chocolate and the delete button and Ns lack of remorse

[flower]

Hi everyone,

 Just in case anyone is curious,  I haven't gone off the deep end nor am I afraid of posters or trolls nor have my feelings been irrepairably hurt.  I thank the poster who cared enough to ask me. Hugs (((caring board member))))  

 I had some strong  chocolate, a delete button and felt like moving on in my process of healing. I saved my threads and they might have been saved by others which is okay, but the whole process of deleting was cathartic.  I'm  moving on from where I was and still want to be mutually supportive, but I need to put some clothes on my soul.  


By chance if some registered user that was involved in a particular thread didn't get a chance to see or read a response I sent to them in particular I will try to pm the specific post to them, if they so desire.


Last night I got to thinking about remorse and the N. Do Ns feel remorse  *ever* in their lives - even as a child? Is there some time that they make a conscious decision to turn off their empathy or  has it never developed?   Or were they just not interested?  Persons with Aspergers/high functioning autism have problems with empathy and interpersonal behavior but can also be very moral and ethical and are willing to learn. What gives the N the excuse to not try or care.  Smells suspicious  to me. Like Ns are persons with Aspergers gone bad.

My nmom said a odd thing to me once. She gave me no religious training. But once she said in a sassy tone for whatever reason I can't remember  - it seemed off the wall, "I used to save up all my sins during the day and confess them at night."  Of course she has never admitted to wrong doing though in real life.  

 Makes me wonder if there  are two roads a person can take who didn't get the empathy thing. They can either obsess on train schedules or computers and master "things' and be a nerd or they can obsess on getting their way and putting themselves first and master maniputation  and be a bully.

flower with chocolate stains on her metal petals

[Anonymous]

Last night I got to thinking about remorse and the N. Do Ns feel remorse  *ever* in their lives - even as a child? Is there some time that they make a conscious decision to turn off their empathy or  has it never developed?   Or were they just not interested?  Persons with Aspergers/high functioning autism have problems with empathy and interpersonal behavior but can also be very moral and ethical and are willing to learn. What gives the N the excuse to not try or care.  Smells suspicious  to me. Like Ns are persons with Aspergers gone bad.

The N was being abused/traumatized as a child so they were mainly trying to survive. They didn't learn the right kind of empathy but they learned how to 'understand' people in order to get supplies. They didn't think there was anything available to them beyond supplies. If they turned off their empathy it was for survival purposes. The N is a sick person who desperately needs help. Unfortunately they are the least likely to seek it. And they probably couldn't be helped much.

My nmom said a odd thing to me once. She gave me no religious training. But once she said in a sassy tone for whatever reason I can't remember  - it seemed off the wall, "I used to save up all my sins during the day and confess them at night."  Of course she has never admitted to wrong doing though in real life.

My guess is that she was trying to manipulate God, who was like an abusive parent to her.

Makes me wonder if there  are two roads a person can take who didn't get the empathy thing. They can either obsess on train schedules or computers and master "things' and be a nerd or they can obsess on getting their way and putting themselves first and master maniputation  and be a bully.

I don't think it's that simple but you are right in that people have different survival and adaptation behaviors.

bunny

[Singer]

Hi Flower,

I can relate to your sense of moving on. I had a "moment of truth" of sorts a couple months ago and stopped posting for awhile; had to crawl into a mental hidey-hole and sort some things out.

I don't believe my NMother ever felt remorse for anything, even as a child, which is kind of interesting now that you've brought it up. She tells stories about her childhood and being reprimanded by teachers for making fun of children of backgrounds different than hers. But the point of the stories were to demonstrate how "spirited" she was and how she stood up to those who reprimanded her. She truly believes to this day that her superiority to those children was obvious and the teachers were denying it out of political correctness (although it probably wasn't called that in the 1930's), or stubbornness.

I think her family history might have contributed to her lack of empathy, both by way of genetics and because the history was based on tales of former grandeur and wealth lost to the unscrupulous. Failure was always blamed on outside forces; and on those who were evil and jealous. Which was usually anyone other than the person who was telling the tale. They had no loyalty to each other most of all.

Which makes me wonder why I'm here telling tales on them.

Aaacccckkk....back to my hiding place!

Singer

[Anonymous]

Interesting subject

On remorse... I have seen my N feel what appears to be remorse.  But it is not out of empathy to those he hurt.  It is remorse because a moment of honesty damaged his perfect self image.  He realized he acted horribly, and was more concerned with the fact that he acted like his father =bad than with the fact he hurt his wife.  In other occasians, he appears remorseful because he has lost his N supply.  He feels a desparate need to get it back.

I don't know if my H feels empathy. Sometimes his motives are still quite hidden to me. He can say the right words, even reflect my feelings (as I have trained him to do).  My own requests have made it more difficult for me to detect motives.  I am in a place right now where I am not sure how much motives even matter, if behavior actually changes for the long term.

On Autism... interesting you should mention it.  When I first began describing my husband's behavior to my therapist, she said this was highly autistic. N does not have any form of autism that we know of. However, narcissistic behavior is vary self-involved, thus having characteristics of autism.  

Thanks Flower for the interesting thread

[Moonflower]

....

[Anonymous]

Wow, as I read these postings it got me a little scared.  My 9 year old daughter is autistic and my mom is narcissitic and my ex-husband has ADD.  So I am surrounded by people with "issues."  But I would have to say that the worse one to deal with to this day is my N mom.  Simply because under no circumstances will she EVER admit that she is wrong.  One time when we were in a heated argument I told her that I wanted her to call a pastor friend of ours (the only person she has ever listened to...) and she said to me "you don't always get what you want."  She refused to call him because she knew he was going to side with me.

I have come to a revelation.  It's time to stop beating my head against the wall.  I will NEVER win.  So I just have to realize that there is no winning and go on with my life in silence around her.  I used to lash out (after I got my nerve after 40 years of control.......)  Now she came into work and asked me if I was going to say something to someone about their nose piercing, I said, NO and then just remained silent.  I am sure it drove her CRAZY!

[Anonymous]

Which makes me wonder why I'm here telling tales on them.

This isn't telling tales (IMO), it's describing your family's dynamics so that others will understand you; also, so others in similar families won't feel so alone.

bunny

[ListNewbie]

My Ndad's life has been about "copying" people's remorse. He will say sorry until he's blue in the face, if he figures it means you'll continue fighting with him: however, he won't admit error. It's always, "I'm sorry that your feelings got hurt ... " but it's never his fault. Somehow, he manages to make an apology into an accusation. If you pursue it, it becomes an issue of how 'misled' and 'immature' you are to have misinterpreted him.

At least in my Ndad's case, remorse isn't there. I finally saw it clearly when he was talking about a childhood pet, a bird, that he "thinks died because he forgot to feed it." When he was about fourteen. I remembered the guilt and lasting remorse I had when I lost a fish due to overfeeding: when I tried to empathise, my dad looked at me as if I were suggesting that tomorrow there would be no gravity. "Why?" he said. "It's just a bird." He has pets sometimes, although he doesn't care for or interact with them: he 'experiments', essentially. (Although not psychopathically - he doesn't go out of his way to cause them pain.) From the dog who he tried to make vegetarian to the bird he tried to teach a mantra to, they are objects to make theories on.

Yet, he's been a vegetarian for my entire life, because animal cruelty is wrong, and he can be moral and moo at people eating a cheeseburger.

[Singer]

Hi Again,

EXACTLY what you and Bunny said...

I think we at the board don't think we are innocent of wrong doing.  The difference I see is that we want to grow and change. We share our stories to help one another.

This isn't telling tales (IMO), it's describing your family's dynamics so that others will understand you; also, so others in similar families won't feel so alone.

I don't want to hide behind generalities and I hope others won't either. It was the details of peoples' stories here that allowed me to recognize what was going on with my NMother. The refusal to admit wrongdoing, the rage, and even things like the hours of one-sided phone calls.

I did begin to have a problem with writing it down. As my ex-husband used to say, "If you aren't going to do anything about it, then stop talking about it." But if everyone did that, it would still be a nameless problem, a vague sense of something wrong. So I came back, and will continue to come back because it has made such a difference in my outlook to know that I'm not alone and I hope others find that out too.

As you said, we know here that we're not innocent of wrongdoing. I raised my children much the same way I was raised and now I'm looking back and it makes me think I could have done things so much differently. But that's another story and hopefully they'll survive and move on. Hopefully we all will.

I have to go get something chocolate now.

Singer

[BlueTopaz]

On remorse... I have seen my N feel what appears to be remorse. But it is not out of empathy to those he hurt. It is remorse because a moment of honesty damaged his perfect self image.

Thanks for that, guest.  It really struck me at heart.  My X-N dating partner would should remorse as well, and I'd never thought about the distinction you've mentioned.  

Very interesting, and much food for thought for me....  

BT