Terrified of the Contempt

[Iphi]

I need some room to talk about something.

I have called a hiatus in communicating with my Dad.  Mostly, I just don't call, don't write, don't try to maintain the relationship.  I am not sure if I ever want to increase contact. I think a Christmas card was the last move on my part.

My primary feeling about this, is that I need to do this for my wellbeing and to establish new skills, inside and out.  I really feel I need this space.  For the most part, I feel so much better every day, knowing that I won't be dealing with him. 

But pretty regularly, in my own mind, I am haunted by what I imagine (grounded in long experience though) would be my dad's absolute judgment, condemnation and contempt, and especially his bitterness and bitter vituperative lashing out, about me doing this extreme attenuation of contact.  For which I am sure he blames me, bitterly.  I feel really stressed just writing that.

It has made me realize that it is that strong judgment, rejection, condemnation and contempt that has really been the most traumatic for me.  I have so many really painful memories around interactions like this.  And I believe it is the reason I sometimes experience extreme withdrawal from others (it's very situational), or muteness - an inability to speak my mind accompanied by a feeling of intense stress and fear of judgment.

When I think of all these memories, plus my current feelings of stress and fear whenever this stuff comes to mind, I also feel a strong feeling that this stress, fear, upset, distress, and my actions - are all stupid and overblown and that I should not feel all this in the first place, or if I do, should apologize for myself.  It feels really stressful to write that.

You know, my dad made efforts with us but they were all so thoroughly controlled and one-sided.  It's so frustrating.  We had easter - we did egg dying and easter egg hunts and had baskets.  It was fun.  I have fun memories and I appreciate that.  It had to be his way, but there were fun times.  He was never 'there for me,' but it wasn't always horrible.  You know?

But depart from his script or have an unauthorized opinion or emotion - huge repercussions. 
I mean, if we were all in the car and he said lunch would be Taco Bell and I said 'no thank you' - there was no end to the browbeating, the disparaging, the mocking my refusal, the shaming, the whole accusatory thing that I am doing this to him on purpose.  This is a real incident that happened.  Can I just pass on Taco Bell, and skip lunch so as not to further inconvenience everyone by having a need to eat anyway?  The answer is no.  Not only does it have to be his choice, but I also must be 110% for it and if I am not for it, brother, I am in for it.

This relationship does not work for me and it never will.  I can never have respect, consideration, appreciation, dignity - I can never have a voice in this relationship.

But I feel like a bad person for putting so much distance into it, for practically dropping it.  I feel confused about what is the right way.  And this goes to Ami's new topic on perfectionism, I feel that if I do wrong then that is not okay - then that is terrible, unforgivable.

But you know it always is - so terrible, so unforgivable. So laughable, so unbelievable, so contemptible.  Like the time my dad caught me with a cigarette or the time I was surprised that an acquaintance of mine turned out to be very scheming and manipulative (how could I be so naive, eh?).  Or when I was very little, about 3, I cried because we donated a sofa and I was sad it was leaving us and I thanked it for being such a good sofa - he laughed at me.  Or when a neighbor died when I was 4 and he made fun of me and told me I didn't know anything about death and I couldn't even say it right (I had a lisp. I said 'deaf.')

He makes me feel like an unfunny clown.  Or worse.  I don't want to feel that way anymore. 

I need lots and lots of room.  Got to go for now.  Thank you for listening.

[Ami]

Oh Iphi,
 That was so poignant. . I can ' feel' the little girl who  never felt  she was OK.She kept striving,but to no avail. Pain was at the end of all roads.That is life with an N parent.
 I think that you are saying several things. One is the guilt of cutting off contact.
 The other one is how destructive the relationship is to your well being and how free you feel when you are away from it. You are starting to feel like"you" as you get away from him.
 So, you are trying to balance guilt about no contact with the benefit to your well being.
 The other is your  fear of his anger or judgement against you..
 You (like I) may hold your parent's opinions as more "right" than your own(down deep). I still do it. I know I should not,but I do.
 I am still tied to my M by thinking that she knows better than I do.It is an invisible string that keeps me unable to be my own person.
 I hear you trying to balance out ALL the sides and make a decision. It is VERY hard.
I beat my M and H down. They treat me well, for the moment,but the moment does not last long.
Of course, there is so easy answer to such a  heartfelt issue
 Please compost what does not fit. I am sorry you have such a tough life decision,brought about through no fault of your own.       Love    Ami

((((((((((Iphi)))))))))))))

[Certain Hope]

Dear Iphi,

I surely do understand the trouble with N and unauthorized opinions... actually, having any opinion at all.
It's so wonderful to read that you are considering your own need for space now - along with the need to establish new skills - wow, that is so valid.

What I see in this is that it's not about your dad at this point. It's about you and your own responsibilities to yourself as a human being (another word for need... responsibility to self).

And I think that what you're describing of this current haunting is... guilt.
At least that's what I've felt, to varying degrees, at times when I've enjoyed the pleasures and deep relief of keeping myself detached from
people who would just as soon see me destroyed as anything. All I can tell you is that those imaginations will lessen... both in frequency and in potency.
They really will.
And it helps me to remember that N can curse the weather just as easily as he/she will curse another human being, like me...
I mean, I'm no more important to him than that.
And really, I don't think that the N's in my life give me any more thought than the weather.
After all, out of sight (and out of their control) = out of mind.

He can't reach you anymore, Iphi...
and you can't reach him.
I hope you'll soon feel a peace with those facts... and that your relief will increase and widen like a river of life, opening before you.
You are no clown.

Hugs,
Carolyn

[James]

Hi Iphi......your post sounds like i wrote it. I finally got the nerve and got angry at N D one day. My truth and loud voice just flat out overpowered him. He was even afraid. I guess he realized i"m a big boy now and wasn't taking his s&%t any longer. (He and i both didn't realize i had gotten so big. Lol ). He got a little taste of what he put me thru. Funny thing i started to get my power back after this. I am not afraid of him now. I only see them when i want,  take or return calls when I feel like it, set boundaries, stay away if i feel like it etc. and they are adjusting. I treat them sorta like a business associate. They don't realize it but they are in training and it's working for me. I really can't say whether they respect me.... but i don't care anymore. They are learning not to pull the same old stuff or i WILL walk out and don't feel bad abt it. PS i don't see them a lot. Amazingly we get along so much better. The big bullies were mostly hot air in my case NOW but not back then. I was living today in my child's fear until i started to find courage and change things. I think pulling away will trigger this fear but keep pulling IMO. You might find eventually what i did but it really does feel very frightening at first and it does get easier. A step at a time. It's taken close to a year to get this far. It's mostly the childs fear we carry when we become adults and REALLY can stand up to them IMO.  What you are talking about here is so IMPORTANT!................Best, James    ps.... I needed money a few times from them and that made me shrink a little!!

[Ami]

Dear James
 I did the same thing with my NM and NH. One day, after learning to fight on the board, I stood up to them .. It has never been the same since.
 James,  you claimed your freedom AND yourself. That is a very powerful story.                                Love  to You,   Ami

[James]

AMI.............exactly,  congratulations  (((((((((((AMI)))))))))))))   love, James

[flowerpower]

Iphi, I just posted on my thread that I would look forward to hearing about your muteness when you are ready. 

I really get the guilt in limiting contact with a parent and the guilty pleasure involved. I am so very happy when I don't talk to my mother and yet the guilt is there lurking always. It does get better as time goes on. I am at the point now where I don't feel guilty all the time. It just pops up when triggered by contact from her. I hope it helps to know that the feeling lessens over time.

I also relate to the memories of good times like birthday parties and holiday events as a child. I figured out that the reason my cold mother put so much effort into certain things that appeared caring. She needed the appearance of being a good mother and she enjoyed these things herself. Perhaps your father was motivated by similar reasons? For some reason the story you told about Taco Bell reminded me of the time I accidently found pet stockings in the cabinet that were to be given to our dog and cat for Christmas. My mother became angry that I had seen them because they were supposed to be a gift from Santa. She yelled at me and said that since I had seen them and ruined the surprise that the pets would not get any presents. I was heartbroken because I loved those animals deeply. I felt guilty that I was the cause of ruining Christmas for them. I guess the rigid ideas about how things had to be done reminded me of the description of your father.

Yet another thing I can relate to is being laughed at and made fun of. Gee, no wonder we need limited contact!

I am so sorry you are struggling with the guilt of limiting contact, but I hope you will continue to do what is right for yourself despite the guilt.

[Iphi]

Thank you everyone so much for sharing your thoughts and responses with me.  It helps so much to simply be heard and to have what I am sharing recognized.  It's so comforting and reassuring and it helps me to let go of it, somehow - to not feel so tightly clenched up about these things.  For years I could wind myself up into a knot of distress over these complicated problems with no solutions that I could find. 

I so appreciate that you guys really know what I am describing.  It means so much to me.

On another board, a yahoo group for ACONs, someone just recently posted their opinion that ACONs have a fundamental need to step away from the relationship because they have been stripped of everything by their N parent - they don't know who they are, what they are good at, what they like - and they need time to build that up in peace.  The poster said something like, you don't send the wounded straight into battle.  I am probably paraphrasing it really poorly, but those thoughts were very helpful and I wanted to carry them back here also. 

Ami, you are so right - I kept striving and there was nothing but N at the end of every route of the maze.  And it has been very destructive to me, but I am not used to thinking that something that is destructive to me is important at all!  This has gotten me into difficulties again and again.  I touch the stove and say 'does it matter if it burns me?'  It's like a learning disability.

CH - thank you so much for affirming the validity of my needs.  That helps so much to hear and is something that was certainly never a part of my life early on, you know?  I don't think I had one need that was ever affirmed, down to going to the bathroom. lol!  Every darn thing was an inconvenience I inflicted on my parents on purpose.  All I can do is pray I never give my offspring such a horrible impression, even if I sometimes get impatient.  People tell me to 'put the baby down' but I'll be darned - I will carry him while he's small enough.  I might be a little fanatic about fulfilling needs!  Thank you also for pointing toward new horizons of freedom.  Brings me a sigh of relief.

James I loved the idea of thinking of them as business associates.  We have a contract.  It's not the greatest but it exists.  I review contracts as part of my job and that's just how it often is with business contracts.  Incredibly useful idea for me to find acceptance of the way it is.

lollie thank you for your careful hearing of the different aspects of what I'm trying to communicate and for saying that we are good daughters.  We are!  We just apparently signed up for a high degree of difficulty advanced expert level of daughtering.

flowerpower - yes the memories of good times have been the hardest for me to process and understand in a different, more insightful way.  For years it was the good times I would use to convince myself that the bad times and problems were just a flash in the pan.  I clung to the good memories to keep my denial and also to keep only blaming and hating myself for failing to live up to things.  I mean if I only blame myself then I could keep building my father up. The whole system depended on me only blaming myself for everything and not looking any further.  And he definitely agreed with that - we had all kinds of conversations about 'what is wrong with Iphi.'   We all agreed that I was the problem that had to be 'fixed.' 

Thank you for recognizing the issue of being laughed at and made fun of.  For so many years I have lived in a way that denied and minimized that, like it was nothing.  Obviously, I had to.  But that is where so much pain lives.  I am forced to fully recognize and acknowledge it, where I have been in denial about it in order to keep up that pretense that it is not a problem, and continue to always build up my dad.

I believe the good memories of my dad have a great deal to do with him building himself up to himself.  I mean he did things for the family because his image of himself as a great dad is an important part of his false self.  His own father ignored and sabotaged him and he wanted to be different.  And I absolutely did benefit from his efforts and I really understand how much he wanted to be different - that was sincere, he is just terribly limited and has no empathy.  It's so deep, really and I have to say that my heart really bleeds for him and I feel so much for him, which is how I got into all this enmeshment in the first place.  And the bottom line is that I really have to protect myself and I have seriously been damaged and collaborated in that damaging.  For years I would receive these really serious woundings and say 'Oh that's alright. I am fine.  It's nothing.'  Facing reality of this - that it is not nothing.  That is most hard for me.  I almost don't like it or don't want to except that I must.  The road leads straight through this.

It's hard to step away because I am so conditioned to make my decisions around what would not bother my Dad, what would gratify my dad, and what would be likely to enrage my dad or bring on negative repercussions to me.  My whole being was arranged that way. At the center of my life was the tyrant.  And I fluttered around that center in dread and anxiety.  It's like that joke Ami has shared about the codependent who sees someone else's life flash before their eyes - I am that person too.  I feel so, so much more for his life than for mine - his triumphs, struggles, concerns and defeats, generally I think are much more meaningful and important than mine.  Naturally, he agrees.

But over the years I have absolutely been pulling away.  It helps that he has absolutely no interest in my adult life, as indeed he had no interest in much of my child life.  But now we come down to it.  It was my baby boy's first birthday a few weeks ago and his grandfather sent a card and toy.  He wants a relationship with his grandson.  I do not approve.   And I think this is the trigger that is bringing on the intensity of these issues for me.  It is really, really, really hard to go against my Dad's direct interest and specific wish.  It's different than just avoiding him when he isn't interested in you anyway.  I do that very well - avoiding him and minimizing myself from his notice and 'not bothering him.'  But every day I see that card out on the counter.  I can't manage to throw it away and I can't manage to put it away as a keepsake for my son, either.  I can't manage to make myself call my Dad to thank him for the present or tell him anything about my son either.

So I guess that specific thing is at the bottom of what is really bringing these issues to the surface right now.

flowerpower I will come over to your topic and share what I have figured out so far.  I used to not understand it (the muteness) at all, but now I am started to get it a little bit.

(((Thank you)))

[gratitude28]

Iphi,
I think I am at the same exact spot now. And I am feeling the same confusion. Sometimes the things seem so small that hurt so much, but when it is a lifetime of being minimized and lied to, it just gets tiring if you want to be healthy.
Iphi, we will never matter to them. And I am not sure they feel our "pulling away." I really don't think they care. Really, what we are doing is detaching emotionally, and I believe that is something they cannot sense.
I am tired of the contempt too. I have done much more good than NM could ever conceive of doing... yet she has, and will never have, any idea what it means to be good or do good. She is selfish and self-centered. We only exist to reduce her boredom.
It is sad, Iphi. It is unbelievable. I think sometimes I believe that it should (could) change. But you know it won't.
So, Iphi, when your dad says something mean to you, remember he is talking to himself. Really.
And remember that distance allows you the life and happiness you deserve.
Lots of love,
Beth

[Iphi]

Really, what we are doing is detaching emotionally, and I believe that is something they cannot sense.

Oh my god Beth - that is so true.  What am I doing but feeling his feelings for him, or rather instead of him, just like usual? 

And I have something to add to what I said above about how I really do feel for him and his struggles and life.  I really do.  But what I never thought about, never ever thought about until therapy and a really tremendous struggle to actually think this thought and recognize this truth is that -- he never thinks about me that way.

My dad has an incredbily successful way of surrounding himself with women who think about his care and wellbeing all the time, and not their own.  I have seen it so much with family, friends and girlfriends.  Sometimes he has even had men around who are like that, but mainly it has been women of course including my sister and me.

One day I was visiting with my mom, who is ill, who scrapes by in semi-poverty, who struggles every day.  And who he felt was an intolerable burden that he wanted to be absolutely shut of.  And regarding whom he told me he never wanted to hear her name or anything about her and if she ever ran into any trouble or difficulty, he didn't want to hear or know about it.  This was because I asked him for help in dealing with a housing crisis she had when I was in my early 20's and she called me for help (everyone used to call me in a family crisis - another good reason to move away).   So my mom asks me 'oh how is your father doing?' and she really wants to know and is concerned and solicitous.  Not a bitter word or recrimination out of her.  She would be ready to go back in there today and help him etc. 

And I realized, everybody thinks about him and he thinks about himself.  And I always thought perhaps he is justified in doing so because of his struggles with MS.  But now I have lived a little longer and met more people and I see that people can rise to meet such challenges and decide how they are going to live.  They can become more despite cruel limitations and circumstances.  But it's a choice.

I guess I am saying that he has always put himself first and though there are mitigating circumstances, it's who he is.  I actually think had he not become ill, he would have been more likely to leave us with our schizophrenic mother and start afresh, but since he had to confront the blow of being diagnosed with a serious illness it actually made him decide to keep us.  He certainly did not spare us the internal darkness and bitterness of his soul - what I'm saying is he didn't set his course out of trying to serve something larger or outside of himself, or out of some motivation to rise to the challenge of life circumstances.  So although I feel for him... it's a one way street.  And a large reason of why I am the scapegoat who should be punished is that I have been walking around free and well, when it is unjust to him that it should be so when he must suffer physically - and it should be me because I am of less value and importance.

It's a bitter brew.

[James]

Dear Iphi......i told you my story and how i handled some of my rage. I also wanted to share with you how much i appreciate you sharing your thoughts and feelings here . I know how much courage it takes to do that as we look inside ourselves to the original hurt and then find the courage to share it with others. I admire and respect that in you and sharing what you have here feels like a real gift. When you said you had to minimize and say that everything was Ok and it's fine, i did something very similar but it was never fine.  I only felt this way to avoid real pain because i felt helpless and hurt with nobody around to help me sort things out. Many experiences like this eventually led me to deny my true self. I became shut down almost entirely and was left frozen in this very early unresolved and painful dilemma. It hurts to drop my defenses now and face the truth but little by little i am finding that i can change these old feelings and patterns of behaviors that still exist. Its very scary but it works. One step at a time at your own pace and i think that you will eventually find that everything will be okay and you will finally be with the real person you are....James

[seasons]

People tell me to 'put the baby down' but I'll be darned - I will carry him while he's small enough.  I might be a little fanatic about fulfilling needs!

Dear Iphi,

Wow this screamed volumes to me personally. My Narccistic Sister convincied  (or I fell for it then, young and nieve) me to put down my baby. She put pillows all around her bed and walked me in her bedroom off the kitchen to lay my 6 WEEK old baby down on her bed, then put a rattle in her hand.
I can rember this like it was yesterday, her demeaning me, telling me my baby wants to SEE the WORLD not MY CHEST all day!

I remember getting up and down from the chair to look at my daughter, while she babbled on and on about herself. This had nothing to do with my daughter but all to do with HER NEEDS, HER!!!HER!!! AND MORE OF HER!!!!

I hate myself to this day that I abandoned my little girl because of her.

Funny fast forward several years now she has grandchildren she wouldn't put down if I was on fire. She has to look like the perfect grandmother. BLEH

Hold your child, listen to YOUR heart.

Your dad sounds like a classic N. I am so sorry you are SET UP to feel guilty. Being punished for existing? For wanting peace? Free to live your life in a healthy safe way is interupted by their need for a supply.

My heart really goes out to you. I hope you are able to free yourself with a peaceful heart, in time it can be done.

Thinking of you, you and your family. seasons

[Betelgeuse]

Dear Iphi,

Agamemnon sacrified his daughter Iphigenia to the goddes Artemis so his own fleet could sail. Artemis took pity on Iphigenia, did not take her life but moved her to an island far away.

Not a bad idea to be removed from a father who'd sacrifice his daughter's life to further his own interest...

Bee

[towrite]

((((((Iphi))))))

One who has few ego boundaries surely cannot recognize the boundaries of others.

towrite

[gratitude28]

Iphi,
I think we, as children of Ns, are especially in tune with the needs of our children. I want them to have the love I did not have. I want them to know that they are good people (even when they do something wrong) and valuable to me and others. I want them to see the world as it is, and know that they have a place in it. And I love them - I adore them. Sometimes I think it is a way of loving myself as a child.
I picked this small part out of your post, but all of what you had to say was valid and true, and helpful. I can't imagine why people do rally around the N. What do others see in the vaipd person??? I don't know if it's a mystery I will ever solve.
Love, Beth