What to do when denial stops?

[Gail]

When I first started visiting this site, I thought it was just because I needed help understanding narcissism as related to x BF.  I read about other people's childhood and thought mine wasn't that great, but it wasn't THAT bad.  Last night, though, I was reading the thread about "not doing anger."  I easily recognized that I wasn't allowed to show anger as a kid.  But then, I started thinking.  Not only was I not allowed to show anger, I wasn't allowed to show:

Joy, sorrow, distress, pain, anticipation, disappointment, love.

I remember getting my hair pulled at church for leaning against my dad's shoulder, told to offer up excruciating physical pain "for the sins of the world", that I talked too much, that my temperament was responsible for a physical disorder I had, and on and on.  I don't remember ever, as a child, being told, "I love you."  I don't remember ever being asked how I felt about something.

No wonder I have so much trouble with anger!  Even now, instead of being mad about the lousy treatment I got as a kid and the devastating consequences to my life, I feel depressed, not angry.

And I truly love this parent who treated me so badly and we have a decent relationship now.  Now, she tells me she loves me often and has really tried to be supportive.  At one point, she apologized for how she treated me as a kid and told me I didn't deserve the treatment I got.  So, I'm not bitter or dealing with continued mistreatment.

But, I think I'm really grieving for that little girl who was so hurt. 

I feel myself slipping into depression and don't want to go down that road.  I have too many responsibilities to become incapacitated.  How does one cope when the realization that a parent really was abusive hits in full force?

Just writing that makes me feel guilty--like I'm doing something wrong saying that about a parent.

Gail

[David P]

Gail, you are getting to that place where you start the journey through all the real pain and anger which has been denied and minimised for a long time. The only way out of this is right through the middle.

 I have a friend called K who was a 'good catholic girl'.She was treated cruelly by the church and her parents as a child.

 When K began to feel her pain as a 25 year old she rushed to 'forgive' all who had harmed her -damn near knocked them over in a 'forgiveness frenzy'.
 K was trying to quickly find a way to make her own pain go away. She has not done her grieving work and her reality work about the depth and intensity of her abuse still remains untouched and now she has developed an eating disorder.She is stuffing the pain with food, and strongly resists naming the abuse and apportioning guilt and fault toward those who deserve it. Instead she claims to be reconciled with her parents and defends their treatment of her because she 'needs' their love in the present.

And so it goes - sad!
David P.

[write]

it takes time.

I remember the first time I called my therapist I was whispering and asked if I could pay cash, like it was all some guilty secret; I thought the sky would fall in.

I can smile at that timid frightened me now, and I can promise you you will get over this helplessness and depression. Being neglected and controlled as a child was abuse, and one of the things I struggled with was letting go of the fantasy family I so wanted, and seeing my family as they really are, and accepting that in many ways they are not good for me, and taking back the power I'd given them ( to guilt-trip, manipulate or be hurtful to me )

Have you thought about therapy? That was my turning point, helped me reframe the whole situation.

[Chicken]

Hi Gail,
I know exactly what you are talking about as I am going through the exact same thing.  It is excrutiatingly painful and isolating.  It's also very depressing.  I am working through it with a therapist.  I hope you are too as sometimes it's too much to burden on your own.  Everytime I see a kid interact lovingly with a parent, or vice versa, I have to look away as the pain is too great.  I think it's due to the fact that I am mourning a huge loss.  Know that you are not alone and allow yourself to feel the pain, let it out and it will eventually pass
x Selkie x

[bliz]

Your upbringing sounds very much like mine.  Putting on the good face and not allowed to feel any strong emotions. It took years to realize that strong emotions were not going to kill me.  I was sure they would.  I too, would like to put in a good word for therapy..at least with the right therapist.  It can make the journey so much easier.  The therapist I have been seeing for awhile now, said to me very early on, that "depression was the damning of the river of emotions."  It took a long time for that to soak on.  I thought my goal in life was always to be happy and act happy, avoid strong emotions, etc.  Couldnt understand why I was depressed.  Now I know.  Anger, grief. joy. they are all emotions that can seem overwhelming at times but avoiding them take a lot more energy than feeling them. 

[Gail]

Tonight, I felt angry at ex h.  It was 9:45 and ten year old daughter, who has to get up very early for school, still wasn't home from her evening with dad.  Divorce decree says 8--I've agreed to 9, but almost every time it's later.  Makes it really hard in the morning to get everyone off to school.

I don't expect that to ever change, but usually I try not to feel angry about it.  Tonight, though I thought let's just go with this and see why angry feels so awful.  I realized it's because it's mixed with guilt.  I feel guilty about feeling angry--like i should just be able to be tolerant and not let things like this get to me.  But this time I said to hell with the guilt.  Passive/agressive behavior is anger producing and so there's nothing "wrong" about being a little ticked off about it--especially when its been going on for years and years. 

Sometimes I think he keeps them late so I'll get so frustrated I call to find out when they're coming home! 

Anyway, it seems so simple--realizing that one reason I don't feel anger when I should is because it triggers guilt.  Hopefully, I can be more aware of that.  I know anger really has a protective purpose as it lets us know when someone is taking advantage of us or treating us with disrespect. 

Gail

[Sallying Forth]

Just writing that makes me feel guilty--like I'm doing something wrong saying that about a parent.

Gail

You might want to read If You Had Controlling Parents because that line above is one of the most common statements made by survivors of childhood abuse or neglect.

You are doing nothing wrong. Voicing what happened is the first step towards healing. Welcome to the journey, you are coming home to yourself!


I can relate to everything you said about emotions. As a child none were allowed in my home. And yet I was the steam vent for everyone's anger and sadness. Routinely I was forced to regurgitate all their feelings. No feelings were allowed to be expressed through anyone else.

[write]

when you start to feel your legitimate anger, I think the guilt fades; realising it is healthy and normal to be annoyed when people frustrate you changes things.

Saying that- I would pick my battles carefully with your ex.
If the children are enjoying their visits and happy, don't worry, a few late nights won't hurt. Unless it is part of a wider power issue where he will keep pushing the boundaries- let it go.

One thing I did when I took control back of my life was turn everything into a battle- I was so intent on insisting I got fair treatment I went too far, I was in fact insisting on my own way in everything.
That made it difficult for the people who were trying to support me, I was just so militant.
Now I think I'm learning what is worth making an issue about, and what just needs a deep breath.

Like ex letting my son go to school in a Greenday American Idiot shirt last week...I commented but left it at that; it really wasn't worth rowing about.

[vunil]

I'd also recommend the book "The Narcissistic Family."  It applies to your family perfectly, and the book talks a lot about those guilt feelings.  It helped me read the book that they kept addressing the guilt, which I had/have, too.

The guilt comes from being taught to be voiceless-- that if you are not voiceless, you are bad.  You internalize this sensibility, and voila you live with that guilt as an adult.  In a narcissisitic family things are upside down and the needs of the parents reign (instead of the needs of the children).  So of course you learn that your needs aren't allowed.

I really "got" how weird this guilt thing is when I realized I felt guilty about my own thoughts (as you do)!  I mean, I wasn't DOING anything, just thinking.  And I felt guilty.  I realized that even if I totally made up my childhood, even if I was the most unfair person in the world in my judgments of my parents (and my ex's and whoever else), that those were my perceptions and it was ok for me to explore them.  My perceptions have as much validity as anyone else's!  Wow.  That sounds like an insane thing to have to realize, but realizing it helped me a lot.  Everyone is allowed their private thoughts.  Your private thoughts are affecting you, after all, so exploring them is logical for you to do.

My parents are spending time with me now helping me tend to my newborn and I have had these guilt feelings over the reoccurence of old issues which leaves me angry with them.  I finally realized another component to guilt:  it comes from the black and white thinking that N tendencies rely on but that are infantile and not realistic.  If you decide you dislike one thing about someone, it must mean you reject them totally.  Unless you accept everything about someone, you must not love them.  That sort of thing.  So, grey feelings are not allowed.  Every negative feeling is a potential jump off a cliff into having no relationship.  Black and white thinking is the basis of Narcissisim, I think, and we learn to think that way too.

I may start a thread on this, in fact... Stay tuned  

In the meantime, THERE IS NO REASON TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT YOUR OWN PRIVATE FEELINGS/THOUGHTS!

I will try to remember that, myself, because I have the same issue.

[Gail]

Thanks, Vunil.  Your insights really make sense.  I was thinking that telling me that I talked too much was a very obvious way of making me voiceless.  I remember that when adult guests came over, I was often cautioned not to talk too much to them.

We moved to another city when I was 11 or 12.  I had a really hard time making friends at school and felt there was just something wrong with me.  Kids used to do "slam books" where they'd write comments about the other kids at school.  On my page, the most common comment was that I was so quiet that no one knew me well enough to say anything more about me.

Also, since displays of emotion also deserved negative comments, that also contributed to voicelessness.

Gail

[Sallying Forth]

Thanks, Vunil.  Your insights really make sense.  I was thinking that telling me that I talked too much was a very obvious way of making me voiceless.  I remember that when adult guests came over, I was often cautioned not to talk too much to them.

We moved to another city when I was 11 or 12.  I had a really hard time making friends at school and felt there was just something wrong with me.  Kids used to do "slam books" where they'd write comments about the other kids at school.  On my page, the most common comment was that I was so quiet that no one knew me well enough to say anything more about me.

Also, since displays of emotion also deserved negative comments, that also contributed to voicelessness.

Gail

Wow Gail! This is me all over, especially in school. The teachers' comments on my report cards were the same again and again. 'Extremely shy. Doesn't interact with other children." I too was voiceless and my Nmother didn't want me to talk to HER company.

[miss piggy]

Hello Gail

I read about other people's childhood and thought mine wasn't that great, but it wasn't THAT bad.  Last night, though, I was reading the thread about "not doing anger."  I easily recognized that I wasn't allowed to show anger as a kid.

Yeah, I was brainwashed into thinking this too.  My dad had the constant moral superiority theme going and would criticise neighbors, parishioners, coworkers, for just about anything.  Nothin' wrong with us.  No problems here.  We weren't allowed to have any.  And we certainly were not allowed to talk about the family outside the home.  Recently I had expressed some serious confrontational anger to a bully and then proceeded to have a singular full blown panic attack.  I haven't had a panic attack in a long time.  I asked my T about it, and she said "well, of course, you are waiting for the retaliation that you received when you were younger."  I'm not afraid to be angry, just very afraid to express it to others.  Ugh.  This is a huge issue for me.

We moved to another city when I was 11 or 12.  I had a really hard time making friends at school and felt there was just something wrong with me.  ...I was so quiet that no one knew me well enough to say anything more about me...

Gosh, this is my life too!  Extremely shy and quiet.  "needs more confidence" was what teachers wrote about me.  My dad would look at me like "sheesh, what is the matter with you" never expressing concern, just not wanting to deal with me at all.  Hates to be inconvenienced.  Like the time I was referred to an ear doctor because the teachers thought I was going deaf.  Dear old dad went ballistic.  Like the time one of my siblings had a serious bone disease and was extremely uncomfortable at night.  Made squeaking noises because Sib had to shift weight in bed.  "You only think about yourself!!!" dear old dad raged.  Lots of love and caring and support there!  As young as I was at the time, I knew that response was a little off the mark.   

Fact is and was, I am hard of hearing and always was.  I wondered why other kids could hear stuff I couldn't.  As a result, I couldn't participate in conversations I couldn't hear.  So I daydreamed a lot.  My Ndad can't hear very well either.  His response is to do all the talking.      I did have something wrong with me, but it wasn't my character.....I think. 

MP

[Artsy]

Vunil - you have cleared up something for me that I hadn't even thought about until now - N's think in black and white only and that's how I was taught to think.

My father was a textbook N.   As an only child I was expected to stay in my bedroom and not bother him.  (Plus side was that I read the entire 24-volume encyclopedia.)

I've always wondered how couples can have a disagreement and not get a divorce.   Or how you can be friends with someone after they've disagreed with you.  Thanks to you, I know why I think that way.

And of course, why I chose an N for a husband - it was comfortable (!) and familiar to me.

[David P]

Whoa! This black and white thinking topic has got me really jolted. Like Artsy, I assumed that if you had a real argument with someone then it was guaranteed that they would NEVER want anything to do with you again-EVER. I guess that was B&W thinking?
I have been amazed when people whom I have disagreed with have resumed a relationship with me without resentment or bitterness. AS if it all never happened! Amazing!
 
Does anyone else get this - I also assumed that if you made a bad mistake or did something which displeased others then you were scarred for life. It was a pleasant surprise to me to realize that other people do not hold a grudge forever,that you can wipe the slate clean and that your past mistakes do not have to be your dark burden for life.

DP in TX

[mudpuppy]

I have a kind of different perspective on the black and white thinking thing. I presume its because my parents, while not perfect, were neither one an N.
I first encountered b&w thinking with my brother as I got older. We would have arguments that would escalate to the point where he was saying things that not many people would ever forgive.
The thing was though, if I backed down and he got his way, the next day it would be like nothing had happened. It took me awhile to figure out that people with a healthy decent relationship don't routinely have those kind of fights and that there was something weird, not about the way he harbored a grudge, but the way no comment was so awful it could not be instantly forgotten without a word of apology, until the next blowup occurred. He has literally accused people of felonies and then gone right back to work with them as though nothing happened as long as they knuckle under to the accusation and tacitly acknowledge he's in charge.

If I had been a pushier person I might have lost a few teeth assuming you could call people every name in the book and accuse them of the most despicable behavior and they would just automatically act like nothing happened the next day.

mud