly unlikely and should not ever be expected in any way.  I had a friend who I did a road trip a year ago last week where we drove from Edmonton to Dallas and back (this is like driving Seattle to NYC and then turning around and driving from NYC to Denver) and despite all that fun we supposedly had, I've heard from him exactly once since then.  Forget getting him to send me a zip file of the pictures he took, he can't even be bothered to do that.  It seems the message I'm getting is developing attachments to people just causes pain, so have fun in the moment and expect nothing afterwards because humans are humans - fundamentally unknowable and unreliable. 

I'm getting better at accepting foibles about myself, but I find myself in frequent states of consternation when around people who appear to me to be unconscious of the world and others around them.  There was this person who came to the till at the post office today while I was being served by the clerk and without saying a word walked right up to the counter- forget standing in line or acknowledging that I was *ahem*  being assisted at the time - and plopped her stuff down right next to me like she just demanded the clerk stop helping me and begin serving her right then and there.  God bless this clerk, she is awesome, she completely ignored this person, did not even acknowledge her presence, as if to say, if you are too clueless to understand the concept of a queue, then you can go somewhere else, and a minute or two later this person turned around and did exactly that.  Didn't take the hint and get in line, but LEFT THE STORE.  It just blows my mind when people act like this.  Part of me wanted to give her a major dressing down about manners and consideration of others but she left before I could LOL.   I really struggle having compassion, kindness or understanding for dumb bulls**t like this, and frankly I'd rather rip people like this a new a**hole than show them any form of understanding, given their complete absence of the quality themselves.  Like, who raised you, a pack of wolves??? Do you really have to be wacked over the head with the "show respect for others" baseball bat in order to clue in?  I think where I'm at is re: the kindness part, I was too kind for too long, having no boundaries with the wrong people, and freely let them rape and pillage my life because I valued kindness so much boundaries became non existent, that now I have a relative absence of it.  Being kind for me was very destructive and together with no understanding of the need for personal boundaries, these two combined were like a nuclear bomb in my life - massive, deadly destruction.  I feel like being kind caused me so much trouble, it made me draw the wrong assumptions about others and their intentions and seemingly - I wonder if anyone else feels or has felt this way - made the person want to f**k me over even more (i.e. this person is so kind I have to take advantage of this situation for some selfish need of my own) - that it makes me wonder if it's a value worthy of being held (I still have it, just choose to dole it out with significantly more discretion).  I do understand what is said about inviting disaster into your life with poor boundaries, but at the same time I have enough respect for people that I am conscious enough not to act in these ways, and I feel bad if I ever do.   

Tupp, I have a really dumb question for you, I ask it mostly because I've never had a forum of anyone at any point in my life where I could share stuff like this and bring it up, let alone be understood by others - what exactly do you mean by the underlined segment:

Hopefully now you know you have some support here you might find you can start to process things and start off loading some of the difficulty on to the board :)

I ask this as frankly I'm confused about how I should use this forum.  I largely have no idea what I should do or say beyond this thread, I'm just so used to others not getting it or telling me they don't want to hear whatever it is I'm saying I don't even bother bringing it up.   What kind of stuff should I bring up, and how should I say it or phrase it?  Can you give me an example?  I see some other threads where people speak about some personal issues they are having and people provide feedback - is that how is should be done?   

Hopalong:
Hi Ernie,
I won't wade in deeply to try to restore your psyche with just the right phrase, though I sure wish I had that power. I tend to be anger-phobic and retreat from the chronically angry. Which is not the fault of those feeling angry, but my own fears and limits.

One truism I trust is that anger is always covering either hurt, fear or frustration. In my experience, sometimes someone who is literal in how they see the world and rules for behavior, and who has been judged a lot....tends to judge others ferociously. I did. For ages. It was a way of protecting myself from shame, because on Nmom's side, religion was about guilt and perfectionism. On my Dad's side, it was just about faith...in goodness and in humanity.

I was drawn more to him because he was gentle.

Maybe the Buddhist T who laughed during your sessions was trying to ape the Dalai Lama. It's a shame, because I do think a faith or practice that revolves around compassion would be a good alternative for you if psychiatry/psychology is failing you. I can't meditate either but just compassionate thoughts work for me. That and drawing when my anxiety is racing.

It took me forever to learn that loving myself could be an experience and not just an idea. Once I recognize the hurt child inside me and actually comforted her, something changed and I gradually became safer inside -- less anxious. Based on trust that I could aim love and compassion squarely into my own heart, because I deserved my own kindness. Over time, that gave me strength to begin recognizing kindness in others. Not with the dependency of my desperation any more, but in a wiser way.

I liked that postal clerk too. Best advice I can give, other than abstractions, is to gladden in people like that and when you are alone, find similar feelings in yourself. Comfortable, rather than pious, kindness toward others. Never mind the term "forgiveness" when it doesn't sit well. "Compassion" is a good one too. For me, cruelty in the world is real. I had to start asking myself, is there any reason human compassion isn't just as real? Which am I going to trust in? Which will I add to? Which will I look for and allow myself to be drawn to?

Keep a journal of things that are going well. When so much feels wrong, in my experience, expanding and celebrating and concentrating on and delighting in every single thing you can identify that feels right...that can help.

Hops

sKePTiKal:
LOL...

Ernie, I'm laughing because I recognize myself - my own struggle - in that last post. Anger was about the ONLY emotion I knew reasonably well; abandonment wasn't far behind. I'm not anger-phobic, and in fact, it became my "friend" and a "key" for working through to the other emotions and understanding them. (BTW - I don't feel an emotion in a particular part of my body either; that's a crock of composted horse manure. But I DO tend "hold onto" emotions physically; a bit psychosomatic. Not everyone IS.)

People might react with anger when something in the world around us seems out of control and wrong. Or when a boundary has been trepassed; there is a betrayal or blatant lie confronting us. Ultimately, Hops is right that often anger is masking another emotion. But if we can learn to look at ourselves from the emotional side of our Self... like a scientist examining some molecule for electrical properties under a microscope... but with real full human caring for ourselves - as it should've been from infancy... then we can study that anger and it will guide us through to some deeper understanding.

And I think I heard something else I recognize from my own life - frustration at never finding a permanent "fix", a magic pill, or even a way to find the "buried treasure" in myself that includes the magic potion to change how I deal with all the "reality" around me that appears to be "insane". After my husband died, I have become a hermit. (It's really not for everyone, but I now recognize what lonliness feels like... LOL.) It is way more "comfortable" for me to connect with people online than face to face. Lots of reasons for that, I've learned. But I'm also getting better at the real life people thing, too. It works for me, because then I have to just deal with ME. It's not permanent either.

We tend to only be able to assimilate bits & pieces of this "elephant" of understanding at one time. We're only humans, after all. And life gives us opportunities to revisit the "same old same old" and take away a deeper revelation or understanding. I filled 16 journals just dealing with the genesis of understanding the dynamics of my family of origin and what I experienced... and organizing it into something that I could FINALLLY talk about. I was going over the same feedback loops enough times to finally see the patterns in it. The cycles. What changed; what didn't. Then my mind could tackle it all a lot more UNemotionally and solve some of the "problems" I had emotionally.

I know people here got tired of me trodding down the very same paths, over & over again. LOL. But they are very patient - and our resident "word smith" Hopalong and the others - were often able to write JUST THE RIGHT WORDS for me to solve my own puzzle of my Self. We'll hang in there with ya. It's quite the adventure!

sea storm:
thank you for your outpouring of grief, loneliness and rage. This is a good place for this and you have a lot stored up. Oh yes, there is a tremendous amount of disappointment. It is hard to find the opening to respond to all you have to say. One thing that stands out is that professionals disappointed you and were inadequate and lacked skill, the proper education and empathy. I know how you feel about that one but I find that having a good listener is extremely helpful when I can't stand being in my own skin.
Welcome to this place and to all the anonymous loving people here. You take your chances here and can't control who says what to you but in the end there are some truly amazing, articulate, wise people who have probably gone through much of what you have experienced. They take the time to care about other people and that is part of the healing.... to get the focus away from searing personal pain and back into connection with someone you can trust. I find this is better done in tiny steps.
As for what and how to post.... there are real and imaginary limits but they are often self imposed. Who cares anyway as no one is the appointed all knowing one and there is no boss. Occasionally, there will be judgmental sorts but they tend to go elsewhere.
I am reluctant to say this..... but there is quite of lot of blaming in your post. I would not mention this, except that there are so many people to blame. This is where I begin to fear what you say is coming from a place of having fallen right off the edge. This is a scarey place to live in. Also nothing works for you.  Meditation sucks, everything sucks. You can just add me to the list if you want to. Of stupid people who know nothing and that is what you do historically. If you are really desperate and have come to the end of your rope, hopefully you are humbled enough to be teachable.
I don't think I am better than all the experts who you think are idiots  and I have no magic remedy. I don't know if you do drugs. All the blaming would be a pretty loud signal that they play a part in your nightmare. Go ahead and get pissed off at me. It seems to be the only kind of control you have.
I am not a bottomless bowl of compassion and I need to say that I think you have a nourishment wall. Everyone screws up in trying to help you. There are lots of inadequate therapists and some who use body centered therapy to get to the heart of the matter. This does not mean that the therapy is bullshit and you know it.
I hope you can open up and hear what others are saying because their intention is to help and support you. Speaking your truth and your story is huge and you don't deserve to get stomped. Voicelessness is what this is about. Having someone hear and believe your story is so important and healing and here it is often about the carnage of having narcissistic family members.

There is a lot of rage behind what you say and I think I am afraid of that, even though I know it is just another way of expressing deep depression. I am only one voice here and most people are nicer than I am and will give you empathy.

Sea storm

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