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Thanks!

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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  :D 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

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