Hi all,
I have read a lot of the posts and while I recognise the patterns and the drama triangle........and yes my part and I have danced around it and am still engaged in some way. The past few days i have not taken the bait. I have not reacted to provication. I have stayed with myself and stayed connected to the joyful part of me. All around me the crazy making continues and I am holding myself. I feel good about this but the nagging question of why I just dont walk keeps coming up. It is linked, I know, with me taking responsibility.
It's also linked to the need to 'take your time'. Don't be too hard on yourself about this... as moon said, these things are as difficult as they need to be, but nobody is setting a timetable for us to deal with them. Keeping your eyes on the prize - retaining the awareness that these things are there and that you have the heart intention to deal with them - often opens a way for what you need to come to you in ways you'd never believe.
As I write this I can connect with a part of me that is happy to be me but I am in denial about the madness that I live with. It is drama all the time. Everything is complicated: its like living on a rollercoaster. And yet I can find a calm place in myself.
This is something a lot of folks never manage. I envy you this ability, axa. As long as it doesn't turn into this:
http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/nq/you're doing a lot better than I ever managed to!
I think there is something for me about avoiding the pain of abandomnent. It is as if I will do anything to stave off that pain, even though a consequence is pain in another form. Living alone frightens me. Walking into an empty house with no one there makes me feel so sad. I am avoiding this. I am taking responsiblity for this. In some ways I am the problem........and I need to find the solution.
axa
axa... do you have a bond with animals? I live alone in terms of humans, but it feels almost blasphemous for me to say I am alone here. I have loving, gentle, dear warm creatures who live with me and love me and make a warm, soft, tender place right at the center of my life. I can't imagine being without them, and I can't imagine calling this life 'solitary' or 'alone' when I live in such community! You might find that the love of a sweet animal, shining eyes gazing up into your face, little furry body dancing its joy when you come home each day, is enough to fill your heart to bursting. Especially if you are able to save one or two from a shelter... or other dire situation. [Edit in: this is a Quinby Rescue, and it's one of the best antidotes to Karpman that I know of! When you rescue a shelter animal, or an abandoned pet, and bring them into your home, there are no games. There is no persecution, no victim. It's all healthy and loving and good, and you may experience healthy gratitude for the first time in your life. It doesn't matter that it's not coming from another human being. What matters is that it's there, and healthy, and good.*]
If this next bit hurts, stop and come back to it later. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't feel as though, underneath everything, I was really all alone - in human terms - with nobody to rely on but myself, when the chips were down. It turns out that with my family dysfunction, I was absolutely right.
Basically, if one parent is N, or abusive, and the other parent is wholly consumed by enabling, caretaking, or doing damage control on the first one, then
you have been abandoned from the very start.I spent most of my life in pain over this, but my efforts to solve it were mostly counterproductive. I found myself wasting honesty and loyalty on people who weren't capable of honesty or loyalty to me; expending huge amounts of energy keeping the peace, keeping things steady, making a difference in workplaces and social settings that showed not a particle of awareness or appreciation.
I got tired of feeling like a hall monitor in middle school, and I finally decided this should stop. I've been pulling the plug, in stages, for the last few years. In the meantime, though, I've noticed that it's harder to find constructive replacements for the destructive interactions. I think this is true, and typical of the larger society we live in at present. So it may take time... both to reach the 'minimum safe distance' that you need [which only you can define for yourself] and to find new 'safe people' and 'safe groups' to be with.
There's a terrific book, by the way: "Safe People" by Drs. Townsend and Cloud. If you can't find it in mainstream bookstores, try small independent Christian ones. They can be a treasure trove!
Don't lose heart... ((((((((((axa)))))))))) because
even though you may have been alone in your Family Of Origin, once you start out on the journey to awareness and healing, you'll never be entirely alone again. And you're already on that journey...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*animal 'hoarding' unfortunately is an unhealthy variation on this... but I'm not talking about that here, and it's very easy to tell the difference.
