couldn't do the right thing

[Survivor]

My sister and I have noticed that our Nmother says things to us or about us to other people, but she is really taking her own inventory.

Examples:

She will tell people that I am "crazy" or "need help because I'm mentally ill", etc.  (In reality, it is HER that needs the help!)

She will tell people that my sister is "greedy" and "wants all of her money, things, etc."  (In reality, it is HER that is very greedy and a hoarder!)

Does anyone else ever experience this kind of behavior?  We have certainly realized our NMother tells on herself all the time.  If you just listen to what they say, they will spill the beans on themselves!  

Survivor

[cj]

Hmmm, I do know whenever, (and for a long time now), if an argument starts between my mother and me, and i lose the rag, she is prone to saying something like 'i'm going to call the doctor!!!!!!'.  She used to do it years ago actually, before i was diagnosed with depression etc, but now thats i have been classed as having depression, I guess 'in her mind' there is even more validity to such crazy statement, or that she can get away with it, rather.

[rosencrantz]

Yeah, Survivor - but this is where I get REALLY confused - cos if she's projecting onto me, then surely I must also be projecting onto her.  

So if I said in return that 'SHE'S the one who is crazy and needs help because she's mentally ill", I'd be saying it about myself.

This is where I got really lost in 'therapy'.  I could see all the stuff this psychiatrist was doing but...wasn't I just tranferring onto him what I saw in my mother?  And if so then it didn't really exist in reality.  He can't have been 'doing' to me what she 'did' to me...and maybe that meant she wasn't either!!!

Except, she said, really limping now - HE WAAAAAAS!!!!!

Neither my mother nor that psychiatrist were able to 'tell the truth', neither of them saw 'me' as I was and neither of them was prepared to hear they might have got something wrong without punishing me for THEIR shame.  

Except once...one day the psychiatrist said something that suggested he'd had some insight and there was hope...but by the end of the session he'd slipped back into his old 'self' and I despaired.  

Why did I keep it all secret?  Why didn't I tell anybody?  

- Because the idea of being crushed by denial and obfuscation by the psychiatrist/my mother was too much to bear.  My sanity is only safe if I keep it all a secret and don't let anybody mess with it.

- Because of the shame of letting it be known

- Because I was afraid of my father's 'disapproval' - for 'telling tales' on my mother - represented there by the psychiatrist's senior colleague who I'd met briefly.  He was the only other person to 'tell' and I couldn't face his disapproval and disbelief.  And yet I knew all this, I could write it down then as now - if someone could have just released me, shown me where the door was hidden, I knew the truth.  But nobody ever did...

Round and round and round, instead, with no way out. Just terror, fear and being alone.  Not that anybody else knew - I was brought up to provide an outer 'face' for the family, I think - a happy, successful persona with a wide social circle.

This is also what I experienced someone 'doing' to me via pm.  It might be her problem (projecting) but it created problems for me (confusion, fear and shame).

So I get my 'helicopter view' (looking in on all sides from 'above' rather than from 'inside') and I know the truth, I know reality, I know what's rational.  I know what it 'feels' like, even if I can't always find words.  Even if the truth is not 'allowed'.  But my foundations were crushed by 'therapy'.  The whole edifice crumbled and nothing was built in its place.  I am easily undermined, the rug pulled out from under.  I'm either up in the air or down underground - there's no ground floor!!!

But my 'no more secrets' rule (created when my father died) has meant I've risked talking about what's happened/ing.  

It's still not 100% 'safe' as it depends on whether other people are strong enough for the truth, open to the existence of the 'N' thing, really understanding what makes people tick - or whether they are in denial (etc) - and who is the arbiter of which is which???  

So I keep a large question mark beside me for humility's sake, but I choose to believe in what my 'soul' tells me.  And bit by bit, person by person, validation by validation, I'm getting stronger.

And no-one - but no-one - gets to mess with MY sanity and boundaries again!!!!!

Be warned    

Except - doesn't that take me back to 'lonely' again???  With me being 'strong' for everyone else and nobody being 'strong' for me???  (Not that anybody else 'should' be strong for me but I seem not to know how to be 'strong' for myself!!!)  Oh God - I'm stuck going round and round again with NO WAY OUT!  

R

[RedRose]

Rosencrantz, you wrote:  Except - doesn't that take me back to 'lonely' again??? With me being 'strong' for everyone else and nobody being 'strong' for me??? (Not that anybody else 'should' be strong for me but I seem not to know how to be 'strong' for myself!!!) Oh God - I'm stuck going round and round again

I know, just in part of my healing and self-observation, I had come to a realization that people are people, and they will let you down.  Hell, you will let them down.  You'll let yourself down.

I see my mother desperately trying to find happiness from others, yet she is "let down" many times over.  Why?  She just doesn't realize that she needs to find her own identity.  Then, couple that with the grandiose demands she places upon people, especially those that she never voices.  

It's no wonder we are caught in this hellish place of floating aimlessly from one extreme to another until we reach a point where we say, "Enough!" and we no longer live to impossible expectations.

I'm quite introverted, anxious, and at times apathetic about the human race, but I don't want to be.  I'm also learning that it's all right to set boundaries and if people don't like it, so what?  I also had to learn that people can say no to me and that we are not here to please one another on a twenty-four hour basis.

It's maddening.  

[Wildflower]

You guys are so amazing.  Really.   I can’t express how wonderful it is to have a place to get to the heart of these issues instead of seeing the pitying, blank stare of a friend bewildered by my stories.

My subconscious has been screaming almost as loud as my body lately.  It’s so strange, but twice in this month something in me has called out to go root around in very specific places.  The first was when I found myself writing that "when I’m stressed, that 8-year-old or 12-year-old with unresolved feelings screams out".  I get 8, but 12?  My therapist recommended that I find pictures of myself at both ages and talk to the girls in those pictures.  Listen to what they had to say.  I have to say, as familiar as I am with those pictures, I was shocked by what I found.  I was alive and well when I was 8.  I know I was in pain, but the pictures show a goofy kid who smiled easily.  The 12-year-old was a wholly different story.  She had forgotten how to smile, or even how to breathe.

And now, ever since the memory at beginning of this thread was stirred up, a voice in me has been saying, “Find that journal entry – you know the one.”  I knew it, and last night I mustered the courage to read it.  What I found is that I knew more then about the mechanics of my mothers power over me than I seem to know now.  

If I knew….then what’s really going on now?  Why is it so hard to know again?

I dug and dug.  I faced some pretty painful journal entries – not painful because of any descriptions of abuse, but painful because of who I was.  My high school journal entries were almost incoherent because I had, apparently, slipped almost entirely into an imaginary world.  But the journal entries I wrote starting in college (my escape) show a steady and determined progression into reality.  More and more clarity.  More and more detail.  More and more connection to the world.  More and more understanding that I didn’t really know who I was.  More and more focus on reclaiming myself.

Still.  Why the difficulty in facing these memories?

Because in order to access this pain, I have to go back to a person I’m not proud of.  A person filled with hatred and bitterness.  A person reeling with confusion.  A person whose pain hurt those around her.

I was a bit of an N by the time I left home.  There.  I said it.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but my struggle since then has been to expel one N quality after the next from who I was.  I wasn’t a true N, I don’t think – but I had been taught to be one.  I spoke the way my parents spoke.  I was too self-absorbed by my own pain to realize how I hurt others.  I was so easily injured.  I was in so much denial.

I didn’t want to go back there, because I made the connection at some point that by dragging up the pain my parents caused me, I risked staying sick.  Well, things are different now.  I have a core (a small one, but it’s a start).  I have connections to the outside world.  I know how to treat people with kindness (and I do, every chance I get – as if making up for lost time).  

My mother was horrible to me.  She almost killed my soul and my body.  She robbed me of so much.  And she made me believe I was horrible – even caused me to be horrible.

There.  I said it.  And the world is still standing.  And I’m still a nice person and have the smiles on people’s faces to prove it.  And I can still feel so sorry for my mother.  And in a way, I can say goodbye to her.

Wildflower

[rosencrantz]

Yeah - Brilliant!  Million million megabucks brilliant!  Once you get that 'inner N' thing you're well down the rocky road to recovery.  

Hugs for the kid in High School in that terrible state of confusion.  

My photos are of me aged 7 and aged 8.  Aged 7 I was me; aged 8 I had become defined by my mother (and I hated the her/me that I had become).  I had to be her/me and she has fought me for the rest of my life to become again the her/me that I left behind.

You'll find lots of what you've talked about in your re-posted post  in 'When You and your mother can't be friends' - well worth a read as it sets out the process very clearly. They treat us like their mother and so we become like their mother.  I know I spent my teens believing my mother thought I was HER mother ie horrible and mean.  But it's really an unconscious process.  

When we are 'defined' by others (as children) we lose ourselves in the process.  And that makes us vulnerable to be being 'defined' by others, too.  

R

[Wildflower]

Thanks R!        

I feel a gazillion times better now that I’ve had a chance to talk about this!

I wonder how many others have before/after pictures out there??

It’s just so twisted, all of this role reversal stuff!!!  I’ll buy that book now.  I’m going to need all the help I can get to hold onto an idea as weirdo as this.  

Wildflower

[clj_writes]

Dear Rosencrantz,
You wrote:
"Yeah, Survivor - but this is where I get REALLY confused - cos if she's projecting onto me, then surely I must also be projecting onto her.

So if I said in return that 'SHE'S the one who is crazy and needs help because she's mentally ill", I'd be saying it about myself."

Projection requires a person to be unconscious of what they are doing.  If you are aware of yourself (and you have shown repeatedly here that you are!), chances are good you are *not* projecting.

[Wildflower]

Thanks, Jacmac.    That means a lot to me.  I have to admit, I was feeling a bit like hiding yesterday because I was worried that by using the N word on myself, people might be wary of me in the future.  That may be, but it’s encouraging to know you and R heard and understand me.

I missssssss the little girl that I once was sooooo much!!! I'm longing to find her again.

Me, too.  I keep a picture on my mantle of myself when I was about 4, and every now and then I look at her and wonder how anyone could think a child could be so threatening.  And yes, I miss her and try to listen to her all the time.  My way of bringing her back into me – the present me.

Wildflower

[clj_writes]

Dear Wildflower,
I can relate to your story.  When I was in high school I was quite sarcastic and cynical (a defense mechanism).  Plus I was highly critical of others (and myself, of course) for many, many years.  In fact I was engaged at one point to a man who broke up with me because "I wasn't nice enough to other people".  It has taken many years of dismantling my own self-judgment to get to the point of deep compassion and understanding for others.  I'm still doing more dismantling so as to be easier on myself.  It's all a process, right?  

[Wildflower]

Hi Christy,

That must have been so difficult to hear    .  I still squirm a bit when I think about the time several years ago when my oldest friend said she didn't want to share an apartment with me.   Ouch.

It has taken many years of dismantling my own self-judgment to get to the point of deep compassion and understanding for others. I'm still doing more dismantling so as to be easier on myself. It's all a process, right?

Wow.  It's so comforting to know that someone else is doing this work, too.   It seems to get easier all the time, doesn't it?  Really tough in the beginning, but less guilt and more connection and joy as those successess build up?  

Thanks for sharing this, Christy  

Wildflower

[clj_writes]

Yes, Wildflower, you are right.  Every tiny connection point adds to the inner network that says "hey, that wasn't my true nature and I don't want to live like that".  It reminds me of the statement "Every arrow you shoot has to pass through you first".  

More freedom, more connection, allowing more of our true natures to show...this is about reclaiming ourselves and our right to be who we are.

I was puzzled when my fiance broke up with me all those years ago.  He made some statement like "well, naybe if you got some therapy" which also puzzled me.  No puzzlement now after I did do therapy and a heck of a lot of other things.  The judgment and criticism were pervasive.  Ugh.

Speaking of "ugh", I have to go get ready for work.  I have tons to say about the imposter syndrome (yes, yes, yes!) but it will have to wait.