N Saint slandered me to my therapist (just heard)

[Certain Hope]

Dear Lise,

Reading your story again here, from that Nov. post, I just realized something... about the difference between being frightened by feelings (including those of others') and despising feelings (also including the feelings of others).

I've certainly been terrified of other peoples' strong emotions in the past... and now I know that terror sprung from my own deep sense of responsibility, as though the strongly emotive people were looking to me to fix them, to make them feel better.
I would try and try to help... just by being there for them... by reassuring... by reading the riot act to them even, on occasion... but it was never enough.  At last, I would give up and walk away. Of course, this was in the context of friendship, not a professional counseling capacity.

But some people are not simply afraid of strong feelings in others... they despise those feelings and look at them with contempt.
Is this what NSaint does, do you feel?
I feel that's what my mother does.
As though you've broken some cardinal rule by daring to feel poorly in the presence of such greatness...
ugh.

I hope this makes some sense and doesn't cause you hurt by my asking.

Love,
Carolyn

[Gabben]

Hi Carolyn,

What you brought up here is the root, at least from one perspective or my perspective of narcissism. Alice Miller writes about it in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child.

When we are children we are naturally emotional i.e. our emotions and needs are the only things we can identify ourselves with. In other words we are our emotions and needs to ourselves. So when a parent is displeased with our emotions, our intense emotions, (I'm sure you have noticed that babies and small children have rather intense emotions) the child picks up on it and out of the child's survival instinct they will shut the emotion and expression of need down in order to conform to their mom's expectations in order to not displease her -- babies, children instinctively know that without a parent or caregiver they will die. Babies emotions and needs are in a sense rejected by the parent therefore the child's core sense of self is rejected and bound in shame.

My mom used to say to my sister and I that we were really "good" babies in that we "never" cried. Well, I found that strange, so did my sister. Babies cry, naturally, all babies!

My sister can remember being about 2 years old and crying in the back seat of the car, my mom turned to her and told her to "stop crying or I will give you something to cry about!"

N's hate emotions.

So, when I was in intense painful emotions and memories this last summer, N saint who I am now going to start calling Rachel because I do not what to treat her with disrespect anymore (do unto others as you would have them do to you) could not handle my pain. She told the priest that I was "intense."  If you can imagine, this cut into my deepest nerve. As a baby I WAS intense in my needs and wants. But my mom rejected me, my needs and emotions were bound in shame.

I have no idea if I am making sense here...

Thanks for being there for me Carolyn.

Lise

[Ami]

Dear Lise,
 I can relate to your statement about our emotions being rejected and we have a sense of shame.I wear shame like a coat. I have made inroads in to letting some of it go. However, there is still way too much there.
 It is very deep and resistant to change.
 I am trying to be more real with people and to try to stay in my "core", as an exercise to dispel shame. You would not believe ALL the people who shared about having depression, after Scott died.
 *I* was trying to be so "perfect" so people would like me, that I was pushing away people. As I "force" myself to be "real", I connect and find that I am not alone, after all.
 My neighbor,in the cashmere sweater with pearls and high heels(lol) is the perfect example. She had it all and she understood all that I  was going through,as if she was a member of the board. My M was wrong when she told me that there WERE perfect people. Oh , the lessons you have to "unlearn" when you have an NM--gobs of  lessons.
 So, now I am trying to unlearn them: to see life with my own eyes,not hers .
  That is my current goal. Her lens screwed me up, royally. My own sight will have to be better than that. I think that my own perceptions are ,actually ,good.                   Ami

[Certain Hope]

Hi Carolyn,

What you brought up here is the root, at least from one perspective or my perspective of narcissism. Alice Miller writes about it in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child.

When we are children we are naturally emotional i.e. our emotions and needs are the only things we can identify ourselves with. In other words we are our emotions and needs to ourselves.

Dear Lise,

If our emotions and needs are the only things with which we can identify ourselves, as children,
then that explains to me - at last - in terms which I can understand - why I felt like such a nothing
as a teenager... and into adulthood... unless I had a man. Married at 20 and divorced at 21, that was the first and only emotional connection I'd ever known...
and it really wasn't emotional at all; at least not to the other person, I don't guess.

Right now, I can't even think any further than that one thought... because I've just never seen it so clearly and simply, and related to it so personally, before.

Thank you.

((((((((Lise)))))))))

I will come back to the rest when I can.

Love,
Carolyn

[Gabben]

Hi Carolyn,

I'm glad that this was insightful to you.

When N saint or Rachel (not real name) told me last summer that I was "intense", just as my intense emotions/memories were surfacing, it was like a knife going into my gut. 

Then when my spiritual director, the priest, told me that I was "intense" it was like a second knife going into the wound itself. I was emotionally incapacitated for three days because of the layer of shame that they, N saint and the priest, triggered. It was as if my core was opened up and revealed and then someone lit a match and set my core self on fire.

What n saint and priest did was trigger the deepest original wound I have.  I have since begun to call it the baby wound of N's. Our needs and emotions were squished. Our needs and emotions were our only form of self expression and they got squished!

If you had an N mom or a caregiver, there is a wounding at the earliest stages of life. It is the wounding of not being unconditionally loved, genuinely loved the wound of shame of core self.

Peace and hugs,
Lise

[Certain Hope]

((((((((((Lise))))))))))   I feel like mine were smothered, more than squished. Starved of oxygen, with great globs of stoicism and pride, smothered over top like lard, in an attempt to extinguish any attempt at honest, genuine expression....

but they are alive and well now, in great part due to you and your honest expression of your self here.

Thank you so much for that... and for allowing me to be my self, in every way.

With much love,
Carolyn