Thanks to joining this forum and reading through some of the essays, I've had a Eureka moment. I now understand more of why I do what I do and why I feel guilt. The passage below is really my journal entry today, but I wanted to share it. I still need work at losing the guilt, but this was such an Ah-ha moment because it helps me understand why I feel like I do about things! It also has made me aware of taking in my daughters' worries and that needs to stop!
"I am having an unusually hard time today. Just worrying about things. I decided today that I don’t want to try to go to visit Mother this weekend like D (my husband) had suggested. We can’t get there on Friday because we wouldn’t arrive until 11:00 or midnight. So, then we’d have to get up early on Saturday morning to get there by 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. We’d have to cram bitching Mother and J (husband’s sister) into one day and turn around to leave on Monday. Frankly, it sounds like sheer hell to me. So, I am relieved to have made that decision, yet guilt, guilt, guilt just nags at me. Mother expects a visit, even though we didn’t go last year and gave her the same & true reason – the school board took away the extra day the kids used to get off after Labor Day and without a 4 day span, it is too much of a trip. But I know that she is just sitting up there seething and ruminating and this just plagues me. But I don’t know why. She was simply the most detached parent a child could have, so why can’t I detach? Just take a look at these quotes that I cut and pasted from one of Dr. Grossman’s essays:
About children of Narcissistic Parent(s): “Frequently they feel other people's pain as if it were their own, and are racked by guilt if they cannot somehow relieve this distress.”
Their self-esteem is completely dependent upon responding to others needs.
Their place in life was to know what everyone else wanted--this is the only place they felt comfortable and unthreatened.
This is so incredibly me. I was just saying to D the other night how stressed out I get during the school year because I feel M & C’s worries as strongly as I do my own. And this is what I am doing with Mother! I was brought up to walk on eggshells around her. I was told not to upset her. If I was sad, she’d get upset. If I was angry about something, she’d get upset and place blame on my actions. Thus, I stuffed everything inside and appeared neutral to the outside world. So, I believe that right now I am “taking in” what I perceive her to be thinking (which are nasty, ugly thoughts about how horrible I am), yet this time I am not altering my behavior to alleviate her anger and this is resulting in guilt because I was programmed to never permit my action to upset her!"
