Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

The What Ifs

<< < (2/3) > >>

rosencrantz:
As far as unconditional love is concerned, I'm not sure that it actually exists.  (Joke : only God, Mother Teresa and psychiatrists practice unconditional love - the psychiatrists get paid to do good, Mother Teresa wants money to do good, and even God wants your soul back when you've finished with it!!).  

I'm sure it's something Nparents desire for themselves.  So they can do anything they like, no matter how awful, and still be revered.

In that case, I choose not to give unconditional love. And I can't think of a good reason to want to!!  

Actually if I did think I should offer unconditional love I'd be very concerned about me in particular (as the adult child of an Nparent) wanting to do so because I think the concept feeds off the self-sacrificing 'gene' that Nparents plant in their offspring. Red flag time again.

What I do practice, in spiritual terms, is 'forgiveness'.  And I have forgiven my mother for the past.  And that benefits me!  So it's neither unconditional nor self-sacrificing (so I reckon that's healthy!).  

Whether or not that will continue into the future, I don't know. If NPD isn't acknowledged in my country, there isn't much chance of my mother receiving help or me being helped to help her.  Or of the wider family understanding what has caused the pain, bewilderment and psychiatric problems in their own little nuclear families.  Being 'so near, yet so far' ('never to be believed') may just make me a little bitter.
R

Cinderella:
Rosencrantz   :shock:

It is interesting that my post provoked such strong defense mechanisms in you.  Maybe I hit a nerve.  First of all, UNCONTIONAL LOVE to a parent or anyone else will not destroy you.  Hate and anger will destroy you.  Regarding your joke about God and mother Teresa---I didn't laugh!

CC's "respectfully disagreeing" what on earth is wrong with that, and how can that be condescending or a put down?  It is a very polite way of saying, that she respects your opinion, but disagrees.  CC has proven herself on this site to be an articulate and thoughtful person, who has given all of us some great insight, always in a possitive way.  She may not always say what you want to hear (perhaps like my post did) , but she is usually right on.  You on the other hand remind me of a Rottweiller ready to attack (that was my joke).

Don't forget that we are experiencing the same situation as you are, only maybe a tad less bitter.  That means that we understand your pain and support you, because we have the same emotions as you do.  You say that you practive forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a form of unconditional love, or putting aside the wrongs of another person and embracing them.  We can still set boundaries, and love at the same time.  You set boundaries and forgive at the same time, right?  My post was intended to inspire all of us to call on our higher self.  I am truly sorry that you didn't see it that way.

mary:
I appreciate what has been said here.  Once my  husbands aunt told me that she went on a trip with my husbands parents.  They both had small children, my husband was one and the aunt had one about my husbands age.  That night after traveling and being in  a strange place the two little ones cried and cried at bedtime.  They were just little and over tired and in a strange situation.  The aunt held her baby and let him cry while she loved him and rocked him.  At last he finally went to sleep.  In the next room she could hear my husbands parents screaming at my husband to shut up and slapping and hitting him until he was histerical.  This is a sad sad thing in my husbands past that ofcourse he was too little to remember it now but it makes you wonder how many nights he was beaten and yelled at .  Did he feel love ...ever.  So my poor husband who makes our lives pretty tough sometimes did not bring this on himself he is a victim also.   When he was little and should have been loved and nurtured it was not happening for him.

My husband mother who is the manipulative witch...."I can make anybody do anything"  plus a lot of other really nice traits that have endeared her to myself and my children.  When she was a little girl about 2 years old I think her mother had an appendix burst.  She almost died and she lost a baby.  It ruined her health and my mother in law was taken away to go and live with her grandmother.   This was around 1925.  I think her mother was very ill for at least two years.   I dont think the grandmother particulary wanted her and I never get any feed back on her being kind or loving.  I am sure the little child must have felt unloved and seperated from her mother.  My mother in law to this day has no patience with those that are ill and doesn't want anything to do with them.

Both my husband and my mother in law have tragic stories I think.  Both are pretty miserable people really but both are a result of what happened to them when they were little people and the marks left on them are deep.  My husband sees the world differently than me.  He is still trying to be nurtured and loved and it is obvious that all attention should turn toward him...it really doesn't matter if it is good or bad as long as he is the focus.  I would guess that he is still looking for that love that his mother and dad should have given him but didn't.....his mother couldn't give it because her mother wasn't there to give it to her when she was little.  I am sure that to her she had been abandoned by her mother.  

I think I have to forgive them.  At the same time I have got to find me and give myself a chance to be.  I have been so lost in being the supply for N husband that I am not sure who I am or what I am about.  My kids have been in the same place.  Our world is a strange one where we have lost ourselves feeding this N monster that has been demanding and has made himself the only important one.  we love him  but we are all going to find ourselves and while we have our lives here together we are going to  try to protect ourselves and find out who we are.

My mother in laws constant manipulation is just too much for me.  I forgive her for the lousy things she does but she cant stop herself so I must protect myself from being her victum.  Christ did tell us to love others as we love ourselves.  We have to love ourselves too.   See I told you I was going to get passed being so whiney!!!   Now to find out how to forgive and not allow myself to be a victim!

Tinkergirl:
Hi All,

Before the posts keep coming to this thread, I wanted to just put a reminder to all of us that nobody is judging one another and that all of our experiences, while similar, cannot and should not demand the same outcome or healing mechanisms (ie unconditional love, forgiveness).  

As an outsider reading all of your posts individually, and then again as a thread, it is so clear that we have had varying degrees of abuse from our Ns and also are all in different stages of what i call "healing and dealing".  So try not to get caught up in semantics of definitions of unconditional love, forgiveness, empathy...they all have different meanings to each of us individually.  You all have valid stories, valid ways of dealing with your Ns.  All of these topics (ie empathy) are valid theories we each practice in our own ways, let's not start assigning how, who, or what each of us should say, do or feel.  

I'm not preaching, but again seeing the stories, I see the potential for a much more constructive debate if we recognize our similarities and differences in order help each other heal, not to scrutinize someone else's methods.  That, my friends, would be entirely inherited from our Ns.   :wink:

Nic:
Tinkergirl,
All I can say is well put! Well done and said.  We have indeed all had such pain, and we all have had to deal with it with survival mechanisms or tactics. We were too young to understand.  Now that we are older and seeing our situations with the benefit of hindsight, of course we get angry, and then some.
Situation X dealt with by me and my knowledge and all other variables at the time is different than the same or almost the same situation X dealt with by you for example.  The important thing is we all survived these situations using whatever means we had to deal with them at that time.  And we come here to talk about them and heal, slowly or quickly or in spurts.
I think we must remain encouraged with our decision to heal and get this horrible inheritance in check and behind us.  Speaking for myself and being a Christian I must confess that I find it very hard to forgive people who continue to make my life very difficult.  I know I must forgive them, I know that forgiveness comes from the heart and I have conluded that I must go on with them in my mind but at a distance.
Sometimes I really pity my mom and dad who are 76 and 80 respectively, and other times i'd like to drown them! Yes I would!  The hardest thing for me to do is let it all go because I am so used to living with it.  I want to let it go, I long for it all to go away and it will, bit by bit.
Again I thank each and everyone of you for your posts..I'm still so astonished at how similar our experiences are and have been.  Reading your experiences, reading you on your good days and your bad days makes me feel like i'm a part of something.  I cannot have these sane conversations with my parents or my brother and it is very refreshing to come here and receive such validation.
Nic :wink:

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page