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N parents create children naive about close relationships?
Anonymous:
Dawning,
It sounds like when you tried sharing your creativity and talents, people took advantage, crossed boundaries, and exploited you. So you're afraid that people can't be trusted to just appreciate and admire you appropriately. Have you ever noticed how children preen and prance around for adult admiration? Our job as adults is to give them the admiration! If we didn't get our rightful admiration in childhood, but instead criticism, shaming, or abuse, then we may have problems accepting appropriate appreciation. We may tolerate more abuse because we can't tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy attention. But we can learn.
bunny
Dawning:
Hello flower and bunny.
--- Quote ---my mom enforcing her unreality.
--- End quote ---
yes, that is just what they do, don't they?
--- Quote ---Through my childhood and beyond, I would keep hitting my head against the brickwall of her stubborn, silent rejection or rage, risking her revenge in my attempt to be heard.I had some love from others in my life and I knew that something was wrong with her. I remember growing up thinking sometime, "Mama is dumb, but she gets mad when people tell her she's wrong."
--- End quote ---
That is a great quote you remember. To your inner-child, I say, "here's to the truth." :D I had a similar experience of risking her revenge (also my grandmother's) as I wrote - especially when I attempted to *separate* by being creative. I am glad you had love from others in your life. I remember being told repeatedly how much *they* loved me and I thought, then, that the reason everything I did made them angry was because there was something wrong with me. I mean, here were these *loving* people and I was making them hate me. "In retrospect" (great term) I see they were just lying. Telling me that they loved me was a technique to control me. On the contrary, they separated me from everything I did love.
--- Quote ---I felt some kind of sense of warmness flood over me, drawing me in and I felt myself entering her realm that was 'safe and easy' with no tension and I could be like a little baby again where she did all the thinking for me. It was like the stage before the sense of power during exploration and sense of self. I was entering a melded state. I would then apologize for getting hurt feelings and being upset ( read: having my own emotions) and throw away my brain as my entrance fee into her good graces.She would accept my apology with a regal air about her as she stooped low to regard me. She won. I was back in her realm, and 'security'. But at one point there was a new dimension I realized, added as the kicker at the end - a sick feeling that I would pay for violating her total rule. I would go back to the brickwall again and again because I wasn't a total basketcase.
--- End quote ---
It sounds like the brickwall - although a destructive means of self-expression - saved you from her somehow. My mother also expected me to relate to her as my saviour and expected me to pay the price - relinquishing my worth as a separate human being with needs of my own. She is still stuck in this pattern. Just a few months ago, she wrote to tell me that she would be here for me when, unfortunately, my friends won't be. That brickwall analogy has really got me thinking. I've been up against it for years and just now starting to climb over it and see the light at the other side. :) Thank you for this analogy. I understand.
--- Quote ---I think the difference between us and our Ns is that we want something from a fantasy but a lot of us don't have the disease and don't enforce the fantasy on the others. We are the responders. When I became married, I took along the fantasy of being melded.
--- End quote ---
How wonderful that you met a man who was patient. I didn't want to be melded with anyone in my twenties yet I wanted a connection - a real one that was, in effect, my need for unconditional love. I pushed men away and welcomed them in at the same time. Very ambivalent there. My ex gave up on me but he also lied. Since I've been at the brickwall, I have needed to be rescued by a man...to be picked up and lifted over to the other side. And, in that fantasy of being rescued, I have denied myself so much. :cry: And I am dam* angry :x :x but finally able to tell the truth. :) Lots of emotions there.
--- Quote ---My mom is like Tuvok with no boundaries with her hands superglued to my head. "My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts."
--- End quote ---
How frustrating and scary to deal with. I was lucky that my mother was inconsistent about doing this. For the time I spent alone made me strong enough to have ideas of my own at young age - though no one listened. It also seems to me that whole nations have been built on this idea of the mind meld. Its funny to think that narcissism may also be seen as a world *phenomenon* (for lack of a better word. )
--- Quote ---Any other elements of a fantasy relationship or naivety about close relationships that we could discuss?
--- End quote ---
Naivety about men.
The naive assumption that in order to get attention, there has to be a problem that needs to be fixed.
Well, I already feel like I have hogged your thread with my sharing through creativity rant. :roll: Yet, I do think there is something there...sharing creativity together without feeling the (naive?) fear of the creativity being usurped. I know my mother wants me all to herself. She wants a captive audience and she and my GM want to be imitated. Is that another characteristic of Nism? But I never wanted to be like my mother and realized somehow in my life that I had to be *good at something* to get healthy attention. Thank gawd. I think my *attention-starvation* is another brick in the wall. All my life, I was never told that I was good at something or good just as I was - N's hidden agenda - and in my naiveity, I believed them. When people are attracted to me, I don't know why they would be. I have (naively) let myself be abused in my thirties because I went from not wanting to meld (and felt that cost me my marriage in my 20's) to wanting to meld (and being turned away because I was too needy.) And so I see that I hold a (naive?) assumption that everything is my fault. When something goes wrong, I was quick to take the blame.
Gee, flower, I want to thank you also for coming up with this insightful use of the word *meld.* And thank you for your questions and I am sorry that I can't come up with more general answers. As I said, this topic is difficult for me but the difficult things have hidden keys to learning and re-programming. I would like to take the journey together without the melding too. As you said:
--- Quote ---So I believe the healthy alternative to a fantasy of melding is two seperate persons with their own cherished identities, having and respecting boundaries, interacting in agreed upon areas aka healthy contracts.
--- End quote ---
Sounds pretty healthy to me.
--- Quote ---Unhealthy expectations we allow others to have of us?
--- End quote ---
The one I am recovering from these days is you can get away with hurting me but I expect you to give me some attention back.
--- Quote ---Handling disagreement without learning how to growing up?
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure what you mean here but I would like to know. Perhaps you could clarify.
Bunny, thanks as ever for your wise and insightful comments and for being showing such a positive example of *sharing.*
Dawning:
flower,
Your story about the shoes and hair got me thinking that, in an N's perfect world, everyone would simply reflect their own fantasies and they *will* enforce that fantasy on their *own* young children who are the easiest targets. :x
--- Quote --- I learned only how to boss and how to be bossed from my ubringing.
--- End quote ---
This is a valuable insight. You say you learned the hard way - but you learned.
I think some mourning and grieiving is called for when getting deep into retrospection. Something was not taught to us growing up - alot, actually. In this case, the modelling on how to nurture close relationships in a meaningful way. You are not alone. I am going to take it slowly when I finally feel ready to go out and meet new people. Give a little here, see how people respond. Be sensitive to the times when people *are* giving to me and take gently and slowly. Recognize that my trust was shattered at an early age. Allow myself to feel hurt by this but move on with a new, less naive and more confident awareness of what happened, what is happening and what I can do to make the future happen.
el123:
flower,
Sorry if I say whats already been stated but I haven't had time to read through all of the posts yet . I just have to reply to this.
I definately lack the basics here (see "Can a N feel true attraction" post). I like what bunny had to say about the templates. I think that this is true and would explain a lot!
--- Quote ---My mom is like Tuvok with no boundaries with her hands superglued to my head. "My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts."
--- End quote ---
I can relate to this! My mom is the same way. She absolutely cannot see that I have different viewpoints/thoughts from her or different from how she wants me to think. She often tells me what I think.
--- Quote ---Any other elements of a fantasy relationship or naivety about close relationships that we could discuss
--- End quote ---
Well, I also have a problem with naivete and just blindly putting up with people's sh***t. I know that I have a hard time with boundaries (understatement...) and sometimes it takes me days or longer to even *realize* that someone did or said something to me that they shouldn't have.
I think that you have discovered some very valuable insights here. It's hard to grow into a "healthy" woman without the basics modeled for you. For your own mother to use you for her own ego needs. Just knowing this is a stepstone that you can move up from. You seem to be on the right track!
-El
Portia:
This is such a great thread Flower, I’ve only just read it. Dawning you sparked some thoughts in me, particularly with your belly-dancing teacher episode. I have (had?) the problem of thinking that everyone – everyone – is better than me, less screwed up than me. And therefore everyone is worth trusting from the outset. I have trusted far too much, been totally gullible. Had to run away from situations in my 20s and 30s where I suddenly realised I just might be raped, seriously! Anyone else would’ve gotten out of the situation a lot sooner. Or not got into it in the first place.
And I’m used to being used/abused so when new people try it on, I don’t notice it as quickly as someone else might. I’m getting better, slowly. I use the ol’ intuition – a moment of feeling ‘icky’ or ‘confused’ means danger. But I’ll still go and investigate further, give the benefit of the doubt! But I won’t beat myself up about it: it’s all learning and growing.
Dawning this is real ‘icky’ and I think you’re brave for writing it:
--- Quote ---My mother went into her room, took off her shirt and came out in a loose-fitting scarf draped around her breasts. I was wearing a t-shirt and leggings. When I started to do a few basic moves, she stood right in between me and the neighbor. This is a man that she has repeatedly talked ill of, has stated she will not marry cause he's "not my type" and has criticized to others while he is in the room. She got up face to face with me which I felt uncomfortable with and so I moved off to the side. She then attempted to push me back into place.
--- End quote ---
And what’s more I don’t fully understand what happened? Was she blocking the man’s view of you? Or was she using you in an effort to jointly titillate the man? Or was she just in plain, direct competition with you, wanting to prove she was sexier? Gosh…whatever happened here, it makes me knot my eyebrows. It’s sick. You are being used and abused somehow. But I guess you know that. Yuk. Does anyone else have a different view on what might have happened here? I try to understand, even though sometime it’s unfathomable. Shaking head, P
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