Chilly Cerebral N

[Certain Hope]

Iphi,

The potential is all yours... always and still. The squashing part belongs in the past and you're the only one who can place it there. That's tough... I felt pretty much like an amoeba yesterday... and maybe I'm just so stubborn, but I refuse to exist like that anymore.

I am coming through this... and I don't hope so, I know so.

Step 1 for me is to choose to see my mother as I finally saw npd-ex. Powerless.
That's my choice, right here and now. And it's yours, too.
She has no control over me unless I allow her to.
So I'll continue learning the things that I should've learned years ago... about internal boundaries, and real intimacy, and recognizing feelings, to manage  them as an adult.

Step 2 for me is more like a giant, flailing leap across the Grand Canyon, and that is to forgive her. Not to "feel" forgiving, but to make the deliberate decision of will to release any claim to judgment against her.
Without forgiveness, I believe I'd be choosing to allow her continued control over my life, so this isn't for some day down the road... it's for right now.
And for tomorrow, and the next day, and every single time it tries to sprout in me... the anger and the resentment and all the rest.

Step 3... Well,  "Accomplishments" is a word my mother likes to bandy about. Okay, fine... how about listing them? Not in light of what could have been, but only the facts. And don't forget to put "awareness" wayyy up at the top, because that's a whole lot more than many folks ever achieve.

Step 4..... getting pretty tentative here, but I am thinking of a review of standards. And this time, we set the bar... based on our own needs, likes, preferences, interests, etc.  I know for a certainty that my mother's designs on my life do not come anywhere near what my own desires have been.
And again, this is not at all about "what if's"... I think that those need to be put on mute in order to begin this fresh start.

Whatdya think, Iphi? Sound like a reasonable beginning? I'm game!
Tired of fighting the jailer when the key is already in my own pocket.

Love,
Hope

[Iphi]

What a great post CH - I'm going to take it with me and sleep on it.  You are so right - the things we achieve (i.e. awareness) are things that the N wouldn't even understand or know how to value.  Sleep tight!

[Hopalong]

Iphi,
I felt like I'd watched a bayonetting when I read your post.

I think it can't be any farther apart--the hungry heart of a child who just needs some simple love and appreciation from an Nparent, and the cold freezing wind that howls through their chests where empathic hearts should be.

It's like one of the terrible contrasts in nature: the calf and the merciless lion, the storm and the grasses, the sun and the thirsty.

It just is. In some way, I feel that our human anguish can make us forget that we too are animals, we have long gestation, extended childhood by mammalian standards, and we are as vulnerable as a newborn zebra...and just as exposed.

Where I give thanks in reading here is that those well enough to write about it here have survived the predator, the drought, the river...and we're here, swimming so strongly.

I think telling the story must have left you drained. It was an act of power and declaration and you've kicked off.
Never doubt that you will swim so much farther than you ever could have imagined when you were trapped in a car with a merciless human.

Hops

[Iphi]

Aww thank you Hops, your kindness shines out.  Your thoughts on we human animals are profound and ring true to me.  It is true - I was drained and yet agitated at the edges.

Yesterday was a strange day - it was strange to post that experience and know, for the first time, that it was not my shame and it did not happen because I deserved it because of my failings and weaknesses and really I had no fear that anyone here would tell me that it did.  I'm so grateful.

A small incident happened at work where I was treated as less than. It was an unconscious slight on the other person's part, but real.  And I felt the hurt and then I felt anger.  Then I realized it was because I particularly like the person who did it and had hoped we could be friends, but now understand she sees me as less-than.  And then I realized - I do not feel less-than. It is not true.  That process took all day. I was amazed to be knowing my own experience in real-time.  And it was happening at the same time as this topic. 

Together between them - I realized how one-down less-than not-good-enough I live my life - apologizing for the stink of my especial badness that my presence inflicts and the great try to overlook.  And I realized that it is over - living that way.  The cloud... is blowing away.

It must be what they call synchronicity.

[finding peace]

Hi Iphi,

Yes, in some ways it was a saving grace.  From that point forward I was more emotionally detached than I had been before – but he was still able to hurt me.  It is funny, I got to thinking about this last night, but I think that after that particular incident, I drew a line in the sand – he was well aware of that line, and for the first time in his life, he didn’t dare cross it.  (Without going into all the details, he knew I had information about him that could destroy him socially).  But, true to nature, he was constantly testing that line.  He would push it, and push it, and push it, but would stop just short of breaking it.  So, although it did get better, it never truly stopped.

My M was more the chilly, cerebral N.  Despite years of subtle and not-so-subtle abuse I did the same thing with her that you did with your F.  I too:

just held harder and squeezed my eyes shut.  It especially was problematic for me in forming other relationships in that I see I did not defend myself or even distance myself from cruel people.  Because I refused to see.  And you know, I really wanted to be normal so I just umm faked it.  And when they hurt me I... stood there and pretended it didn't hurt and kept hanging around.

It wasn’t until after my F died, and she once again (and for the last time) knifed me, that I realized that it would never end.  That was when I finally realized that I had spent half my life as someone else’s whipping post, and I refused to spend one more minute doing so.  I decided that all that energy that I poured into 2 black holes was an utter and colossal waste, and that I was going to take that energy and use it where it would have a more positive outcome – give it to my real family (children and H).  I went NC.

You said:

Together between them - I realized how one-down less-than not-good-enough I live my life - apologizing for the stink of my especial badness that my presence inflicts and the great try to overlook.  And I realized that it is over - living that way.  The cloud... is blowing away.

I can so relate to this.  After I went NC – I realized that I had lived this way since earliest childhood – and IT IS NOT TRUE.  We are all created equal.  I have been working through this over the past year.  It has not been an easy belief to change – but as you say “The cloud…..is blowing away.” And the glimpses of sunlight I catch as that cloud slowly moves away are quite beautiful.

Much love to you,
Peace

[Hopalong]

It is not true.

So powerful. So much power in four words.

 

Hops

[reallyME]

AMI: That explains my whole childhood. My M 'loved" me when I made her look good-- did well in school, married someone she thought looked  good, had kids, kids did well etc. Whenever, I was hurting--- She STABBED me.

I think one of the most important things to realize about the narcissist, is that they cannot handle it when someone appears to be the N's version of "weak."  This can mean a number of things, depending on the particular N.

To N men, they see many women as being "weak" for the simple fact that they are WOMEN.  This, in the N-guy's mind, means that, when he abuses the woman, she ASKED FOR IT, just because she's female.

To N women, other women who appear not as smart, pretty, integrous as they, are DESERVING OF PUNISHMENT.

Now, WHY do N men and women want to punish others for just BEING WHO THEY ARE?

Because, generally the "who they are" shows to an N, things inside himself/herself, that he/she will NOT ALLOW to be seen on the surface.  They have trained themselves to stuff the "real me" down so deeply, that, when they see other people being the way that "stuffed self" really is, they vaguely start to recognize it, don't realize that it's in them too, and they become upset and start to lash out...it's almost logical, when you think about the truth of the situation.  The one they are actually meaning to punish is, THEMSELVES.

~N's HATE anything resembling openness or vulnerability.

~Laura

[SilverLining]

tjr100 - I'm interested in what symptoms lead you to wonder about Asperger's in your dad and family.  Your experience with your dad bending everything around to his advantage is so depressingly familiar though not in that specific way. 

Hi Iphi.  Unlike many of the N parents described on this board, my father isn't (usually) outright mean, just self absorbed, socially inept, and a "know it all".  He worked as an engineer, which is one of the classic Aspergers professions. He doesn't have any friends and has had trouble with every human relationship.  That's sort of the quick summary of symptoms.  A couple of years ago in exasperation at his usual way of relating, I looked up "borderline autism" on the internet and eventually learned about AS and narcissism.   

I grew up listening to him do monologues about topics of interest to him.  I've come to realize the biggest problem for me isn't necessarily what he did, it's what he failed to do, which is provide any sort of validation or positive feedback to his children.  In terms of food and shelter, he was an okay provider, but emotionally he left his children to raise themselves.

So I spent the first 20 years of my adult life in a semi conscious search for the  external validation I didn't get as a child.  This project kind of fell apart in my 30's, and then I started trying to figure out what really went wrong in my childhood.  I knew all along things in my FOO weren't good, but it's only in last couple of years I really started putting the pieces together.

I can relate to your comment about not feeling "good enough" and how it squashes your potential.  This kind of feeling seems a definite holdover from FOO experience.  If we weren't "good enough" to get validation from our parents, then we aren't likely to make up for it elsewhere.  No matter how good we may be in reality, we are still fighting the lack of validation from childhood.   

I've been feeling good the last couple of years.  Distance from the FOO and knowledge of the problems goes a long way toward improving things.   

 



 



   

[Iphi]

Oh my tjr100 thank you.  My dad is a retired (electrical) engineer too.  I don't think he has Asperger's though he does seem able to live like a hermit and amuse himself, no problem.  He likes to be fussed over though and always seems to have women hanging around.  I would call them his friends, but they tend to serve him, so it's more oooey and dysfunctional than that.   

Got to run for now.

[Ami]

Dear Laura,
  Your post put so many things together for me.I "saw" how the N worked. My mother loved to smirk and mock at my desire to have  integrity. I can see here mocking and sneering face, She would hiss with her twisted face,"There ISSSSSS no right or wrong."She thought that these desires on my part were the most stupid and naive  desires in the world.
   She hated that I aspired to have character.
  She hissed and denounced anything "good" ,loving or kind. She seemed to need to "annilihate" it. I wish that I knew about N ,earlier..
  You explained it all. Thank you. Laura                                                      Love    Ami.

[Iphi]

Hey folks I'm sorry for not more fully responding to the posts here from late last week.  I intended to but life events swept me away from doing more than a quick read of the board and posting on the fly.  Hopefully now there will be a bit of time.

Finding Peace - thank you for your post.  You are definitely my sister-in-arms and I'm sorry you had to live with 2 such parents.  I think it is a mark of your presence of mind and strength of character that you were able to implement some emotional detachment from your dad and maintain it.  That's the striking thing, since so much of these enmeshed issues are so cyclical.  Also your ability, eventually and ultimately, to redirect your energies from the black hole/bottomless pit to more productive and rewarding and deserving directions - is so important and crucial.  I'm working on it. 

People have been telling this joke about when the co-dependent dies and someone else's life flashes before their eyes.  You know, I know so much about my dad.  I've entered into his feelings at every turn and spent hours listening not just to lectures on science and math and politics and evolution and all sorts of whatnot, but discussed his childhood and listened to him talk about work.  I'm parentified, you know - I had to take care of him emotionally as well as all sorts of house tasks and raising myself.

I'm an expert on my dad.  He is the project that all that energy has been devoted to that could have been used for living my life.  It's done. It is what happened.  But it's hard to pull out of the bad investment!  Even as I finally am able to do a damage assessment in the light of morning after the storm, even knowing the serious warping of the structure and heavy setbacks and seeing how much work I am going to have to do - and it is a LOT - even so, it's really psychologically difficult to redirect the energies.

For the first time this weekend I was able to think about forgiveness as a possibility.  And it is probably only because I can see that no matter how much havoc he has wrought in my psyche and life etcetera, he really doesn't know better.  I actually do not believe he would do better if he knew better, because he seems so bloody incapable of any learning or growth whatsoever.  Instead, time and again, I have seen him pretend to wisdom that he clearly does not possess.  That makes me sad.  So I think it may be that I can forgive him because he is so clearly covered in ignorance and darkness and therefore it is he who must suffer the most.  If I understand that really I am valuable and worth knowing and loving (in contrast to all the messages conveyed to me) then his loss of relation to me is really pretty awful.  But that is exactly where such lies lead and only the most lost, bereft, delusional fool would choose control over relation, lies over truth, flattery over appreciation and basically all the things that I see him choose time and again. 

ReallyME - thank you for your post.  When you write about how an N sees other categories of people as weak and less-than, I also see that the N will never consent to learn anything from those people or by observing those people.  The N cannot accept anything from the weak, except no-doubt service and groveling and compliments.

I was hasty in saying that the clouds are blowing away from being not good enough.  It was an epiphany and a real rush to experience within myself a lightening of the load that has always been squashing me, but then later on I realized -- it is up to me to put in the elbow grease to make the change.  And I haven't really started on that yet.

Still, on Sunday suddenly I experienced a feeling of marked warmth and fullness in my solar plexus.  It actually felt full of warm energy.  Now, not since my teens have I felt the horror of hollowness - and in those days it was very extreme hollowness as if a cold wind was howling through my center - it was horrible.  I used to draw pictures of things with holes in them to express the feeling.  Anyway, it hasn't been that bad for 20 years, but never have I felt such fullness and warmth either.  It subsided but it was a sort of high experience.

This morning I had to go somewhere new and meet someone for work, and my stomach pains came back.  Also yesterday I felt the same frustration and some resentment with the co-worker who dissed me last week and who so clearly regards me as her inferior.

So it isn't exactly blue skies.  lol!  But it's work in progress.  Since tjr and FP have both shared that they struggle with the one-down less-than unworthy feeling - I want to do a separate topic addressing it.  I need all the help I can get to extract myself from this and it is my hope that working on  it can be helpful to many.  It's so encouraging that others struggle and push on the same issues because it shows the illusory nature of the box we are in.  kwim?

Ami it is so disturbing to read about your mom saying there is no right or wrong.  My dad always has laughed at me because basically since birth I have asserted that Mind is over Matter and we have existence beyond our current physical forms.  Mostly I do not discuss these things with him, but it has been a big struggle not to lose what I have always known.  It was also very difficult to never, ever express those things that are my perspective. It was obviously too dangerous, so I never did, until the early 2000s.  The reason I broke silence then was that it occurred to me that I had to try to convey these things to him, because his interior sickness is connected to not understanding these things.  His reckless actions and foolish decisions, his choice to live in self-pity, rage and despair, and to feel that illness should not happen to him but should rather happen to someone more deserving, such as Iphi - all of these things are bad for him, I believe, beyond his current life.  Anyway, of course he made fun of me but I approached it all sneakily as a game "In your next life you should learn to blay the maracas."  That was my approach - just to slide some playful possibilities in there to get him to think about what he actually does not know, since he is so sure he knows what he knows.

Getting back to your mom, asserting that there is no right or wrong is, to my eyes, a symptom of a serious spiritual illness.  Imo, all of creation has an absolute relationship to the creator, but all of creation has a relative relationship to each other.  If one does not know of the absolute relationship with one's creator, then maybe everything looks relative and there appears to be no right and wrong, but it's a 'the earth is flat' assertion.  But hey, just imo.  It's a terrible thing to teach a child since (a) it's wrong and (b) it leaves the child rudderless and without a way to protect herself and keep herself safe - how can you learn discernment?

On the other hand, it isn't like I am so enlightened as my co-worker really hurt my feelings last week and made me angry by putting me down and if I was so enlightened it would not be even a blip on the radar.  So that is about where it is at for me.   

I really appreciate the opportunity to express these things here.  It's such a relief.

[Ami]

_{[ It's a terrible thing to teach a child since (a) it's wrong and (b) it leaves the child rudderless and without a way to protect herself and keep herself safe - how can you learn discernment?}


Dear Iphi
   You came through for me again. This point( above) has been what I have been trying to explain on my new threads.
  I feel rudderless. I don't trust my gut to give me the information in life so I can function.
   What my M taught me is "garbage" and not real and I have lost connection to myself so I don't trust my own eyes  and perceptions to tell me what is real.
    I am dumping out N ideas BUT DON"T TRUST myself and my perceptions to put in new ideas. I hope that somebody understands  . I am having a panic attack b/c of facing these things           LOve  Ami

[reallyME]

Ami,

I heard a real heart's cry in your post here.  It's almost as though you are saying "EVERYTHING I was taught, I found out was unhealthy or distored.  Now that I'm an adult, I know those things I learned, are not helpful to me, but then, if I discard the only compass I have had since birth, what/who shall lead me and protect me...from myself, others, life.

If I am OFF in my interpretation, feel free to correct me.  That's just what I hear you saying from my own perception.

My answer to you is, take a chance at choice making one step at a time, ask a trusted friend to explain to you if your choice is healthy/unhealthy, beneficial/unbeneficial.

~Laura

[Ami]

Dear Laura,
   Thank you. That is what I am saying. I am taking a whole lifetime  of learning and  and having to throw it off the "boat" b/c the boat is too heavy and we will drown.
  I AM shell shocked..
  I just wanted to express this and am glad that you understood . I needed to know that I was not alone.
  Not being alone is a huge part of the healing for me.
  You are right, Laura. I need to  grow(like a baby)-- step by step.   The ONE thing that gives me comfort( and a lot of comfort) is that  all this lifetime of pain brought me to a" new birth" with God.  I am the only one in my family  who is "born again". They think that it is "stupid".
  At my darkest hour, I see my life as coming together to be 'born anew" from above. I could never , ever face all these truths about my life ( and how I wasted most of it) without knowing that the best is ahead.
  Also, I have the promise,"When my mother and father forsake me, God will lift me up."I fit in this category.(lol).
  Thank you for responding. My heart was crying,but now I feel much,much better      Love  Ami

   

[Certain Hope]

For the first time this weekend I was able to think about forgiveness as a possibility.  And it is probably only because I can see that no matter how much havoc he has wrought in my psyche and life etcetera, he really doesn't know better.  I actually do not believe he would do better if he knew better, because he seems so bloody incapable of any learning or growth whatsoever.  Instead, time and again, I have seen him pretend to wisdom that he clearly does not possess.  That makes me sad.  So I think it may be that I can forgive him because he is so clearly covered in ignorance and darkness and therefore it is he who must suffer the most.  If I understand that really I am valuable and worth knowing and loving (in contrast to all the messages conveyed to me) then his loss of relation to me is really pretty awful.  But that is exactly where such lies lead and only the most lost, bereft, delusional fool would choose control over relation, lies over truth, flattery over appreciation and basically all the things that I see him choose time and again. 

Dear Iphi,

I believe that these people don't know any better because they don't want to know any better. They seem to be absolutely resolute in their closed-heartedness, to the point that even the most outwardly normal-appearing of them view other human beings, at best, as pets.
That pretending to wisdom is so very damaging to a young child. Having seen some of that acted out by npd-ex in my own home, with my own children as captive audience, I've been able to re-frame alot of my own childhood experiences. The difference is - my kids had the wherewithal to say, "No, that doesn't make sense."  I didn't... not as a child. I was too terrified of the rejection which was sure to follow any such signal of disloyalty to the queen.

This makes me sad, too. Having been consistently, repeatedly dismissed for a lifetime, I now receive weekly letters coaxing me to report on things like my childrens' accomplishments and other newsworthy items which might sound good to those who ask, by the way, how's your family? Letters signed with love and God's blessings, x's and o's. X's and O's!!!!  4 of each... 1 for each of us. This from a woman from whom I've not once heard the words, "I love you"... not once, to anyone. No hugs and kisses, no warmth, only an image... a calculating stick figure posing as a human.
I feel like I could forgive if there weren't anymore of these awful letters, but they just keep arriving in the mailbox. If she'd just quit trying to play the role... I really don't even know why she bothers. Maybe she is wondering the same... because it sounds like her health has gone directly, dramatically downhill, ever since our visit there 8 weeks ago. Ugh... see, now I feel responsible, feel the guilt... as though it's up to me to tell her what she clearly cannot admit to herself... that this whole thing is a lie, a fraud, a charade. I feel like if I could maybe free her from going through the motions, she'd... well, I don't know what she'd do. At least I would have been honest. My husband's method of honesty with his mother is to only contact her when he wants to, which isn't often.
But then she doesn't write to him weekly... she writes to me    I just say hi and wish her well and don't speak of him... figuring that's his business to communicate as he chooses.   

Covered in ignorance and darkness... yes. Sometimes I feel that  I have a little light which would shine into that darkness, if I quit hiding it beneath my bushel basket. Then it would be clear that the ignorance is chosen, if it continued...  and after 81 years, it's hard to imagine a change. Except that I remember long ago, when she was very, very nervous... quite a bit more neurotic... and maybe more open, before this icy steel vault became her permanent measure of security. And I feel that, if she were a friend of mine, I would at least tell her where I stand... and for myself, if I could just do that, in less than 10,000 words, without hatefulness and blame, then the grieving could begin. She needs to grieve as much as I do, because what she's lost is two generations.... and more... and at the rate she's going, she will not be on this earth much longer. This is eating away at her from the inside, I know, and when she called demanding to know "what's new?" I feel that she was really asking me to turn the key. God knows I don't want to open that door... it feels like Pandora's box.

"Only the most lost, bereft, delusional fool would choose control over relation, lies over truth, flattery over appreciation and basically all the things that I see him choose time and again". 

That fact shakes me wide awake. I don't know about your father, but no one has ever dared confront my mother and face her down. Dad says he tried recently, with the simple question, "Why must it always be your way?"  To which she replied, "You're full of s_ _ _."  And now, her latest health problem... she's never told me what it is, only the usual vague (constant) complaints about her trials - and the note that for 6 weeks she hasn't gone to church -... but Dad wrote and told me, in his words, she has the "quick steps".
Ironic. I believe it's a God- thing. I am absolutely convinced that all her health stuff is wrapped up and contained within this prideful denial which she has absolutely refused to confront within herself. And I think that as the only person on this earth who's in a position to say that to her, I'd best spit it out.

Once again, Iphi, so many thanks for this thread and for all the thoughts and feelings you've shared here. I don't think I could keep looking at this alone.

Hugs,

Hope