Why is it that I feel like it is about my undesirable personhood, instead of their bad behavior? Is it because I have believed them?
I'm posting late in this thread, just because it doesn't seem like I have time to keep up with all of the posts and everything else going on in my life right now.
But I clipped the above quote because I have spent months talking about it with my T, with my friends, with my brother, and anyone else who is willing to listen. I actually went to an assertive communication seminar this morning, and one of the things the awesome speaker mentioned was that to earn respect and control of our situations, we have to first respect and like ourselves. He said the first thing we need to do in the morning is look in the mirror and say, "I am good." It was a very profound thing for me, because my T has been trying to get me to look at things more postively for months.
It seems to me that all of our N experiences have a common theme: we lose ourselves in the miasma of the N relationship. For those of us with N parents, I don't really think we were ever allowed to have a sense of self. And even if we had that sense of self, we were never allowed to express it. My Nmom was the type that squashed any display of self expression:
"You aren't wearing that are you? You look like a (fill in blank)." I have heard bum, frumpy, boy, tramp, boho, etc. My Nmom even told me the other day that my son looked like a boho because he had on a baggy t-shirt and shorts with a pair of crocs.
"You don't want to go into that field. You'll never succeed."
"Why do you want to do that? That's a man's job." I currently work in a male dominated field, so she considers it "men's work."
"You need to do something with your hair." or "I don't like your hair that way, you should grow it out."
Self expression and love of self was bad with my nmom. I wasn't allowed to like the person I could be, because there was always something wrong with that person. I was selfish. I was cold. I had no passion. I didn't care about anyone but myself. My grades weren't good enough, even though I was at the top of my class, but I wasn't the best. I wasn't ambitious enough. I didn't have goals. Etc. These are things I grew up hearing, and after hearing them so much and for so long, it's very hard to break away from that mold without some sort of motivation. N's turn the focus of their bad behavior on us, and present us with very clear terms why we are causing it. I took my son on vacation and my Nmom told me she would be dead when I got back. Not because we were going on vacation, but because she perceived it as me taking my son away from her. Therefore it was my fault, and I spent the first three hours of a ten hour drive, crying.
N's have this manipulative behavior that makes us doubt ourselves, and if we grew up with an N parent, we've heard that we aren't worth anything all of our lives. The only way to break out of that is to learn to like ourselves as ourselves, for who we are, imperfections and all. I won't say I'm there yet, and some days I really don't succeed, but I"m getting better. I read, I'm not sure which book, that we can't give love until we love ourselves. I think this is very true. I feel more connected with my child now that I'm away from the N nonsense, even if we are in separate rooms, doing different things. I feel good when we have a day with no blow ups or misunderstandings, and there are more of those now than not. I had gotten to a place before I got away where I didn't want to spend time with anyone, not even my son, because I just wanted time for me. Somehow "me" was getting lost, and everyone was demanding things from me. I finally had to stop and say, "Enough. I matter too."
I do not like to have contact with my family, my parents in particular. IN the future, I'd like to decrease contact to as little as possible. Contact with them brings those old feelings of worthlessness and defeatism back, and I am starting to really like the new me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are tricked into believing their bad behavior is our fault, and the way to escape that is to realize it is a trick, to look at them and realize we aren't what the N is telling us. We aren't bad, selfish, cold, unpassionate, etc. We have to learn to have a sense of self and respect for our persons.
