Pushing the healing envelope

[sKePTiKal]

"Go brush your hair."

Something occurred to me. In a normal, mom-daughter transaction this statement - or even the "you're not going out like that, are you?" is simply a matter of fact statement, command or question. It's not got horrific, emotional significance. No damning shame... no humiliation...

but with our warped parents, these kinds of things took on supernatural importance - significance - because we were already vulnerable to this type of abuse. The wound was already there - and this was salt in it. Not permitted normal boundaries... it was the warning... the precursor... the omen... that we dare not transgress, stand up for ourselves - because the "or else" was pointed emotional abuse.

This is how we were controlled. Those lack of boundaries - was the door that allowed shame & humiliation - to perpetually exist for me without any overt "damage" being inflicted.

Boundaries and "control" - even the passive-agressive kind - are important tools for unravelling how we bought into the insanity of our parents. How trust was destroyed... even trust in ourselves.

[Gaining Strength]

In a normal, mom-daughter transaction this statement - or even the "you're not going out like that, are you?" is simply a matter of fact statement, command or question. It's not got horrific, emotional significance. No damning shame... no humiliation...

OMG PR - you have highlighted something that has haunted me forever.  I would tell people about my experiences and my struggle would be completely dismissed and I was checked off as "a complainer."  Now I get it!!!!  Of course I am treated as a complainer - everyone else's mother's said the same thing.  The words are not in themselves the problem it is the meaning behind them that is the problem.  Just another example of how insidious the problem of the "small T trauma" and the experience of the child of the N parent is.  It is hidden; hidden to the public and often hidden to the child and to the people in the counseling world. 

Thank you - this is a very significant point.  This answers the question I have long asked myself that I used to further disparage my own struggle.  "What have you got to struggle about?  It is not what happened to you but your weakness of or lack of character."

Thanks again.  I am thankful.

[Gaining Strength]

I am hanging curtains today and working on other issues at my house.  It is an interesting process - very unpleasant, even downright painful at times.  I want to stop at each juncture.  I am taking a break right now.  As I work and slip into the darkness, I am able to remind myself that I am responding to the still unconscious condemning interalized voices of my parents.  That helps me know that it is a false voice.  I then must work to find a "true" voice and find encouragement and step out of the path of criticism. 

It is still difficult and far from natural.  But as I work on this change I am also getting extreme insight into how this unconscious voice has controlled my emotional reaction my entire life.  It is absolutely astonishing.  I can't help but feel a sadness that I have "wasted" an entire life that had so much promise.  Not that I can't construct a valuable life but stilll I am deeply mourning the loss of all of these years and the many things I would have like to have done.  I do understand people in a way that I never would have if I had not been throught this battle and that is something worth holding onto.

[Hopalong]

SS,

I am awed by you.

You have wasted NOTHING.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Each time I clean up a pile I think of you Hops and how you encouraged me what seems so long ago.  I never thought I would get here but I never gave up either.  I finally am able to work on the square foot that you gave me to focus on so long ago.  Finally, I have identified those wretched voices that have held me back and called me names and belittled and condemned me.  Finally I can talk back to those voices that are not my friends.  And when I do, I can clean that one square foot and I have cleaned ten or twenty in the past two days with lots more to go and strength to do it.  Thanks to you and your voice of power and encouragement - I am finally cleaning one square foot.  Thanks for that voice that I can now replace that destructive voice with.  That's power and that's healing - Thanks to you - hoorah!!!!

[sKePTiKal]

The lessons that we've all learned as we try to heal often don't come to people. They're not "conscious" or "intentional" understandings. It's just taken for granted... those lessons are integrated into "selves" almost by osmosis, and are generally not examined closely - as you've been doing, SS.

The struggle to learn these "missed lessons" as adults gives us a depth, an understanding beyond "normal"... these lessons won't ever be taken for granted or forgotten - even when fully integrated in our selves. Time simply isn't wasted, I don't think. Whether consciously, or not, I know I've been working at this a long, long time... and learning a LOT of things along the way, even when it seemed like I was totally "stuck", helpless, powerless, confused... even when I was still not consciously aware of what happened to me, I was still trying to understand.

I'm learning to be grateful for all those lessons - even those learned the hard way.

[Gaining Strength]

Excerpts from Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in their Struggle for Self, by Dr. Elan Golomb (1992)
A narcissist cannot see his children as they are but only as his unconscious needs dictate. He does not question why his children are incredibly wonderful (better than anyone else's) or intolerably horrible (the worst in all respects) or why his view of them ricochets from one extreme to another with no middle ground. It is what they are.
When he is idealizing them, he sees their talents as mythic, an inflation that indicates they are being used as an extension of his grandiose self. When he hates them and finds their characteristics unacceptable, he is projecting hated parts of himself onto them. Whether idealizing or denigrating, he is entirely unaware that what he sees is a projection and that his views are laying a horrible burden on his child.
. . . .
The offspring of narcissists grow up fulfilling their assigned roles. They may sense that they are in a state of falsehood, but do not know what to do about feelings of nonauthenticity. They try all the harder to become what they are supposed to be, as if their feelings of uneasiness come from an improper realization of their role. If their parents see them as miserably deficient, from the shape of their bodies to the power of their minds, that is what they become. If they were portrayed to themselves as great muckamucks, especially if they have innate ability to fulfill a powerful role, they become the movers and shakers of society.
At heart, children of narcissists, raised up or cast down by the ever-evaluating parent, feel themselves to be less than nothing because they must 'be' something to earn their parents' love.

*****
Perhaps I should order this book.  It certainly describes what my experience has been.  Has anyone read this book?

[Ami]

Dear SS
 I am finally getting what N is. I am feeling what I expereinced, which was to be seen as an inanimate object, a chair, a plant. I did not have feelings, pain, thoughts or an identity to my M.
 I was s/one whom she could hurt if I didn't please her or make her look good.
 I have suffered greatly, as we all have, with extreme self doubt and insecurity.
 I have faced that my M is broken. I always wanted her to be "normal". I thought that if I was better, she would transform to be "normal". The fairy tale would have a good ending if only *I* could be good enough.
 The truth is she is broken and probably never saw any of my attempts to please her .
 I have just faced these truths. I feel more real.
 I am coming out of a nightmare,but I found God from extreme duress and I would not take one tiny piece back if I had to give Him up. That is my peace in it. I am very very grateful that ,for me, it was not a waste but had a wonderful conclusion.        Ami