Is Guilt an Appropriate Feeling?

[Overcomer]

You guys are on some tangent that I don't understand - maybe I am DEFINITELY artistically challenged!!

Well, it wasn't me that wanted to go to counseling - it was she.  If you have read some of my past threads and know anything about my nmom, she is the one who tries to "fix" people.  She had my ex in in-patient therapy, my old b/f in rehab and I suppose she thinks a counselor will "fix" me from my angry outbursts.  And again, she wouldn't go to the other therapist again because he told her I didn't like her and that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear - so we tried this new one!!

[Plucky]

I turn around and start planning who we might sell the business to.  I have contacted the man I think wants it more than anything.  But I know if she finds out that I am talking to this man, she will feel betrayed - and I feel guilty.

Hi Kelly,
I will go out on a limb and try to predict the future.  You start to arrange the sale of the business to the best buyer.  Your M finds out.  Your M  sabotages the sale no matter how bad this act is for all of you, just because you are organising it.    She then turns around and sells to someone else, who will definitely get rid of anyone decent n the business, including you and your friends the bookkeeper.

Then she tells anyone who will listen how you almost messed the whole thing up and she had to rescue the transaction.  Feeling guilty is the least of your worries.

Plucky

[Overcomer]

Plucky:  I have to say that you have it all figured out.  Yes, if she thinks for a minute that that man is behind the inquiry, she will stop it dead in it's tracks.  He used to work for us and she let him go - she blames him for some stuff................he was the scapegoat.  He did use my mom's money to get involved in the first place.  When we originally bought the store, he came to her and told her he could help her - he convinced her to pay him a lot - later she felt like he got too much for what he did...........but it had always been his dream to have a store like ours, he just saw a woman who had enough money to fund it.  Problem is, he didn't really know her and had no idea she was a raging N and so he wasn't ready for her venom!!  So if she gets wind that he is behind anything - and especially if aunt gets wind of it - forget it.  Aunt hates the man.  But isn't it funny - she sticks up for sister but not daughter!!?

[Hopalong]

Aww, Kelly. I'm sorry. Her grudge means more than your dreams.

About the therapy: maybe what the T will be working on is not "fixing" either of you, but helping you both fix the transactions and communication between you?

Hops

[Overcomer]

No, I think Plucky said it best................with the preconceived notions by the T, I just look like an unstable person who is desperately trying to point the finger at my poor, accused nmom...................if he only knew................................we won't be going back.  We decided we were at an impass and I am happy with that..................there is no fixing the situation as it is.....

[Gaining Strength]

oh boy Kelly, Plucky

I will go out on a limb and try to predict the future.  You start to arrange the sale of the business to the best buyer.  Your M finds out.  Your M  sabotages the sale no matter how bad this act is for all of you, just because you are organising it.    She then turns around and sells to someone else, who will definitely get rid of anyone decent n the business, including you and your friends the bookkeeper.

This sounds sickeningly familiar.  See N as saboteur.  Think Kronos or Black Widow - they ate their own children.  Can't make sense of it - don't even try.  But here we are - many of us children of N.  This is the sickest and most numbing and most unbelievable truth about Ns.  This is the last one for me to understand and the most painful.  Oh that I had known this 25 years ago.  How different would be my life today.  Oh that I do something about this knowledge today so that I don't waste another 25. - Don't waste any more years hoping that N mother with not sabotage you Kelly.  Don't let her do it.  No No No!!!

Don't let her!!! your friend and fellow victim of sabotage - Gaining Strength

[Overcomer]

Believe me - I have a plan.  I know that my nmom is very concerned about the welfare of my children.  She has gone overboard trying to make up for the neglect she did to me while she was building her super human career and persona........................so if she perceives letting me work from home to be with my kids (meanwhile getting me out of the business so she can do her thing...............without my interference......) a good thing, I may be able to do my work from home.  This would be wonderful for me because I would be paid but able to stay home and work.................this would take the frustration of working with nmom and incompetent aunt away.....only thing is, bookkeeper will probably quit and the business will be in a MAJOR world of hurt without her!

[Overcomer]

Hi Everyone!!  Ok, I figured something out tonight.  Al-Anon is great.  I should have done this years ago.  This one gal was talking about being a detective and knowing where her alcoholic husband spend his money (look at her online banking.............) and following him and etc. etc.  This need to know everything so that somehow she felt in control...............even though she wasn't really in control at all!!!  She just knew what he was up to.  I used to do this with my ex...............I would obsess.  I would drive by his girlfriend's house.  I bugged the phone to catch him calling a woman.  I called and told the credit card company that our credit card had been stolen - we were separated and I gave him a card with $100 on it - in a couple of months he had $6000 charged up - he went to use it and it was declined........................anyway, this need to control something.  Then I realized when I was young and I wasn't really sure about life, had never heard the word dysfunction or codependent.......................and I drank - a lot!!  And my nmom did the same thing.  She went through my drawers and found birth control pills and confronted me with it.  And when I didn't go to church, she showed up at my door after church to see why I wasn't in church - a need to control!!  Then I realized it - MY FAMILY IS TOTALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL.  IT'S ME.  IT'S MY NMOM.  IT'S MY ALCOHOLIC HUSBAND.  IT'S MY AUNT.........................our poor bookkeeper should run the other way!!!  Run as fast as you can!!  If you stay here you will be sucked into the dysfunctional family rules!!!!!

Al-anon works for my family dynamic - do you think that narcissism is like alcoholism??  Aren't they both addictions???  Or is N really a personality disorder???  Sometimes I think it is an addiction....................

[RADALTE0623]

Ahh.. dear Rad, I am artistically challenged and not well read as some of the others folks here, so I have no ready thoughts re: the architectural style of the altemudwald, but do you s'pose it could contain a very large refrigerator stocked with an endless supply of fresh eggs? I have always wanted to try a suggestion I heard years ago... to take a basket of eggs out into the woods and hurl them repeatedly at the trunks of trees.
Seems like an excellent way to release exasperation!! 

By the way, I'm inclined to check words in the dictionary when I realize that their meaning is hazy to me. Exasperate meant to frustrate, when I'd think of it, so I looked and.... oh yeah, this meaning is much more full and rich!

[v. ig-zas-puh-reyt; adj. ig-zas-per-it]


–verb (used with object) 1. to irritate or provoke to a high degree; annoy extremely: He was exasperated by the senseless delays. 
2. Archaic. to increase the intensity or violence of (disease, pain, feelings, etc.). 
–adjective 3. Botany. rough; covered with hard, projecting points, as a leaf. 

Yes, frustrate to the nth degree and beyond. I like the eggs idea, the throwing and all, it could be a semiannual ritual,eh, Kinda ironic that you mention that becasue I have used eggs in soem of my imagery in the past, feeling like just an egg in the world, a little too fragile, or nondescript as if I am just one of 1000's, that kind of thing? Keep up with this idea, there could be looming eggs over the architecture of the village, or they could be part of the landscape. I definetly think they have huge symbolic value!! Thanx,keep it coming!


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[Origin: 1525–35; < L exasper&#257;tus (ptp. of exasper&#257;re to make rough, provoke), equiv. to ex- ex-1 + asper harsh, rough + -&#257;tus -ate1]

[Stormchild]

Alte-mud-wald?

A village for exasperated mudpuppies!

[Hopalong]

Hi Kelly,
I'm really glad AlAnon is working for you! 

Hops

[Hopalong]

Hi Rad,
Bounced on your post again and I still love it.
I won't be much help because I have a very surreal and sometimes dark sense of humor.

So...I was thinking about the phrase "a village for the exasperated."
Village makes me think of simple, humble, and vulnerable cultures.

Exasperated is a sophisticated, modern, ironic word to me.

So my brain put them together and came up with -- any of those architectural models that appeal o you most, but with an important feature on the outskirts:

a rabbit chewing hard on the tires of a poorly-armored Humvee.

(This is no doubt why I could never be trusted to be a 3-D artist.) 

Hops (hope you don't mind the detour, Kelly...if so, let us know, another thread can start)

[gratitude28]

Hops, you should change your name to Salvidor...

[Hopalong]

Ewww.

I know. I have written some realllllllly dark poems. Can't imagine what I'd a done w/an innocent watch.

But really...if you think of a rabbit as soft, vulnerable, endearing ... then think of what most exasperates many people today (the war), well, I think a rabbit worth its fur would be out there determindedly chewing away on the Humvee tires, using the small weapon (his l'il rabbit voice, I guess) to gnaw at a symbol of something terrible...

then again. One more bite and the whole enterprise could spring a leak. Pfffffft.
No more war.

(It would perhaps be necessary to write this obscure explication in the "catalogue"... )

Rad, I can squawk about it, but you build YOURS, and the exasperated will come!

Hops

[Overcomer]

Yeah - I know that a Narcissist is self-absorbed to the core....................alcohol takes over your psyche and if left unchecked, I believe it is as ominous as Narcissism (IMO)

But S&S, I agree there ARE differences.........................but when alcohol is full blown - the chaos that surrounds it can be the same as the chaos that surrounds Ns.........