new to board

[tigerlily]

Hello
Last year I finally saw information of narcissistic parents and what they can do to children and I was so relieved, as you all were, to see that it wasn't me that had caused all the problems.  I grew up thinking I was not to be valued by anyone, including myself, and that everyone else but me had rights that I had to cater to.  I was an extremely introverted chld who felt that everyone else came first.  All of this came about because of a mother who had to be the most important one in the family.  I was simply an accessory to her and a scapegoat for everything wrong in her life.  I could do nothing right, make any decisions of my own, or have feelings of my own (unless they coincided with hers) .  She was insanely jealous of any attention my father gave me, so she drove a wedge between us so that we couldn't be close.  When she wasn't around, he and I would get along famously, but when she was, he would retreat emotionally because it was just easier to back off than to incur her wrath and manipulations.  I realized, after growing up, that she did this with as many relatives as she could too- I always wondered why they were a bit remote with me.  I grew up and married another N, but eventually wised up and left him.  The point I am trying to make now is that, even though I have a lot more insight into why I felt so badly about myself all these years, I still am having trouble trying to rectify it.  I recently asked my doctor to put me on Paxil, which she did, and it has helped me tremendously.  I no longer eat compulsively when I am stressed out, and I have lost over 40 lbs.  I used to cry over everything (I could sob over a touching dog food commercial, for God's sake) every day.  I now am able to respond normally to situations.  I even went to a wedding recently and didn't cry- I used to blubber through the whole ceremony like an idiot.  But I still have a long way to go.  I don't know how to work through my feelings of self loathing left over from years of emotional and physical abuse from my mother.  Intellectually I know about the wonderful thingsyou guys talk about, but emotionally I still mentally flog myself over anything that goes wrong or that I haven't handled properly.  I feel like I am at a standstill.  I can't afford to see a therapist.  I tried that some years back, but she really wasn't what I needed.  I am now married to a very nice man who supports me, and I have 3 wonderful grown sons.  So I have family support.  But I still can't seem to give myself support.

[Anonymous]

Hi Tigerlily,

Welcome!

I come here to have a place where people understand me. It is comforting know there are so many of us that have had similar experiences and to find it is not us that are the sick ones! I find healing here. I see an counselor, but not as much as I should. This seems to be a nice outlet. There are so many enlightened folks here.

I too feel I can't give myself support. Maybe because the voices are still in my head telling me it really is me, and the N parents are always right. Don't really know, but I know I look forward to reading each day and venting if needed.

So happy to have you join us!
Ellie

[tigerlily]

Thank you, Ellie.  I know that when I can't forgive myself, give myself support, or believe when someone says something nice about me, it's my mother's old tapes in my head responding.  It's so unconscious that I don't even realize it at the time, then, when I think about it, I see where it is coming from.  The other day a friend of mine gave me such a nice compliment, telling me that I have helped her so much (another child of an Nparent, unfortunately)  and that I was such a good person.  I was so quick to step in and say that I wasn't such a good person- I was thinking that she couldn't really know me, or she wouldn't say such a thing.  
I am in a situation now where I still have to deal with my mother because she is in a nursing home, and I am the only one she has.  She lived with me for two years, and it just about did me in.  I thought I had gotten over all of her influence, but then she moved in and started pushing all those old buttons again, and I felt like I was a kid again.  Now she is 88 and still clear as a bell mentally, and I still have to deal with her.  It is better now because I don't have a steady diet of her and I can leave the situation when I need to, but the residual damage still surfaces in my head.  
How does one overcome all that stuff and start being kinder to oneself?

[Barbie]

Dear tigerlily, welcome to the board.

I'm the eldest of four daughters.  We are 54, 52, 49, 48 and the baby 42.  I do believe my mother ruined every one of us emotionally and physically.  I don't want to hate her but there are times when I do and I know this isn't good for my mental health.

I've been taking paxil for four years now and to me, it's a godsend.  I was very afraid when my psychiatrist first prescribed it.  So scared that I prayed about it for days and finally left it in God's hands.  Well, I did take it and it took a month to work but once it did, I felt 100% better.  It wasn't that I was on a constant happy trip because I still have all my emotions, like crying and feeling sad, but I am no longer irritable for no reason or panicking and feeling like I want to run away.

Please know that you are a beautiful child of God and that he loves you no matter what.  You could be the ax murderer of the century and your Father will still love you.

Again, welcome to the board.  Since I'm kinda new too, I'm still reading.

[Anonymous]

Hi Tigerlily & other newbies,

Welcome to the board!  

From what you have written about your current family situation, you have made some significant progress towards health!  You deserve several pats on the back for that.  

I know what you mean about the self-support.  I'm still working on that and the process is different for everyone of course.  This board helps me tremendously.  I can't believe how long I've been hanging around   .  But it is so validating.

One thing that is recommended over and over again is journaling.  Good old private journaling.  Not keeping a grocery list diary of day-to-day events, but of tracking your feelings about those events.  It helps to purge the build up of gunk.  A nice gentle approach to healing and improving your self talk can be found in Julia Cameron’s An Artist’s Way.  I find that doing any kind of artwork or craft is like meditation for me, only busier.  I love it. (You don’t have to be an artist to benefit from this book. I really like the author’s tone and she has been in the depths of negativity and found a way to climb out.)

I also read somewhere recently where an artist said when she was raising her family, she thought of her artwork as another child that needed her time and attention.  The real kids would get her time but this was something she had to care for too.  I think it helps a lot of us women who are trained to nurture others to think of our needs in terms of a third party so we don’t beat ourselves up with guilt or thoughts of selfishness when we do take care of ourselves.  My H sometimes feels abandoned when I do these things but he is learning that I need to have this time and that it won’t result in him being ignored or pushed away.  

As for your mom, what helps me is I continue to read about this stuff and learn that all the vile poison that comes out of an Ns mouth belongs to them.  They really are talking about themselves and throwing up all the bad stuff onto nearby targets to purge themselves.  The more you remember this, the less likely any of it will “stick” to you in the future.  During a recent hospital visit, I would picture the words out of my Ns mouth as falling on the floor making a mess I didn’t have to clean up.  Having said that, I am still working on deprogramming the stuff that did stick before I was aware of what was really going on when I was a child.  

I hope this helps in some way.  Be gentle with yourself and think of yourself as a newfound friend.  You wouldn’t think badly of her, now would you?  Take care, Seeker

[les]

Hi Tigerlily,  

Great name!

  My mother is 91 and I've been venting about her for a couple of months now on this board, reading the posts and slowly starting to feel better. Like you, I am left with the care of my mother, holding the baby so to speak and I'm hoping that a retirement home is in the near future ( if not for my mother then maybe for me! I'm tired!)

I just indulged and bought a few books from Amazon.  My head clears - like taking an antihistimine or something - when I find words to explain what happened in my life.  So true what Seeker said about journaling - purging the gunk.  I've filled 7 notebooks. It really does help to clarify and get it out.

This may sound bizarre but I often say to myself that I am a live, breathing human being.  Even with those very basic credentials I deserve fair treatment - just as a creature of this world.  Sometimes I think I treat a beetle with more care than I do myself.  Anyway I start from square one -all creatures deserve to be treated fairly. And then I think, oh yes that INCLUDES me.  Just a thought.  Stop for 10 seconds right now TigerLily and wrap your arms around yourself.  I just tried it and I said some good things to myself.  The afternoon sun is streaming in the window and touching me right now and and all living things. It's for all of us.... no one excluded. Same with love. Give it a go. ((((hugs)))))) to you. Les

[tigerlily]

Thanks, Les and Seeker, for the suggestions.  They are good ones.  I appreciate the kind words.
Last evening my mother called me from the nursing home and poured it on big time.  She does this every couple of months and then she is ok for a while.  She complained that no one was doing anything for her, she was being neglected, no one was listening to her, etc.  I feel so sorry for those workers there because I know for a fact that they run their tails off trying to please her, but that just isn't possible.  I have great respect for them- I could never work there and stay sane.  Anyway, she wanted me to drop everything and come up there to put her to bed because "no one was going to do it".  Which is baloney.  She has always had a getting-ready-for-bed ritual that takes a very long time, and now she expects them to do the same thing for her that she used to do to pamper herself.  I felt guilty enough to call the nurse and talk to him.  He reassured me that everything was being done for her.  He actually made me laugh because he confided in me that they all call her "Queen Victoria" to each other.  (Her actual name IS Victoria).  It certainly fits.  
I feel bad that she is old and has come to this stage in her life that things are hard for her, and I know she is being taken care of and I am doing as much as I can for her, but I still feel guilty when these episodes occur.  I don't know how much of this is manipulation and how much is actual distress from being old.  So she can still make me feel torn, conflicted, guilty and bad about myself.

[tigerlily]

As an addendum to the previous post...I forgot the best part.  When she learned I wasn't going to run right up there, she said "Well, just call that Dr. Kevorkian- I just want to die."  How's that for a guilt trip?

[Anonymous]

Love the guilt trip!!! That's so classic!!!
My N dad says no one in the family is to let me know if he is in the hospital or dead - he doesn't wan t me to come to him then if I will not let him control me now.

They're all so alike it is actually eerie. After you read this board for so long you can start to predict what one is going to write before you read it because the stories are so much the same.

Ellie

[Anonymous]

As an addendum to the previous post...I forgot the best part.  When she learned I wasn't going to run right up there, she said "Well, just call that Dr. Kevorkian- I just want to die."  How's that for a guilt trip?

My reply would be: "We'll get him to you as soon as we can."

bunny

[tigerlily]

That's funny.   It's just what a friend of mine said today when I told her.

[tigerlily]

Hi all
An update on "Queen Victoria"- I got a call from the nursing home yesterday that they sent her to the hospital because she had been having chest pains.  When the nurse from the home called me to tell me this she suggested that my mother be put into the hospice program because, even though she was not terminally ill, she could benefit from the extra attention.  I know they have been running themselves ragged trying to please her, so this could be a solution for her to get extra attention.  I know this need for attention is her anxiety regarding her awareness that she is no longer independent.  
All this started me thinking about the future.  The nurse said that she is declining a lot more lately.  A friend of mine e mailed me and told me that if I was upset I could call her anytime because she was there for me.  My reaction was "I am not at all upset- I am fine with this." I actually did feel like this because it would almost be a relief to not have to deal with my Nmother anymore.  Then I started feeling guilty.  I thought that I should not be feeling this way because she is my mother and I should be more concerned and upset.  Then I thought "maybe I am in denial of my feelings because I am so angry at her from all the years of emotional and physical abuse, and if she dies I will fall apart."  I went to see her in the hospital last evening and I saw this helpless old woman in the bed, complaining aboout everything, and I could hardly wait to leave.  I gave her a hug goodbye, cringing the whole time.  And on my way to the car I kept thinking that I should be more loving and supportive because when she dies I will regret that I wasn't a better person to her during her last days. Help!

[Anonymous]

tigerlily,

When an elderly person is sick or dying, it's normal to have mixed emotions: relief, indifference, guilt, remorse, hate, acceptance, fear, sorrow, nothing, etc. Any possible feeling could come up. So don't feel you "should" have feelings other than what you have.

In my case, several elderly relatives and both of my in-laws have died in the last few years. So I know what happens: mixed emotions! Don't worry about it and let yourself have any feelings you want. The main thing is to make sure she's being treated okay. And you're doing that.

bunny

[tigerlily]

But, why can't I be a big enough person to put away my emotional crap  so that I can make someone's last days on earth better?  I will have the rest of my life to sort out my baggage, so why can't I just leave that aside right now and be the kind of person I want to be so that I won't kick myself later?

[phoenix]

bye