My Truth

[indiered]

Dearest Helen,

This is my first post since I found this site four years ago. I "hear you", and recognize myself in your comments. I welcome you and send (((hugs)), acceptance and validation.  I fully understand social inepness, the isolation and living with preconceived notions of myself.

Please continue to write, we are here... I send to you waves if love...


Indiered

[Ami]

Dear Helen
 I have SO much to write to you. I will be back later. Before I write ,I want to really read your posts well . You have poured your heart out here. You have said so many truths about how the child of an NM feels. My heart relates  very much.       XXXOOO  Ami

[lighter]

Helen.... what a wonderful thread you've brought to the board..... not enough time to read it through but.....

I was reminded of something a dear friend said to me years ago:

"We all need some one person, who knows everything about us....

the good and the bad......

and still loves us."

I think that makes a big difference in the life of an introverted person.

I too have trouble with small talk and being in groups drains me of energy.

Welcome Helen: )

Mo2

[Gabben]

Helen,

I just wanted you to know that I am following your thread, reading. There is a lot here, you pour your heart out very well, interesting, so much that I want to respond to and will.

Thanks,
Lise

[Gabben]

I'm replying to myself again... This song just came on the radio. I've always loved this song..for obvious reasons. God, I don't cry a lot-almost never- not even at movies, but I'm sitting in a public cafe writing on this board and listening to this song.. and I am trying hard not to cry.....

Here are the Lyrics:

Helen,

What is the name of the song, do you know? I'd like to listen to it. Music is a powerful tool that I use to help get my heart awake to tears. Good music can lift my spirits or bring me to a place of comfort, which will start me crying too. Yesterday I was at the super market and heard Simon and Garfunkels Bridge over Troubled Water..I wanted to lose it right in from of the organic produce section. I came home and played the song, letting the tears roll.

[Ami]

I'm replying to myself again... This song just came on the radio. I've always loved this song..for obvious reasons. God, I don't cry a lot-almost never- not even at movies, but I'm sitting in a public cafe writing on this board and listening to this song.. and I am trying hard not to cry.....

Here are the Lyrics:

love I get so lost, sometimes
days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
when I want to run away
I drive off in my car
but whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
the heat I see in your eyes

love, I don't like to see so much pain
so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

and all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light,
the heat I see in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes

Dear Helen
 Can you explain in words what the song means to you? Are you thinking of a M's love, God's love or just the yearning to be understood?           Ami

[Ami]

I am gonna come back later ((((Helen))))).You addressed so many  points about neglect and the primal nature that are so heartfelt to me that I need time to process them.    XXOOOOO   Ami

[Ami]

Just writing more of my stuff....

I remember clearly this moment at a baby sitters where I was pinching this little boys legs, there did not seem to be anything going on in my mind when I was doing it, I was unaware of my own motivation. The reason why I'm writing this is because at times I have tried to understand why people get pleasure out of seeing others suffer.

I also remember that when I was very young I would laugh when I heard babies cry, it was this uncontrollable response that I had, I didn't have any thoughts going through my head. I wasn't causing their crying, I wasn't a tyrant kid, but if I was in a room with a baby that was just being fussy I truly would laugh and cover my face probably hiding/sticking my face into the sofa while I was laughing? Thats weird isn't it? I'm not sure if I was laughing out of pleassure I don't think so, I think it was just some sort of emotional release.

I have not grown up to become a mean person, this memory stands out to me as a strange uncommon thing that I did. I think some child development specialists say that kids go through saddistic periods? That it is normal. Nah that doesn't really sound right to me. Maybe narcissistic people are so emotionally immature that they are stuck back in that really young stage where they don't really fully comprehend the suffering that they cause. -In the same way that kids need to learn to be gentle with pet animals, that at first kids don't really get that animals are sentient beings.

I also remember stepping on snails the sound of the crunch and the goop left behind was satisfying, I then noticed as I got older I went out of my way not to step on them and I would shudder a little if I accidentally did. I know this is not very important or significant it's just interesting to me. At what age do people learn compassion or empathy and how....

It sort of doesn't matter, I've learned that even if I some day "get" why people have hurt me and why they even seemed to enjoy it- that just understanding it does not protect me. That having insight is good but that I need a self protection that is greater then insight. I think insight is part of it. The thing is healthy people don't have to earn a PhD in psychiatry in order to protect themselves, they know how to protect themselves without understanding how they know. If asked to explain it, healthy people can't explain how they do what they do-"I don't know I just do it". I had a highschool friend tell me that "I needed to learn to stand up for myself" That was a totally true observation on my friends part. The thing is I had no idea what they were talking about and how to even go about it. A friend can say that "you need to learn how to stand up for yourself" but the friend doesn't actually understand what that process is-it is probably related to those deep internal messages about oneself- seems complicated to me. I think it is possible to get stuck in trying to understand why we were not loved, instead of learning how to feel good.

My mother did not- all out hit me that I can remember, she slapped me a couple times but I was not pummeled like some people are. The thing is, one day I broke a bone while playing by myself, accidentally. I didn't tell my mother and she did not notice. Looking back I know that a normal mother would have seen that something was not right, I wasn't hiding it. She was always occupied with something else. I guess I had learned to keep my pain to myself, maybe even ignore myself. She is really comatose in some ways. Sometimes she seems normal, but when I remember stuff like that.. no, there was something wrong with her. There was a counselor in grade school that use to talk to me, I asked to go to the counselor because my friend told me it was a way to get out of a class I didn't like, I probably did want to talk with someone. I could never really explain why I felt so anxious/upset as a kid. The counselor figured because I wasn't being physically attacked nothing was going on. He didn't seem to understand.

I am trying to follow the saying "If I am not for myself, who am I? If I am only for myself, what am I?" .I need to stand up for myself but  treat others with respect and care. I think it is a balance. I think we have to face our primal nature which has a lot of "bad" qualities such as selfishness, egocentricity, pettiness, judgemental, etc. We all have these and I think we can only be "good" when we accept the bad. IOW, we have to face and own ALL our parts in order to be whole and have the greatest capacity for love.                Ami

[Ami]

I'm writing, writing, writing..

I wrote something about how maybe Narcissistic/abusive people don't understand the pain they are causing. I think this is false, they do seem to understand the pain they are causing. Ok, I will leave it there. Don't want to write about that anymore. Yuck.
It's hard to accept that people choose to cause pain, seek out to cause pain. That is a real psychologically hard concept for me to accept. A person can sound smart and charming or what ever and then there is a side of them the pain-causing archaic thing in them. I would think that those people would want to lift themselves up and become better, they certainly seem to see themselves through rose colored glasses. How can they live with themselves? I guess it's true some people really don't have a conscious. Some people really are full of garbage and they seek to "throw away" other people. Huh? I guess I'm just realizing how messed up narcissistic people are. Narcissistic people can gain popularity and no one would dare say that there is any thing about the N person that is less then perfect. In fact I think N people get sort of worshipped sometimes. Admiration. That is one of the things that makes it hard to fully realize their abuse. There can be other people around who buy into the N's version of reality. They are living a lie.

And there are lots of lies. And voiceless people sometimes accept the lies. Voiceless people accept that lie that we are bad and wrong. I guess that is internalizing.

  Dear Helen,
 I just looked up the U tube video on N by PsychDoctorate. It tells it about N like I NEVER heard before. I get it for real, now!
 I think that if we can leave the "bad' identity behind, they can't hurt us anymore.                  XXXOOO  Ami

[Ami]

Hi, Gabben, nice to meet you.

Yeah, I think it is ok for you to cry, I've heard some say that they go through years of crying.
I had a yoga teacher who really encouraged people to cry, in fact I think she does it on a regular basis to purify herself as you say.
Yep, they say it's healthier to let it out then keep it in. Keep it in and get sick, or let it out and get better.

There is a lot to cry about in the world, our personal problems, the worlds problems...

Actually when I think about it, people who cry are probably healthier then people who don't cry. I went through long times when I did not cry, I was numb, the feelings were there somewhere, just pushed underground, so not really alive. Numb=dead like a zombie.

I think crying is a step towards aliveness.

Sometimes life is too fast or tense to take the time to cry. And then after all that time something really big comes out, a big powerful emotion. I guess emotions can be scary. The intensity of emotions reminds me how bad I want to be fully alive.

I will have to look up the beatitudes, I would like to know what they mean exactly, there are stories behind all those sayings from the bible. I just wish I would be comforted while I'm alive, and laugh while I'm on earth rather then waiting for the after life. I did pray really hard one night and it changed my heart literally but only for a couple of days and then it reverted back to my "normal" squeezed in compressed, contracted, weary little heart.

I think crying is a blessing and a wonderful way to get rid of pain. When my son died, I could not cry . Just now, a year and a half later can I have really cry. When the pain is too deep for words , it is the worst.
 I am thankful that I can cry about him and  the pain of the N's that we talk about here.
 There is a Book "Cure By Crying". The author says you can heal all sorts of emotional problems with tears and a person next to you to support you.It feels like it would work, to me.        XXXXOOO  Ami

[Ami]

I'm all written out.. almost.

When I was a kid, I had some illnesses, I think they were worse then they should have been, I think if cared for better I would have been healtheir and sick for less time. I was sick for months it seemed. On medications from doctors that I certainly don't need to take anymore as an adult because I try to take better care of myself.

Some of my relatives said I was making my illness up, that it was all in my head, I felt really bad/frustrated when I heard this, my alcoholic relative said I was pretending to be sick to get attention-yeah right cause little kids like to lay in bed all day for days on end. I even ended up spending the night in the hospital one time. I think this all could have been lessened with good care. I remember being in bed and feeling afraid and alone. What else could I have done? I keep on feeling like I should have had more power but it makes sense to me that I didn't. None of my relatives would allow me to say this but I'm going to write it here.
My mother was neglectful. NEGLECTFUL.

I did not deserve neglect, maybe on some deep level I felt like I did something wrong to deserve the punishment of neglect.

My mother had excuses for why this happened it was usually related to "lack of money", yeah lack of money does make life more difficult but I don't think it is a valid excuse. I think there were simple solutions to my illness would not have cost her any money. I think the medication was more expensive then preventing it in the first place. She didn't bother to learn about my illness, to this day she still doesn't understand it. what sort of person does not learn about their child's illness?

If I was to say to my mother "you never believed in me" she would say, "we didn't have enough money for that".

Dear Helen
 This neglect is so sad. For a long time, I did not know what I went through as a child b/c I was not abused physically. I was neglected and abused emotionally. The neglect is the hardest to see.
 It leaves you feeling that if you dropped of the face of the earth, no one would care.
 I liked your other post where you said you cried out to God and your heart was peaceful for a few days.
 God is all I have, really, and I like to hear that!      XXXXOOOO    Ami

[Meh]

My NICE mom can't let me sit down to a normal dinner

So, I'm writing a lot, I know it's better to be concise but I'm going to go ahead and just "jumble-journal" on here if that is ok.

There are times when my mother does seem nice, maybe at times she really is nice. This has been SO CONFUSING to me.
I think I'm less confused by it now at least intellectually, my soul is probably still confused. My mom does like to maintain an image of normal. I think that is mainly what her interactions with me are about- to prove to the rest of the relatives that it's all fine. Maybe she does it out of obligation.

I was invited up to my mother's house with her current husband to spend the day and have dinner, the day went by uneventfully,
that evening while we were preparing to sit down together and eat dinner I thought to myself "I can't believe this we are actually going to sit down and have a dinner together after a nice day" wow this is just too normal, I can't believe it, this does not feel like anything we have ever done before. I had the thought "this feels too healthy". Apparently my mother must have thought that it felt too healthy also.

My mother had a drug-addict-alcoholic-relative on the phone that I just didn't wish to speak to at the moment, especially not at her demand, she insisted, I didn't want to, I refused. After she got off the phone. My mother threw a huge tantrum-fit she started yelling at me "I feel so sorry for you" and she said some other things. Her current husband witnessing the whole thing. I had been helping make dinner while she was talking on the phone. She came over to the dinner I was working on and started yelling at me about the dinner and saying there wasn't enough for all of us and that "I was so selfish, are you just making dinner for yourself". I thought that I was just helping since I was the guest, I didn't know that she had somehow without telling me expected me to make all the parts of the  whole dinner for them like a servant. I can do my part yes, but it's not polite for her to expect a guest to make a whole dinner. I wasn't just making my meal, I was working on a portion of the whole meal that all gets put together at the end of prep. She didn't communicate that expectation (that I was to be servant)- she came over and yelled at me.

I don't think she was saying "I feel sorry for you" due to "the heat of the moment", I think the statement is really what she thinks about me. It's the truth in her mind, the undercurrent she "feels sorry for me" because in her eyes there is something bad/wrong/pathetic and unacceptable about me.

I felt disgusted by the whole thing afterwards, it was sort of good to see her yell because it shows her true self under there, and it's good for me to remember what she is really like inside- because sometimes I get fooled. It's also the first time I have witnessed her flip out in front of her husband. I don't think he was too comfortable with the whole thing, he even said to her that he felt bad. He told her to talk to me, of course she couldn't see that she was just doing some crazy making and disrupting an evening that was turning out to be too warm-and healthy. So the conversation was about her trying to make me feel bad for not speaking with the drug-addict relative. Ironically I do at least partially blame my mother for this relatives addictions. It's my brother. My brother started getting into drugs and alcohol when he was 15-16, she did not even attempt to intervene for him and stop him. I'm angry at her for that. Real angry. Of course I never tell her and I don't take it out on her. That is a whole other issue.

I know my mother and her husband have nice evenings together on their own, she allows herself to have a normal evening meal, but she will not allow me a normal evening meal. That crazy b*tch.

Some part of me is always secretly wanting compassion or sympathy from the other witness (her husband) but I never verbally ask for it.

"SEE did you SEE that happen this time, you were right THERE! What do you mean you didn't see it, what do you mean it's my fault, I was just trying to make dinner!" I'm the crazy one..

So the nice evening was ruined due to her tantrum and she said that it was my fault because I wouldn't speak with the relative on the phone. I choose my own interactions with this person when and where. This is my mother not respecting my need for space away from an unhealthy person (drug addict). If I followed my mother's every demand and whim, I would no doubt be co-dependent like her.  

I needed a ride home, the next day she dumped me off at my place, completely in silence. I'm an adult, she is still finding ways to emotionally dump me. I felt like I was being blamed for something. I felt like she had got me again. I'm an adult, I'm not suppose to allow this to happen to me any more.

I haven't been to her place since, she invited me for some holiday. She says everything is so difficult with me, it's just so hard for her.

I didn't talk with her for a while, ignoring her, the relatives called me and said "your mother really loves you, why won't you talk with her" as if I was punishing her. I finally did start talking with her again and she just acted like nothing had ever happened. It makes me feel freaked out when she acts like nothing ever happened. Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! EVERYTHING IS NOT OK.

If she was healthy she would have enjoyed spending the rare time with me and the normalcy of the evening would have been fine, she would not have thrown a yelling-tantrum to break it all up. If she was healthy she would respect my decisions and ability to interact with other relatives of my own volition, and on my terms. If she was healthy she would understand why I need to distance and protect myself from this drug addict relative. If she was healthy she would not have expected that me (the guest) make dinner for her. I was being generous by pitching in. If she was healthy she might even have sat down to dinner and asked me how I was doing and really meant it. If she was healthy she would not have made a phone call to that relative while we were in the midst of preparing dinner. She could have done it after dinner or even the next evening.

Her tantrum just seemed to "happen". But I wonder if she unconsciously planned it. When she explains herself it sounds like it makes sense: she was upset that I would not talk to the relative, "I'm being cruel" she accuses me.

When I put it together from a different perspective.. my impression makes sense, the crazy making came up to prevent a normal nice evening meal from happening and the "phone conversation" was not the real issue. Maybe she has some real needs going on, but she is attempting to get her own needs met in an unhealthy way at my expense. At this point MY NEEDS ARE IMPORTANT TO ME. She did not deal with her own crap. NOT MY FAULT. HERE I AM, IM REAL, I HAVE NEEDS, MY NEEDS ARE IMPORTANT TO ME EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT IMPORTANT TO HER. I no longer need her to acknowledge my needs. I acknowledge my own needs, I can do that. I love that statement: "My needs are important to me."  It makes me feel a little strong when I say it.

I deeply understand that I will never get my needs met through any interaction with my mother.. that is why she is currently and hopefully permanently no longer in my life. A deep part of me has hope (the innocent little kid still looking for love), intellectually I know there is no hope with her specifically.      

[Hopalong]

Boy, Helen.

You sure are working your way through to complete reality.

I really LOVE it when someone "gives up hope" -- know what I mean?

It frees you.

It gives you peace.

And then anything GOOD can happen in your life.

Congratulations on a really productive outpouring.

Hops

[Meh]

Hi! Mother of 2, Gabben, Ami, Indiered,

Nice to meet you all, thank you for your comments and for the questions I will have to consider them and write....

It feels reassuring when people confirm how bad the emotional pain and damage was, it wasn't always right out there in the open like physical violence. The few times I tried to talk to people in my youth they always expected and asked about physical violence and when I didn't have monster truck sized stories of being kicked in the head they just did not get it. I thought maybe they were right, that what I went through was not a big deal.

Hearing all your stories helps me to know that what WE WENT THROUGH WAS A BIG DEAL. If it wasn't, then we wouldn't be thinking about it to this day. Emotions are not in some make-believe-ether-land, intangible. Emotions are our physical mind-body-spirit communicating with us. FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS ARE VERY REAL. YOUR FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS ARE VERY REAL. MY FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS ARE VERY REAL.

The song that I put on here was from Peter Gabriel the title "In Your Eyes"  You can listen and see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrzr4R3LpsQ

I caution: I just watched this video for the first time there is some symbolic imagery that might be sort of hard to watch: a woman who looks like a mother, two ink-blot like figures that are two and become one and are two again and are one again....

[Meh]

Hello Hops and thanks for the comment.

Yeah, I think I know what you mean. Giving up hope normally sounds bad, but when one gives up hope on a futile situation, a situation that is keeping one emotionally stuck then we can have hope for something else. There can be some form of renewal, we start to find some of our own power and find some personal empowerment, even if it's just our little toe that feels powerful.