Author Topic: How Long This Journey?  (Read 3478 times)

Iphi

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Re: How Long This Journey?
« Reply #15 on: October 10, 2007, 02:31:02 PM »
Hey all - I'm glad if some of the stuff that took me sooooo long to learn and was so hard for me to come to terms with can provide some insight and/or solace.  It's an amazing thing to realize that some lessons that were so terribly hard to learn and which it seemed were my lonely path alone to grasp - are valuable to share.  I don't usually feel like I have anything to offer.  Thank you for that.

This topic is making me remember so vividly when I 'bottomed out' and gave up for real.  I never knew, ever, before that, that giving up a struggle can be the most powerful freeing thing.  I thought giving up was 'quitting' and that it was the same as 'failing.'  No.  It's nothing like that. 

Also, in the process it made me realize how my interactions with others were not clean - it gave me a new awareness which was painful but also kind of exhilarating - seeing a whole new dimension of living and relating.  It was the enmeshment and it was being raised among people who were also coercive and conditional and had bad habits in relating and in speaking - that's what I saw - I saw the interchange where I was doing it - putting that into the world and relationships - just as it was being done to me.  Dropping the effort was also an important way for me to begin to clean up my ways of relating - it isn't just how I respond to what comes at me, but what I put out there too.  Well anyway, it's a work in progress and let me tell you when the baby has a shouting restless night because of teething and I haven't showered and I'm hungry and tired and had no caffeine - let's just say there can be some backsliding in the way I relate to my poor SO.   :shock:

Anyway, sorry if this post is tangential - the topic has sent me off on a path.

sunblue - I know what it is to feel that need of family but there's something I found within myself after I started observing and becoming more aware of my internal dynamics.  I was feeling as an adult, the full force of how badly I had needed them when I was a child - and at all points along the way to the adult I became.  I needed them so many times along the way that I never had them.  It was like it just built up.  But in fact as an adult, now I do not actually need them now, right now as I needed them during those first 20 years.  But I still felt like I did - in fact I kind of actually felt it more because back in those days I was more numb and just surviving.  I guess I actually felt the intense need more when it was actually safe to feel it - which was after I had proved I didn't actually need them.  So the need was not met in the past and it can't be met in the present because the need is... a ghost.  It's a ghost.
Character, which has nothing to do with intellect or skill, can evolve only by increasing our capacity to love, and to become lovable. - Joan Grant

Ami

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Re: How Long This Journey?
« Reply #16 on: October 10, 2007, 05:23:28 PM »
[sunblue - I know what it is to feel that need of family but there's something I found within myself after I started observing and becoming more aware of my internal dynamics.  I was feeling as an adult, the full force of how badly I had needed them when I was a child - and at all points along the way to the adult I became.  I needed them so many times along the way that I never had them.  It was like it just built up.  But in fact as an adult, now I do not actually need them now, right now as I needed them during those first 20 years.  But I still felt like I did - in fact I kind of actually felt it more because back in those days I was more numb and just surviving.  I guess I actually felt the intense need more when it was actually safe to feel it - which was after I had proved I didn't actually need them.  So the need was not met in the past and it can't be met in the present because the need is... a ghost.  It's a ghost.
[/quote]



THAT is so big,Iphi. Thanks                                                                   Ami

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.        Eleanor Roosevelt

Most of our problems come from losing contact with our instincts,with the age old wisdom stored within us.
   Carl Jung

Hopalong

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Re: How Long This Journey?
« Reply #17 on: October 10, 2007, 08:02:06 PM »
Quote
I actually felt the intense need more when it was actually safe to feel it - which was after I had proved I didn't actually need them.  So the need was not met in the past and it can't be met in the present because the need is... a ghost.

That makes SO much sense, Iphi!
Congrats on such clear thinking.

thank you,
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Iphi

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Re: How Long This Journey?
« Reply #18 on: October 10, 2007, 10:12:05 PM »
Oh please the T had to lead me to that again and again with heavy, heavy hints.  lol! It sucks so much.  The need didn't get met in the past and it won't get met in the present - and just when and where will it get met?  My answer has been that it will be met within myself between me and god, but everybody has to come to their own answer.
Character, which has nothing to do with intellect or skill, can evolve only by increasing our capacity to love, and to become lovable. - Joan Grant

sunblue

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Re: How Long This Journey?
« Reply #19 on: October 11, 2007, 02:03:56 PM »
Hi all:

I think Iphi made some very good points.  I think it is true that the need is greatest as a child.  But I think it is only as an adult that you come face to face with the reality that the need was never met and will never be met.  I also think as an adult you are mature enough to become self-aware and to face all the experiences in your childhood that were so painful.

I also think if you are the one in the family who is particularly affected by an N person, then it does affect how you relate to other people.  I know in other posts, people have listed some characteristics of Ns.  Those characteristics are so evident in the Ns in my family.  Growing up in a family with two Ns and a co-dependent parent, there was never any humor or joy or happiness.  There were never any hugs or affection.  There were never any "I'm proud of you's or You're wonderful....You could do anything if you set your mind to it."  Because there was never any "you".  It is always about the Ns.  So, as an adult, it is much more difficult to relate to other people.  Speaking for myself, growing up in this kind of household in combination with a lifelong clinical depression has left me isolated and alone.  While others find it natural to find friends or dates or spouses, I never have.  I can't explain it but to say things just never worked out.  I found my way to one brief (but ohhh too long) abusive, relationship with an N.  He was N but also a psychopath and caused a lot of damage.  I know that had I not been used to the abuse of an N family, I would never have found myself in that kind of situation. 

I think for me the other important truth is that I am cognizant I am not the person I wished I could have been.  The pain and sorrow and loss weigh  heavily, despite all efforts to overcome it.  It's hard to be a hopeful, happy, joyful person when weighed down by all these memories and painful truths.  Yet, people don't really care about the "why".  They just know they don't want to be around people like that.  They want to be around happy, joyful, positive people.  It just seems one painful consequence is heaped upon another.

The other thing is as I learn more about the NPD and how it manifests itself in the Ns in my family, I also become more aware of the extreme levels of my other parent's co-dependency.  It deepensas time goes on and makes things even worse.  I recently had an argument with my Nmom (she was being very unreasonable and "superior" and her actions are hindering my job search efforts).  Well, after this argument (which is extremely, extremely rare in my family), my co-dependent dad screamed at me and jumped (literally) to my dad's defense.  I just kind of looked at that situation and thoughts, "Wow, no one will ever stand up for me.  I don't have a single ally."  So, yes, letting go of that hope may be necessary but it is really, really sad.

I hope to soon get to the point that some of you are at.  Acceptance.  Understanding.  That would be good.

Hopalong

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Re: How Long This Journey?
« Reply #20 on: October 12, 2007, 10:13:13 PM »
Sunblue,

Do you have any community of your own, even if it's not intimate for you now?
Do you have a church, a cause you care about, a volunteer activity, education, local issue, class you take?

If not could you take one small step in one of those areas?

You are a citizen. You inhabit a community. Not just the stifling space of your FOO and memories.
There is life all around you. It's okay to eddy in, in small steps. There is room for you.

Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."