Thanks!

[rosencrantz]

I just felt a need this evening to express my gratitude on this Board for the opportunity to express my voice, for the opportunity to help others, and to be heard, recognised and to be allowed to be accurate, for the opportunity to be helped, supported, respected and loved here (and occasionally usefully vilified!).

I am just so, so grateful.

I've come a million miles in the past few months and I couldn't have done it without your help.

Thank you to all the individuals who have been the grit in the oyster as well as the love and support, the respect and the courage.  Thank you for what you have been, by being who you are and having been through the fire of your own experiences.  

I am coming from a place now where I know that it is possible to survive the most overwhelming fear, pain, terror, dread and horror of facing what it means to be the child of an 'N' and the wife of someone who is angry, moody, controlling and full of bile.

The truth will out - sooner or later - when you are strong enough to handle it.  And there is peace on the other side.  But that change will only come about after you've changed your own thoughts and feelings and reactions.  

I may always have to be alert to the threat of 'Ns' in my life so I will never take my current peace of mind for granted but it's good to be in a  place of serenity for now.
R

[Anastasia]

Ditto to all rosencrantz said.

Thank you for helping me realize that I am not alone.  Thank you to this Board for having a safe place to vent.  

Anastasia

[Acappella]

Thank you too!  Rosencrantz you were one of the first people I encountered here.  Your hard earned keen insight and caring, your posting presence has been a vital part of my feeling safe and enriched here.  

Thanks to Richard Grossman making this haven possible, and so many caring and struggling people here, and a protracted period of unemployment   I did some serious emotional infrastructure work and am now so gainfully employed I barely have time to visit the board.  When I do I feel like I am visiting a home base that I miss.  I want to catch up on how various folks are fairing and although I may not I am just grateful to have interacted to the extent I could and will still.  

Thanks too!

[Portia]

Dear Rosencrantz, I’ve been reading up on my books but I haven’t come across ‘accurate’ yet. In case I’m missing something, does it mean telling the truth as one sees it (as opposed to what you’ve been fed)? You said it to me at some point and I’ve been looking for it since!

I’m sorry R for you and your other half. I can’t think of anything else to say: you know more than I do and I won’t say any platitudes. But talk/vent privately to me if you wish. You’re the stronger one now, it must be odd for both of you? Do you think his reactions to you are the real him, or a reaction to the new you?

Best, P

[rosencrantz]

LOL If you knew why I said 'accurate' you'd know what I do (well, one of the things I do) for a living!!  But as you live in the UK, you probably wouldn't guess in a million years!    (But I didn't use the word to tease, it's something I now live by.)

It's a 'distinction'.  If you try to tell the 'truth', well, what is 'truth??!!!  Whose truth?  So the best we can do is to be as 'accurate' as we can be in what we say!

Does that make sense???

Re my husband - he's always been like that but I didn't 'see' it or I didn't believe it... or something - because I'd been so brainwashed by my family situation.  It was just something I didn't 'see' fully.  Like my mother, he had a public persona that was very different to what I lived with.
I thought I had pretty much kept strong throughout our marriage except I now realise that within a year of getting married I'd lost my job mainly because he undermined me so much that I wasn't able to stand up for myself any more.  I didn't realise at the time.  I knew he admired me for my strength - but he then 'made me' feel ashamed of it.  If I'd realised, I'd have done us both good by continuing to believe in myself as a 'good' person, even if an 'upfront' one.

To realise that you'd lost a successful career because you trusted the man you married - when it had all been so hard to get started in the first place because of parental undermining...30 years of personal and professional work just went up in smoke.  How could I climb that again at the age of 50 - despair!

My awareness came about after I'd fully understood about my mother and how 'what I am' in the world is so much a result of my attempts to handle her, cope with her and please her.  Suddenly I saw myself in relation to my husband in a different way.

THAT was the worst bit of all.  I felt sheer terror.  I even locked the bedroom door to keep him out that night.   He saw the door was shut so he (dramatically) slept on the couch downstairs (even tho we have a perfectly good guest bedroom!)

To recognise that you just don't exist for a parent (never did, never will) is awesome but then to discover that you jumped out of the fying pan into the fire...

Fortunately, (to use a shorthand) I think he's an N rather than an NPD.  And he's the son of an alcoholic father (I guess ACOAs will recognise some of the symptoms).  I found a book on ACOAs and he fits the bill to a T.  (I'm not implying that ACOAs are Ns - he is an ACOA and in terms of our relationship he's an N.  Let's not forget that I married him for his castle wall-like boundaries - very important in allowing me to be separate psychologically, and diametrically opposed to my mother's total lack of boundaries!!!)

To resolve it, I had to keep challenging him every time he put me down or misperceived who I was.  It was a huge effort at the beginnng.  I honour him that he is trying to be different.  I challenged him hard to be aware of himself, to take time out to read.  He agreed to have some energy healing, too.  There are bad days but I no longer accept the blame for his feelings.  I shrug my shoulders and say that's yours, not mine'!  I take up all my space and there is no room for anyone else in here!  Not him or my mother.  

I'm not sure I could have survived without my energy healer either (Metamorphic technique, a kind of reflexology, is amazing for soothing emotional pain and giving you calm and strength to carry on).

And that's what made the (one so far) conversation with my mother possible - and the result has been a note from her admitting to creating confusion and (almost) apologising for it.

Now, have I been wrong about her all along...or is this a lull before a new storm...or...

My energy therapist/alternative healer would say that I no longer have any 'hooks' and without the 'hooks' they ain't got nowhere to hang their coats!  ie I don't get 'hooked' in any more.

I think that, because of our past, talking therapies are positively bad for us ACONs. (I can intellectualise for England!)  But the body don't lie - and body work really is effective.

Well, I've really bared my soul this evening.  Or perhaps I've said all this in different ways already on this forum.  It's 1.30am - and I really, really gotta go.  
R

[pp]

delete

[phoenix]

bye

[rosencrantz]

Hi Portia - I just realised that both you and I - from the UK - chose Shakespearean characters for our names!!

Hi pp - Adult Children of Alcoholics and of Narcissists.  You'll find forums and books which use these phrases.

Hi Phoenix (we have all the Ps tonight!) - I see you are doing the ACON thing and entering into the experience of other people (even over the miles) and then experiencing it viscerally.  The energy therapy I've been having has curtailed that for me for a bit.  I am worried because that's such a fundamental part of who I am - but on the other hand it means I'm beginning to look after my own life better (getting more organised again, gradually getting things done, getting on top of things, less 'tossed and turned' by the feelings, worries and confusion of other people!)

My mother is too old and too alone for me to fight her any more (even if I wanted to).  I guess that's where all this began.  I stopped fighting and she overwhelmed me.  But if it gave me a new perspective on my marriage which will ultimately lead to a better life than I would otherwise have had, then it's been worth it.  It's been more of a shift in perspective than growth.  Things are the same but totally different.  Like the sun moving round and putting some things into shadow but the shadows causing other things to be brought into sharp relief. And then having to make some choices based on what you see.

I still have grieving to do.  The anniversary of my father's death isn't too far away.  I think that the next six months will be challenging as there will be a lot of times I'll be saying 'It's a year since...'.

Namaste
R

[Portia]

R, thank you for baring your soul a little more. But you’ve given me a puzzle! A Curate? A Cure Rate? An accountant? Hmmm! Ack You Rate (a statistician)? Ha ha! (I bet you’re working in some kind of therapy or counselling.)  Never mind. But accurate = precise and true; perhaps possible in engineering but surely not in language, unless it’s mathematical language. Yes you make sense – ‘true’ evokes too many associations (religious probably) whereas ‘accurate’ sounds more scientific. Just words.

Names: my first choice was Cordelia “how sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child” but the name was taken.  I’m glad – too much of the victim about it.

edit
Did you love your past career? I thought mine was okay but I now see it as a waste of time, apart from earning money – which allows me to be here. Perhaps if I’d spent more time thinking and less working, I would’ve been here a lot sooner?

Your husband agreed to have energy healing! Wow.
Interesting what you say about ‘body work’. I had an invigorating 15 minute clothed massage courtesy of work once but other than that I’ve avoided paid-for physical contact. I don’t have any beauty treatments and even going to the hairdresser can sometimes make my skin creep. Is that weird? I also find it difficult to justify spending money on non-practical things for myself – (ranting edited)

[rosencrantz]

 I like your plays on words!  You're a nice person and intelligent, Portia - and playful - so live life bearing that in mind!

And in response to something else you wrote - get yourself strong before you start on anyone else close to you.  You'll need them to be stable while you're shifting - and once you've shifted then everything else will start to move with you.  

I've always hated having my hair done too - (anything where I have to look at myself in the mirror).  

Re the rest - yes, you're right about these mothers.  I do know it.  I just wonder sometimes (now I'm feeling centred again and not having contact) whether perhaps I was wrong all along.  It's more the onset of guilt than hope.  

Watch BBC2 tomorrow evening - it's all about today's older generation enjoying life and spending all their money so there's none left for their kids!
R

[CC]

I didn't read carefully through all the posts on this thread, just skimmed but I caught something pertinent in Portia's latest response - about N's "sort of" apologizing but really it IS an explanation!!!! My Mother does this CONSTANTLY.  it is a form of them still trying to get you to see THEIR point of view instead of trying to understand ours.

[Portia]

........

[Anonymous]

Does anyone else find that  Ns also have a switch on-switch off smile? Mine does this when he is being charming...usually to strangers,sometimes to me.The smile comes but then goes very quickly.I mentioned it to him once,and said it didn't look sincere.He denied it vehemently.