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Overwhelming Guilt/Pity - Help

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nightsong:
that last post was by me, nightsong - I've finally realised I have to log in to post as me. Sorry people!

nightsong:
that last post was by me, nightsong - I've finally realised I have to log in to post as me. Sorry people!

Nic:
Hi CC,
Yeah I understand..you didn't need to ask me what I would do if only one of my parents was living though! *lol* Nonetheless, since you ask, my father is 81 years old, moneyed cheap and crooked..if he were left alone i wouldn't see him anyway..my mom is 77 and is an alcoholic..I have lived with her drunkenness and pill popping for eons now, if she was left alone i'd make sure she had adequate medical care and leave her in the care of her vulture family who have been wishing her dead for years anyway!  Blunt enough for ya?
I came to the decision to leave my N parents after years of sustained and serial abuse perpetrated on me by them.  It came after much therapy, it is the end of the sentence..the period  as in full stop,the part of the book that reads THE END.  I cannot at this time go into factual details concerning our court case but when I can you will be astonished at how conceited and selfish some people can be..you will more accept my decision and you will in no way be tempted to question and or ponder it further.
Suffice it to say that I spent an awful long part of my life and creativity actually parenting my parents..that is always wrong.  It is true as stated in earlier posts, by Rosencrantz for example, that adults take care of themselves..my N parents needed me as food to survive.  It is very clear now to me.  The programming is gone and I am seldom unconscious  of reverting to it when the thought of them enters my mind.
I understand their matrix completely.
Now, as far as other peoples' experiences and from reading almost everything posted here, only the names and places have been altered to protect the innocent as far as I'm concerned.  There is a commonality, that is, a common denominator to the N nature, M/O of the N parent and that would be: extreme selfishness and self absorbtion to the point of negating the very life energy and veritable BEING of the children they generate or adopt.  Despite them ( the N parents) having their own hangups and horrible pasts, the damage they generate and perpetuate transgenerationally must be stopped when a victim becomes aware of it.  And I thank God everyday for the crap I've been through and am living through right now because I know for sure I will not be a producer of a new crop of Narcissists.
I also have discovered that Ns with age only become worse, i've experienced that personally..there seems to be no hope of them developing any sense of responsibility much less awareness and much much less caring and empathy.  They constantly lay, consciously or by default , traps of caring and generosity for their source(s) of supply..an elaborate or simple disguise designed to maintain the status quo and the focus on themselves., as long as it involves them! In fact it seems to be a Christmas tradition for them..give give give..say I love you or whatever while everyone knows it's all over on the 26th if they haven't just simply ruined it again!
The ultimate protection is what i've done because it was vital that I do so..my self, my identity was disappearing.. I had to cut them out.  BUT, some Ns are not as extreme as mine..and one can manoevre safely ( relatively) around them.  Any guilt associated with not getting an inheritance for example, is ok and normal in my books.  If you've lived with an N so long you're entitled to some compensation! ($)
But, and in my case..there wasn't going to be any money anyway and so I was free to make the ultimate move.  Although it was difficult throughout the entire process, my inner voice kept telling me "go on Nic..it's all going to be ok..don't give in anymore you don't have to"..and of course my wonderful scottish wife who knows since forever that yes is yes and no is no has been a wonderful support, never giving in to my mom's berating of me and all her sabotage.
Don't apply other peoples' solutions to yourself..feel it out with your situation.  I've also learned, ( like Rob i'm a christian!) that when you expect it the least God will jolt you out of your comfort zone and say Hey YOU!  I gave you a life and I want to make it better and I can...and so I was jolted right out of my comfort zone and it has been a weird/wonderful/ terrible/scary/mind-boggling/twisting/topsey-turvey/cool and anything else you can think of two years.
Ok begining to ramble now..I should really write a book..perhaps I will.
I'm glad you're going to claim some peace..you claim it you own it!
Blessings as usual dear friend but most of all PEACE!
Love Nic.

rosencrantz:
It is so very challenging - and complicated.  I agree with the advice in the Nina Brown books - Get out and stay out.  But, if we stay in, then how can we treat them with less respect than we require of them? If we use harsh words, what does that do?  

It's my despair that I know that if I 'stay in' and also stop fighting and pushing (and using harsh words), there is no 'time out' because then my mother encroaches on my space and threatens my mind, my emotions, my equilibrium.  The words no, stop, 'time out', just have no meaning for her so, as I know it's a choice between my well-being and hers, and I have resolved to say 'me first' (if only for the sake of my own family), I have no option but to remove myself from the threat.

I have started a million conversations with my mother in my head and I haven't found a single way through to a positive conclusion.  Because she is elderly and is recently bereaved I don't want to use harsh words.  My choice is to feel (slightly) guilty about 'abandoning' her rather than tipping her over the edge by fighting her.  I write to her and she writes back the odd sentence, always recriminatory in tone.  I keep in touch with Social Services and the Psychiatric team and make sure her finances are OK.

I'm not saying these are the right choices, just that these are the ones I've made. In fact, they are the only ones I can cope with.

CC, you say that you don't want her to change, but you desperately DO want her to change - you want her to act differently and be other than she is.  Indeed, you want her to be herself!?  What a fundamental life change.  She has probably never been herself!

'Being yourself' is beyond the capacity of the N - they have too much shame.  You are surviving the shame - she is overwhelmed by it.  That's what made her an 'N'.  Shame is too hard to experience, it's too fundamental, without a huge amount of support. Their age is against them - they more than any of us are becoming aware of their mortality - and they don't have the ability to trust anyone to provide the kind of rock solid support needed.  (When I mentioned support for her, I meant people around her, rather than therapy for change.)  

And your needs, CC - you wanted her to meet your need to be congratulated and admired for your new status, for it to be important and worth celebrating.  Nothing wrong with the need - something wrong with choosing this particular person (even if she does happen to be your mother).  She won't/can't do it.  

If you 'stay in', can you stop yourself wanting her to meet your needs?   You say that you 'stay in' because of guilt so I assume you seek to meet her needs by staying in - and yet you get angry because she acts in a needy manner and doesn't try to meet your needs.  Are you there to meet her needs - or for her to meet your needs?  It's all jumbled up.  You don't want to have to meet her needs, she can't meet yours. If you know it consciously, there's a part of you that doesn't know it.  Abandon hope and you might just manage the relationship you hope for.

I wonder if you're thinking that, as she's your mother, she 'should' meet your needs and you 'shouldn't have to' meet hers?   I remember reading how damaging the word 'should' is.  The best we can hope for in life is to express a preference and a hope rather than an expectation or a demand.  If we can live with the former then we get less stressed; wanting the latter just leaves us feeling angry.

I'd prefer it if you ...(rather than 'I expect you to...)  Somehow there's more freedom in a preference - and it's less exhausting.

You sound as tho you are exhausting yourself with trying to control her behaviour. I don't think I meant 'teach her' how to behave but rather teach her about you and what your needs are and some of the ways in which she could meet them.  There's a difference between telling a person how to act and telling them what your needs are.

"Mum, I've got some really great news and I really want you to be pleased for me.  Do you think you can do that for me?  Is it a good day for you today?"

I can't see my mother responding to that!  But if she can't respond to that then I know not to share the news or I know not to have any expectations when I do share the news.  

We want them to accept us as we are - but it's just as huge a leap for us to be able to accept them for what they are and let go of wanting them to be different.  The day I accepted my mother's 'difference' (or at least one part of it) and was able to 'let go', my life turned around.  Writing this post, reminds me that I've been resting on my laurels and I have more work to do.  Accepting my mother's need to undermine me and be spiteful is next on my list. :(  The important thing is not to take it personally!!
R

Nic:
Just as I can intuit that an event, a relationship, a moment or a circumstance has changed or is over in my day to day life I have come to realize that the same holds true for the experience I have had with two Narcissistic parents.
There is that inner knowing that my relationship with them is done.  As I look back over my lifetime, I clearly see how both my parents and indeed the family dynamic have never changed.  I changed. My destiny is no longer connected with that unit.  I'm not a monster who suddenly decided that because I wasn't getting my way I was hitting the highway.  My father has made some comments to that effect..after all that has happened and because of their inability to let me go Papa said to me one day, " You're just upset because I don't pay ALL your bills anymore!"
It was at that time I realized that in his mind I was the little boy, the little responsibility he had been lugging around for now forty years.  How sad!  I thought right then and there, OMG there it is again, another projection.  I had just finished reading the article recommended on this board entitled And now we are six.  It struck me hard that my N parents were 6 and sometimes 10 years old..it all fit.
But what do you do?  I thought, that means I WAS the grown-up when I reached 7 and 11 years of age.  My life flashed before me and I saw in my mind's eye the many times I had taken over certain situations, where I had been the leader, where I had been the parent.
And now at forty years of age to have it all tossed back at me in an immense reprimand for not having stuck to the tacit unspoken agreement of so many years ago, was greater than I thought I could withstand.  I don't know how I made it without going completely bonkers.  I realized then that I hadn't been living my life at all..but whose life was I living?  Not mine I concluded..WORSE..my parents were living their life through me..I was an immense doormat right smack in the middle of a high traffic area.  Like that throw rug immediately at the door, you know, the one that gets trampled on and dirty for about 4 feet until it begins to get cleaner.  The clean part is never clearly visible from the door and along those 4 feet, it has to be discovered as you make your way further into the house.  And then it fades and becomes something else..it blends into and with the rest of the decor.  And when you've been all through the house for the first time without an invitation but rather because you've determined to see and seek what lies beyond the four feet of dirt, you can return to the entrance doorway and see that there was more to the house then what you thought was there.
Now what did it take to go beyond the dirty rug?  Courage, curiosity, willpower, daring, a calling certainly..but more importantly and such is my life, an  invitation.  An invitation to go further, to explore, an interest in changing the scenery,and a search for freedom.
I've used the metaphore of the house as my life in my thoughts.  In my own house i was confined to that dirty 4 foot long high traffic area rug.  I was that rug.  My nmom and Ndad's horrible comments and actions toward me over the years pushed me over the edge.  Their cruelty, their Narcissism became so repulsive and repressive that it propelled me into my OWN life.  The oppression was strangling me, there was no more air and in order to survive I saw no other alternative but to jump into my own space.
It has been painful at times..many times.  Especially when you look around you and everyone else seems so happy.  Are they just going through the motions?  I became judgemental of other people's happiness as I was jealously pursuing my own.  What a way to live!  An exhausting way.  I had considered everything:  when I was younger thoughts of suicided used to soothe another blow from the Ns.  Sometimes it was a good time with friends.  I drank with them and smoked pot, even tried Cocaine once or twice..but never to any extreme..I kept myself sober to deal with the everyday assaults with a "clear head" I used to think..hmmph!  I was never NEVER out of control with anything..I was not too happy, not too sad, not too suicidal, not too responsible, not too independent, not too guarded, not too euphoric, not to dramatic etc etc.
I wished I could be more of some things like more loving, more tolerant of my friends, more carefree..but my parents had trained me so well not to be too anything that I was there..just existing and very pliable..my survival ,especially my emotional survival, depended on that.  I was the middle-man, everything went through me whether good or bad, I was the filter, that was my role.  Always living on the edge..not of something exciting but on the edge of disaster.  I wasn't allowed to live, i was adopted to serve.
When I realized that for REAL a year and a half ago, there was an explosion in my soul.  I guess God was ready to change me because I was ready to change.  I think that's what they mean when they say God is a patient God.  I feel he waited for me ..how nice of Him. God is a gentleman.
I dared go past the dirty rug, I allowed myself to go deeper into my own life and indeed to start living it.  I married the most unlikely person you could ever think of for me.  An older Scottish woman sent from God to be there for me and with me during my transformation.  It's amazing how much i've changed in the past eight years of my marriage.  It's nothing short of miraculous I was ever married too!  I was very solitary, and had never really thought this would happen to me, how could it? But it did. And, it was time.
No wonder my N mother exploded one day and screamed at me ( in french 'cos i'm french-speaking) " You've never been the same since you married that woman"..she also said that one day my wife called her a bitch..yep!  Actually she didn't to her face but you know how Ns are...I had the courage now to face the raging torrent ( my mom always appears as a dark raging torrent of water or a whirlwind..in any case it's always black and spinning!) and answer her: Well mom, you are!  And strangely enough, those words were the last I've spoken to her since around this time last year..Oi!
When it's going to change it will, it must.  When you hear your soul screaming at you that you're dying to live, leave everything behind and answer it " I'm coming!"  That's what I did.  Something wasn't allowing me to go on living the way I was.  I had no choice, I had to leave my Nparents, they were killing me.
That's clear in my mind and I only regret that there is nothing I could have said then or now really to make them understand.  They just can't.  And so they rage and drag me to court because I've broken my shackles and run off to live MY LIFE.  It was bound to happen, thank God it did.
blessings Nic.

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