Baldwin calls daughter a "thoughtless little pig"

[Stormchild]

CB, you weren't here for this:

http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3//index.php?topic=3404.msg56404;topicseen#msg56404

you weren't a board member at the time.

Read it; consider that Hops has made no amends to me for this since November of last year; read what Hops said to me above, when I asked her to apologize for it; then I think you will congratulate me on my patience and longsuffering.

Hops has said she is simply not capable of apologizing to me for having done me a grievous wrong. I have two ways to deal with that.

Either I can decide that she is on some kind of power trip, being deliberately cruel to me and taking pleasure from it, while deliberately rubbing my nose in her graciousness towards others she has wronged [this is a ricochet transaction, and very unhealthy if true]

or I can decide that she is being honest with me, and she is simply not capable of accepting responsibility for this specific past behavior and making amends to me for it.

I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. Extensively. I'm assuming she actually wants to reach a point where she will be capable of making appropriate amends. And that she is able to see that in this situation, amends are warranted and long overdue.

Please make sure you are in possession of all the pertinent facts, before you judge someone.

And by the way, I came back and revised my post above before I read yours.

Hops hurt me badly in November, and hurt me badly again just above, and it took me several days to reach the point where I could accept the possibility that she really isn't malicious, she's just not capable of doing better than this. Right now. With me. For some reason.

Because she has made huge progress. She used to simply refuse to read anything that might be the least bit critical of her; she's come a long way from that, she can now read and respond to appropriate confrontations that she would have announced she was ignoring entirely, six months ago.

I had hoped that she had come far enough to be able to address our unfinished business. Not yet.

I realized that too much of my hurt was coming through still in that post above. I've done what I can about that. But it's awfully hard on me to expect me to carry the entire load, both hers and mine, for six months and counting at this point, while being superhumanly impervious to pain, isn't it?

Yes it is.

[Hopalong]

Storm,
Will you please leave me alone?

I believe you that it really hurt when I rebuffed your probing and advice six months ago. I am sorry that I hurt you. I did not mean to hurt you. I was deeply upset and could not accept your PM comments about my greatest sorrow. If you want to mutter and imply and hint and suggest that someone else is not to be trusted, is not what they appear to be, you can do that.

Who did this to you Stormy? Who pilloried you? I believe you did not deserve it.

I don't want to defend myself against you again. I won't. I understand that saying No to you was a challenge but you were speaking about my relationship to my child in a way that I couldn't take. It's painful to see all that purple again, but you often post old threads when a new group of members has settled in a while. Anyway, that's the decision I made and you'll have to accept it. I realize it can spark rage.

You are very intelligent, accomplished and offer such fine information Stormy. I'm glad you started your blogs and I hope they have many readers. I do learn from your posts and I have a great deal of compassion for what you have lived through. I imagine it is far worse than anything I ever suffered. We're just not the right match as advisors for each other. Not all of us can be perfect advisors for all the rest.

We are all survivors, we all intend well, and we all have blind spots and deaf moments. I believe you that my blindness has banged onto your bruises, and caused you pain. I am truly sorry for that, Storm. I believe you felt really hurt, and I do not want you to be hurt. (Any more than I wanted to hurt GS the other day, god knows. I am thankful for her grace.)

I don't know what amends you are demanding Storm, I think they amount to: "I demand that you agree with my assessment of you." I don't. I am not wily, smarmy, or insincere. You can take offense over and over again, as often as you are compelled to. I think you have more creative things to do with your talents. I think you are a remarkable woman who can pour a lot of healing on this world, and I believe that is what you truly mean to do, almost all the time.

I want to let this go now. I spent my childhood accepting bullying as something I deserved. Regardless of my personal failings, hubris or mistakes, Storm, I do not deserve to be bullied. Or shamed, or ganged up on. Nobody does.

I am sorry for whatever's driving this, because I would like to think of you as powerful and competent as you are, not alone, and enjoying a happy, peaceful, safe life. In the embrace of loving friends and a gentle community. You deserve that and I'm sure you've earned it many times over.

You don't need me to validate your power or your wisdom, Storm. I am not disapproving, I am not vengeful. I just sincerely want you to leave me alone.

In peace,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Back to Baldwin - yesterday I saw in the New York Times that he is giving up his acting to go on a crusade for alienated parents.  I have no doubt that there are many parents who are alienated but I am certain that some have done the alienation themselves.  What really gets me is how many people were not able to separate the issues of exposing the tape with the appalling abusive siatribe released by Baldwin. 

If alienation has taken place it is a separate issue from Baldwin's abuse.  I even saw Dr. Phil on Larry King say, "I'm not excusing Baldwin's language BUT...."  He went on to say that he would gladly counsel with Baldwin and Kim and would explain to Baldwin why his language was not acceptable.  What kind of misguided arrogance is that?  Clearly the expect Dr. Phil is lost in his own bravado - he will "explain" to Baldwin and then all will be right.  I have noticed that Dr. Phil operates as though everything is a surface, rational understanding without any concept that we all possess and function to some degree in our unconscious mind.   It is appalling to me that he doesn't see through Baldwin's claims.

I believe that Baldwin feel alienated but he clearly refuses to see his role in it.  His raging and subsequent apologies indicate a total lack of empathy for his daughter.  In all the apologies I read he never offered one to his daughter for raging.  That behavior is characterisctic of a Narcissist.

[dandylife]

I don't know how much longer aol will have this link up but here's the video on rosie O and Barbara's interview with Alec Baldwin:

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/tv/articles/_a/under-fire-baldwin-lashes-back-with-a/20070428090109990001

I haven't had much luck with the technical aspect of this website, so you will probably have to cut and paste that. Sorry!

Dandylife

[GAP]

Thanks for giving the link for the interview.  He is just pathetic.  Watching him blame everyone but himself and claim he had never raised his voice before except in danger warning situations was just plain ridiculous.  He sure feels bad for everyone that has written him that have been abused but he claims he is not an abuser....

[Gaining Strength]

Gap I agree.  Could anyone believe that he has only raised his voice in warning of danger.  The give away of that lie is that he acknowledges that his rant should have been aimed at Kim.  His coaches missed the concept that raging at his ex-wife is still raging .

I am slowly connecting how diminishing, how shaming it was to be raged at by my father, knowing that I would have to be in that situation over and over again.

[GS]

it's absurd - but a mirror of what I've experienced - very restimulating of emotional abuse

Yes, I agree Besee.  That is what has captivated me about this story is that it is a mirror of what i have experienced.  Thanks for your comment and the way you expressed it. 

Each time I revisit this story and all the subplots I reexperience that outrage which actually comes out of my own powerlessness when I received shaming emotional abuse.  I have to remind myself over and over that I have a choice of standing up in my own mind and denouncing Baldwin's behavior and those who say "yeah but" or falling prey to that powerlessness of shamed victimhood.  When I remember that I have this choice I declare loudly and convincingly, "NO, this is wrong behavior, regardless of ANY actions by others.  Abusive raging is ALWAYS wrong!"

[Stormchild]

Before I say anything else, I need to state that I haven't read any posts on this thread or elsewhere on the board since Sunday. I have no idea what's been said pro or con regarding me or anyone else here at this point, if anything.

I don't need to, in order to say what I have to say here.

I went to bed on Sunday as fed up and just plain disgusted as I think I have ever been in my life, and I said a prayer before falling asleep to that exact effect: that I was as fed up and disgusted as I have ever been in my life.

I explicitly asked God to take from me any pain - physical or emotional - that wasn't a natural consequence of my health status, and any pain that wasn't 'earned'. I asked Him to remove any pain that came from 'negative energy' that I had not been the direct source of.

I woke up on Monday entirely pain free. No ulcer pain, no foot pain, no knee pain, no back pain, and no emotional pain.

I went in to work and the entire day went like silk. I planned to take today off [and have], and I didn't get sandbagged with something that forced me to cancel my vacation day; everything I tried to finish got done; not even the traffic was an impediment; and I had a spontaneous lunch date, to boot.

I know how I'm interpreting that...

Spent yesterday and most of today with this situation back-burnering on my mind. Without the pain, it was possible for me to see a lot of things more clearly, and I realized something VERY important.

My narcissistic sibling is a woman, and my narcissistic mother was a woman. As a result, I have extreme radar for any behavior on the part of other women, acting alone or in pairs, that reminds me of my sister or my mother [or the two of them teamed up] in any way. To any extent. However slight, however subtle.

I don't "see things that aren't there"; but I think I see things that are there with the visual acuity of a scanning tunneling electron microscope. And when I see them, sometimes my response to them has that exact effect: it magnifies them, brings them out in detail, larger than life.

At this point, I apologize for my remarks above, to the community here as a whole.

Each person here has their own history and their own perceptual filters and enhancers. Each person here has their own talents and their own limitations. When I share my perceptions in a teaching, explaining way, it's constructive. When I share them in a confronting, judging way, it's not.

That doesn't mean people have a right to abuse me and expect to get a 'free pass' on it; and it emphatically doesn't mean that anyone here has a right to abuse me, pretend it never happened, and expect me to enable that pretense.

But it does mean I will be trying to remain non-abusive myself when I decide it's time to call someone on that stuff, from now on.

And that, I think, fits very well with the original subject of this thread.

[Stormchild]

After putting up my last post, I went for a walk. It is a beautiful evening, warm, no humidity. More like Oregon summer weather than mid-Atlantic sprawl spring.

And God whapped me one right upside the head, right in the middle of it.

I have been given an experience of grace, a genuine damn miraculous experience of grace, something that hasn't happened to me in many long years, and I almost squandered it.

I have been struggling for decades with the question of unilateral forgiveness, unable to grasp how it could be genuinely possible to let an issue go, truly put it out of sight and out of mind, without somehow being evasive, being in denial, colluding with the other party to 'paper it over' and endorse my being misused.

I have wanted an answer to that problem with all my heart. At least, I thought I did. Because Sunday night, I was given the answer, and I nearly wasted it.

The meaning of my release from pain has nothing to do with keeping score, here or anywhere else.

It is totally different from that.

The meaning of my release from pain was simply that God [as I understand Him] has that much power. That God [as I understand Him] can make me whole, regardless of my circumstances.

That unilateral forgiveness can be - IS! - a matter between God and myself, and nobody else, in the sense of healing the hurt.

I wasn't healed so that I'd have more energy available to me for obsessing about this in the future. I was healed so that I could forgive, release, and put this episode behind me, and move into a better future. Monday was a sample of what that future might hold for me, if I would just open myself up to it. I want that wholeness, I want that healing, I want that future, whatever it holds. I want that God, and I want Him forever.

Hops, I forgive you freely and completely. I haven't seen any of the other posts here - God forgive me, I don't think I'm strong enough yet in this new insight that I could hold on to this emotional and spiritual state, if any responses turned out to be strident and condemning, and I don't want to go back to the state I was in. It was an insult to God, to misuse His gift that way.

I hope everyone here will forgive me - I am grateful beyond words for having had the chance to work this out here, and talk about it openly, and admit my own fault, and glimpse, thank God, a way of being that I never expected to touch in this life.

I pray that I will have the spiritual strength to hold on to it. And I'm sorry I haven't looked at what anyone else has had to say about any of this - if anything. I will, though, in a day or so, after I've given myself a chance to get used to this new way of seeing things.

Whoever out there was praying for me - thank you. It worked. God be thanked and praised. May you be blessed, whole and free, and walk in light all the days of your life, whoever you are.

[Hopalong]

I'm glad, Stormy.

Deep peace to you.

love
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Stormchild - I was just getting ready to post when your last post came on.  I want to tell you how very glad I am that you had such a remarkable Monday.  I hope today was as good.

I am always struck when anyone can find a path to forgiveness and a path to grace.  What a remarkable experience!  Thank you for sharing this with the board.  I am so glad for you.

Gaining Strength

[teartracks]

Storm,

What an amazing place to be.  This is such a God story, inspiring and wonderful.  Glorious!  Your renewed spirit has touched mine which has been in pretty bad repair these last few weeks.   'Scuse me, I'm about to shout! 

tt

[isittoolate]

Hi Storm

Your posts impress me and it's great to know you have discovered something.

Love
Izzy

[mountainspring]

(((Storm)))

[Stormchild]

Hi CB

Thank you! Your post is grounded in good sense and says things I needed to hear. I appreciate it.

I've posted more about this on the Cog. Diss. thread.