Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
FACING CODEPENDENCE, What it is, Where it comes from, How it Sabotages our lives
lighter:
Yes, Amber. Some grow out of childhood conditioning.....the one's capable of self reflection, me'thinks.
In my OP, I was thinking of co-dependence...... poor coping strategies......resulting in dysfunctional relationships and FOO systems as human conditions, mostly installed during early childhood.
I was thinking about how our culture tends to view these complicated systems and unconscious beliefs as shameful/personal failure and choices, as though one selects these system errors and mindfully builds a framework on them.
It seems unfathomable, from here, right now.
It's unhelpful , particularly as those suffering abuse are more likely to seek/accept mental healthcare, than those inflicting it, IME.....more likely to be the "identified patient."
And we're all capable of doing harm.....I suspect every human does, bc we can't do better, till we know better.
Many people don't want to know. I'm thinking of parents who sabotage T for their children. Most don't have the ability to turn and face themselves, bc it's human nature to flit from one distraction to another, avoiding pain and suffering. Just human. Not judging, but feeling the sometimes terrifying weight of trying, and sometimes, succeeding.
And when one's avoidance harms other people..... it's........what IS that?
I'm trying to see it with some distance, here.
I've done it. I've watched FOO do it. Experienced it. Held it against my parents and their FOOs and extended family members. Watched my children hold it against me.
We experience trauma.
We do trauma.
We examine both, just the trauma done to us, just the trauma we do/are accused of, or maybe we examine nothing at all.
Some point fingers OR remain confused, while repeating patterns without understanding or care t understand, change, suffer less. It's resilience in a child, fate, luck or what? To question, or not question.
I want to examine motives, at this point, but, as you said ( I think) everyone is doing their best. Right? Seriously.....they are, despite how dreadful/harmful/toxic some human's manage as best....
right?
This morning DD22 said......
"Have you ever noticed how you bend over backwards, concerned with hurting men's feelings, while they stomp all over yours with impunity, Mom?"
She went on.....
"That's misogyny."
I write this, as I digest breakfast, in a chair facing a window, looking on to the street, where the cowboys live, where the police were called, again, last night. DD22 saw the blue lights, this time. We were both out front when a cab arrived this morning, either dropping off or picking up the cowboy.
I'm writing this, bc I feel I'm unable to stop looking over my shoulder, in their direction. Some of it's old trauma..... not knowing what an enraged, entitled man, with many guns, is DOING......but constantly reminded he's making threats and moving through the world in anger.....with entitled purpose....DOING things, saying things, threatening things in anger.
The 3 elderly lady wives pow wowed in the retired nurse's drive yesterday. I didn't join, mostly, bc I already assume nothing can or will be done, but.....I might should have joined. If cowboy wants cowgirl dead.... she'll likely be dead. The same thing my second civil attorney told me in my situation. It's accepted and how things are.
That's a reality, two doors away.....it feels like a dark dangerous energy, pressing in.
Obviously, this is me, struggling with acceptance.
A personal failure..... all my own. Of my own making. Right?
Noting familiar preoccupation with justice/lack of justice. Another personal failure, right?
There should be something, beyond yellow crime scene tape, IME.
A societal, systemic failure, but I'm "co-dependent.". I admit it.... even though I know safety and justice are only imagined constructs, I think I need, at least the illusion, they're real.
Does it, become personal, the moment "good" men, women, citizens do nothing to counter........
what should we lable interpersonal terrorism? I know, I know. It's just "normal" stuff people do, kids suffer, cops allow and Judges ignore.
I know better than to count on the police/ safety nets and the courts.....but that doesn't sit right.
There's discomfort.
And there's complicated lives with complicated stories/med histories/FOO trauma/misogyny and addiction involved. Condemnation of the gay son....
No safety nets for that. Maybe the imagined safety nets/ignorance around the laws/justice system will soon drop, like a curtain.
Willful ignorance won't be so easily sustained.
Lighter
Hopalong:
One of the biggest tragedies of this culture, imo, is the internalized misogyny of so many women. They go trad, they vote, they adore their male leaders at home and elsewhere. And they don't fight for themselves even when the oppression is obvious. But as you say, this is acculturated, not necessarily a personal failure.
I just went thru a difficult thing with friend Poet, but I'll yak about it over there. Your post made me think of a lot of nuances (and denials) that led up to this.
hugs
Hops
sKePTiKal:
Yes, in some large way - and many more small ways - people are realizing that their belief and trust in much of "institutional ideals" is misplaced; that they're not all they're cracked up to be. Regardless of political beliefs - and in some cases, even those are being questioned/analyzed. How much of that trust and belief has been "conditioned"?
What Firesign Theater was getting at, so long ago, with "everything you know is wrong". People react very differently to that revelation/experience given "who they are". And, IMO, we are living in "interesting times" per the old Chinese curse. It is also somewhat true, I think, that we are living in a time with massive energies of change - which, as far as I know, can't be controlled by mankind any more than the weather can. It's a situation that must be "surfed", as best one can.
Bringing it back down to micro, yes there are more overt and visible incidents of mysogeny. Yet it's DIFFERENT than where it came from. Being born in '56, I got the traditional female conditioning when I was very small. But even then, I heard about "exceptions" - where women HAD to fend for themselves, like during the Depression and WWII. The pioneer women were full on partners carving out homesteads and ranches. Brothel owners became weathy influential business people on the frontier. If not for Sacajawea, Lewis & Clark would've died.
So, I'd at least "mentally" come of age when the bra burnings started & the counter culture flooded the airwaves (along with body counts from Vietnam). The "you can have it all" Virginia Slim marketing (conditioning) that fooled a lot a women into they could compete in the business world and STILL do the amazingly complex and sensitive job of raising children. (I rue my participation in this...) Some good has come out of those eras; some things haven't changed a whit.
And this is a topic that is weighing on Hol's mind these days, as well. Being 20 years younger she has a different perspective. One of the most important things she's said about today's mysogeny is that for some men, they don't see women as PEOPLE. That observation smacked me upside the head and got my attention. The correlation with "objectification" is clear as day. And now I suspect there is possibly a lot more dysfunction going on than simply mysogeny - which never really went away. We've been dealing with this the whole time, since June Cleaver days.
As such, it's simply been a "given condition" in the environment I live in. Only once, have I experienced a man who indulged in mysogeny to a high degree - and I still have nightmares about that boss. Most of the men I've had opportunity to get to know - definitely see me as "people"; a "person". Maybe that was luck of the draw, but it also had something to do with my competitiveness and wanting/needing validation and earning respect from men. Professionally and personally. I did work at it. But then, I LIKE men. One of my co-workers paid me a cherished compliment (to me, anyway): he said I was one of the few women he knew that THOUGHT like a man. LOLOL. That would probably insult some of the women I know, and both men & women were slightly afraid of his ability to express himself sans "manners". He was a truth speaker. I know Hol would take issue with it.
People can and do impact all of those other people around them, in so many ways. It's just a fact of life. Like the
Buddhist's say, if you're breathing something died to permit that. Whether we admit it, accept it or even recognize it... we are all, men and women, interdependent. I think we actually NEED each other despite our varying viewpoints about fairness and (in)justice. We each find our own way through the complexities of engaging and interacting, and working together. Interdependent does not equal the dysfunction implied in "co-dependent" - yet they are so similar, that there seems like there is some overlap between the two definitions.
Maybe our definitions are becoming too persnickety and granular - and perhaps we're mis-defining things too.
I dunno. But I enjoy these kinds of discussions, and you've contributed some new ideas to my thinking Lighter.
Hopalong:
A boyfriend's father once told me, after a very long leisurely conversation on a summer evening, that even though I was 17 he thought I had "the mind of a 35 y/o." Back then I was soooo flattered my ego puffed up. Then, life. I'm glad he didn't praise me by implying male thinking is more powerful, though. I still love men and am still intensely feminist. That's the justice I used to believe we'd see in our lifetimes.
Other topic: I'm thinking I've been codependent with Poet the Whole.Damn.Time.
Because I still feel so lonely or alone in the real world, despite a few friendships. I don't know how to share with anyone how bleak it feels sometimes, and don't know how to go out to play in order to find new people. Despite my delighted social energy at my party, I don't come away from that rare event feeling more connected. I just watched others connect, honestly. There WAS a lot of affection expressed for me and I don't know why that doesn't sink in to the deeper level where I'm loneliest.
Maybe that's just how I've always been wired (it's sure how I recall childhood: torturously lonely) and I need to focus more on making peace with my solitude, letting my home and surroundings nurture me instead of abandoning them to act out how I feel abandoned.
End of pity party. Damn. I'll head back over to the Friendship thread if I need to talk more about it, but for now, I'm good.
hugs
Hops
sKePTiKal:
Hops, don't go away. There are a lot of aspects/angles/elements to what Lighter & I have been talking about. It's kinda been wide ranging sometimes. There's room for your observations too.
They prompted me to wonder if your N-mom ever just talked to you as a child? Validated you as a "real person"? Asked what you were playing, what did you imagine in your quiet times, entered into who you were? Or did she just order you about? Try to make you conform? I played alone a lot as a child or was reading or daydreaming - making up stories in my head. There were people around me who asked about "what I was doing" from time to time; that included me in their activities and thoughts & feelings too. And my "imaginary friends" from Sir Walter Scott or similar kept me company... so I wasn't lonely. Still not - reading is my main crutch and I'm always looking for authors who can tell a good story.
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