To keep reliving the wrongs done, is to keep oneself from growing-Izzy Quote

[teartracks]

Hi,

To keep reliving the wrongs done, is to keep oneself from growing beyond their 'torture, lies and crazy-making."

Couldn't have been said better, Iz...

But here's the puzzler for me.   In story after story here the same theme is repeated over and over.  It is that of self-focused ruminating on past wounds.  I spent 7 years doing exactly that. I knew then and now that I wasn't the center of the universe and that my behavior (that of continuously ruminating on my wounded  'self') was not looked upon favorably in polite circles (it's not good to denigrate others or to always be self-focused)  and might indeed be viewed as narcissistic behavior.  I always felt conflicted about this.  But looking back, it feels like it was necessary to move me toward healing.  It appears to be the same with others.  So why is this theme so common in the stories we see here?  I mean, is there truly something therapeutic in going through this socially unacceptable phase, of attacking the character and reputation of another (our wounders), to belittle and disparage them?   Has anyone here come to a point of significant healing without going through this phase?  Does anyone know of a new improved method of moving beyond  the painful past that doesn't require being self focused over hellishly long periods?  
  
tt

[Sealynx]

hi tt,
I think I'm in a pretty good space (having survived last weekend's visit by 2 N's without going insane!!) at this point in my recovery. Identifying the source of and events related to forming the person I am today has been important to me and I still reflect back on them. Reviewing them can help me remember details that are important.

"is there truly something therapeutic in going through this socially unacceptable phase, of attacking the character and reputation of another (our wounders), to belittle and disparage them?   Has anyone here come to a point of significant healing without going through this phase?  Does anyone know of a new improved method of moving beyond  the painful past that doesn't require being self focused over hellishly long periods?"


While I think the above process is different for everyone. Other than sharing my frustrations with my sister and stories with other daughter's of N in order to support their perceptions of similar events, I don't talk much about my mother. I don't feel more healed or stronger or better because I don't....I think in my case I realized what her disorder meant around the same time I got fed up with her behavior.  I started out by useing boundaries and avoided direct confrontation whenever possible. I was also one of those children who retreated into my room, so in many ways I was already emotionally defended against her.

I think it may help to question the need to attack while retaining the need to remember and process. To my way of thinking, all you can really draw from an encounter with an N is self-awareness. They are simply not there to encounter. Putting them down may allow the temporary release of anger, but it will never change them. I have a friend who knows my N's well and always checks in after a visit to see what they did "this time". I don't see my conversations with her as put them down. I see them as providing myself a few moments of comic relief. Laughter...when you can manage it...is good medicine. Anger also needs to be expressed sometimes. As long as you know you are expressing your need to release the anger and not hanging on to the hope that they will change, I think that has benefit too.




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[Hopalong]

Hi TT,

I think compassion is the only thing that stops the recycling.

I also think voicing hurt and anger is necessary, and share with you a wondering about for how long.

Compassion is sometimes a luxury when one's self is crippled.

It's the opposite of cleansing, bracing, motivating anger.

But I think it's the only thing that lets one stop the recycling.

I think if one learns to literally experience true compassion for the self, then one's anger and fascination with Nantics drains away. If you can turn the floodlight of empathy around and beam it into your own chest, and do that regularly until it feels "normal" to be healing and welcome in the human community (because you deem yourself welcome) and not hostile to yourself, then the cycle sputters away because you get distracted by the pull of life.

You can even develop detached compassion for them, but you won't be thinking about them as often because their disorder ultimately makes them boring. They're so predictable in their general patterns that the invidual instances start seeming canned. Like laugh tracks.

It takes as long as it takes and it takes a lot of patience.

love,
Hops

[HeartofPilgrimage]

I think this is a really important question for us all to explore. IMO, hate is not the opposite of love --- indifference is. Both love and hate tie us to the object of our deep emotions. My personal goal is to let go, release ... release them to live their own lives, to feel their own feelings, to think their own thoughts ... just as I wish to be released.

In a way, releasing family members --- those whom we do not wish to completely eliminate contact with --- is sort of like overcoming an addiction to food. Overcoming an addiction to alcohol or drugs is a situation where you can just NOT TOUCH the stuff. Overcoming an addiction to food means you have to learn to eat JUST ENOUGH or JUST THE RIGHT THINGS, you can't get off of it completely. It is like walking a high wire, and it is very difficult. I don't think it's any wonder that we often get wrapped up all over again in the pain.

As I am writing this, I am feeling especially emotionally down, and I know that it is related to feeling that I'm physically coming down with something ... something flu-ish. I'm thinking that Izzy and others who have physical conditions that drag them down for long periods of time probably have a harder time than those of us who are usually physically well, emotionally I mean. It's just harder to feel good emotions when you physically feel poorly.

I have a feeling I'm going to quickly stop making sense ... very sluggish and yucky feeling. The only other point that I was thinking about as I began this post is --- why is it that we always equate being NICE with being GOOD? 

[Hopalong]

Pilgrim, that was a perfect analogy (keeping permeable sensible boundaries with difficult people you love).

Thank you.

(Sorry you're feeling sluggish, hope you rally fast.)

Echinacea? Garlic?

Hops

[mudpuppy]

 

It is that of self-focused ruminating on past wounds.

The way I look at it, if we are attacked physically with a machete we have to spend a few months self focused on cleaning out the wounds, sewing them up and healing. If we don't we'll die.

The psychic wounds of being betrayed and metaphorically knifed in the back by those whom we should most be able to trust, whether parents, siblings or spouses, requires at least as long a period of psychic convalescence and healing. If not we'll die psychicly.
And the attacks we experience leave far more toxins in our emotional wounds than any machete leaves in our flesh. So I don't see how one can heal without going through the process of expelling the toxins by attacking the character of those who try to destroy us with their lies.
Attacking their character with the truth is the antiseptic that stops the infection of their lies that threatens to overwhelm our defenses.

mud

[Hopalong]

I agree with you Mud.
And...wow.

The problem for me is I loathe anger because it makes me feel sick, not better. Usually.

Now and then a welling up of outrage has done me good and helped me defend myself.

So everything you say makes sense.

I think my default setting is just ... low anger. I access sadness because it seems more the point.

I did fight back some against Nmother and Nbrother, and once with an Nboyfriend.

But most of the time, nobody really cares about one's sense of outrage.

If one's going to be happy one has to let it go eventually. I've never seen a happy angry person.

Maybe it's the shock. I feel the shock, then the hurt and anger cycling around, then I forget to let it be finished, then it becomes ruminating/recycling, then I feel sick.

It's not black or white and it's all about timing.

I think you're right the healing time has to be proportionate to the wound.

There are sometimes leaps forward and epiphanies though, that release us faster than we might expect.

Hops

[Izzy_*now*]

hi again tt

It is that of self-focused ruminating on past wounds. I spent 7 years doing exactly that.

and tt, I spent far longer than that until I seriously thought about the Socrates quote~~

An unexamined life is a wasted life---

I found this very important, so along with my other statement I can say that to examine, re-examine and re-examine again, might still be a way to keep hurting, unless I could see any part I might have played in the dysfunction. What I mean by this was changing my perception to where my faults lay, and the biggest were lack of boundaries and assertiveness.

I have come a long way with those, and am doing great, when I must confront "the other side" in my present condition, and insist that I be given the care I need.

Love
Izzy

[teartracks]

Sealynx,

My whole desire on finding out that narcissism was at the root of our family dysfunction, was to 'fix' us all.  I thought if I drew the facts together and presented them  (maybe I was wanting to hold a family seminar,   I don't know) that everyone would be as relieved as me to learn what was wrong and effect collective change.  Well, you can imagine where that got me!

Hops,

It takes as long as it takes and it takes a lot of patience.

Yeah, practice and patience and examples.  

Thanks HeartofPilgrimage - & - Mud - & - Hops

It is like walking a high wire, and it is very difficult. I don't think it's any wonder that we often get wrapped up all over again in the pain.
  
And the attacks we experience leave far more toxins in our emotional wounds than any machete leaves in our flesh. So I don't see how one can heal without going through the process of expelling the toxins by attacking the character of those who try to destroy us with their lies.
I think you're right the healing time has to be proportionate to the wound.

Iz,  

changing my perception to where my faults lay,

I have plenty of faults...but as I look at all my questions above, I wonder if there's a closeted  part of my heart/head that still thinks it needs  to accept the blame for the wounds?  I'm going to think about that!  

tt

PS  HeartofPilgrim,  hope you feel better soon.  Do you have your favorite comfort food and drink?

[Twoapenny]

I've found constanty revisiting without learning from the situation does nothing but breed more hate. fear, loathing, anxiety etc.  However, I find that revisiting past events with a view to learning from them and understanding them helps me enormously - once I understant a situation and the actions/reactions of the people in it I release a lot of guilt/anxiety/self-doubt etc (as I usually feel that everything that happened in my life was my fault, regardless of the actions of the other people involved).

I've learnt a lot about myself through revisiting old events - that I'm not responsible for other people's actions, for example, and I've learnt what healthy boundaries are by working through old events with a therapist and coming up with a framework of what would be acceptable now.

I don't think you're denigrating others if you speak the truth about them?  If the truth makes them look bad to other people, doesn't that mean the truth of the situation is unacceptable to most?  If someone close to you asks why you don't speak to your mum, should you lie to protect their reputation or tell the truth, even though you know the other person will think less of them?  For me, honesty is so important.  I don't run my mum down any chance I get to anyone that will listen, but if someone close to me asks me about it, I'm honest with them and I tell them what life was like for us.

I agree with Mud's analogy of the machete attack.  I have found my emotional health to be central to a happy life and physical health.  Without focusing on it there's no healing - and I think many of us have no experience of focusing on ourselves for so many years that it probably takes a while of doing little else to get the balance back.  I've had periods where I have ate, slept and breathed me me me - and then I get sick of it all and don't think about anything for a long, long time.

I think there's a balancing act to achieve.  Every day of my childhood my mum would tell me a tale of how her mum didn't love her and preferred her sister over her.  I have no doubt she was telling the truth.  But I heard it every day through my mum's thirties, her forties, her fifties and now she's in her sixties and her mum's been dead a long time she still goes over it on a daily basis.  To my mind, she's stuck in this - she hasn't worked through it, she hasn't dealt with it and she hasn't let it go.  In the meantime, she's become an alcoholic, four of her six children don't speak to her and she has six grandchildren that she never sees.  She was my example of what to avoid - I didn't want my whole life wrapped up in my past, but I do think you need to wrap yourself in it for a time to get through it and come out the other side.  I don't know if any of this makes sense?!

Hugs  

[Lucky]

Our spewing of anger and frustration over a number of years does not compare to the lifelong spewing of anger and frustration of our NM's. They will never heal, we are willing to do the effort and after that move away from the anger and frustration. We suffered A LOT of trauma and with that comes a lot of negative feelings. We are only human.

[teartracks]

Hi CB,

Maybe that’s when you know you are finished. When you finally have compassion on yourself enough to spread some around to other people who don’t seem to deserve it either.

I'm thinking an intersection where psychology and common sense merge seamlessly and sanely would give me pause to take a nice long, deep breath, then announce - I'm finished!

tt

[teartracks]

twoapenny,

I think there's a balancing act to achieve.

I think you're right.  Don't feel I've accomplished that.  But as

Lucky suggested,, I'm willing to do the effort and that has to count for something  .

Thanks & welcome here...

tt




 

[Twoapenny]

Hi TT,


I haven't accomplished the right balance yet either - but like you, I feel like I'm trying and I'm aware of what I'm trying to achieve and that's good enough.  I'm going through a good phase right now - two weeks ago I was in the depths and who knows what is around the corner?  But if you're putting in the effort I don't think anyone can ask for more than that ( at least that's what I tell myself!).

Thanks for the welcome 

xx

[Lollie]

Many, many times I am overwhelmed by anger, fear, pain, panic, in this new relationship--simply CERTAIN that I am once again being abused.  And I’m not.  And I am brought to my knees by the realization that I have absolutely no way of knowing that at the moment, that I must constantly work my way through all the feelings and gain perspective.  It is exhausting and no matter how many times I come to the same conclusion, I must always go through all the steps again to get there.

CB, I love the way you put this. I struggle with this all the time, and like you, have to go through the steps time and time again to see where my past is distorting the present. There are parts of me that seem hard wired to expect abuse or being used or taken advantage of. It affects my relationship with my DH and most of my friendships, especially those I have with women. How many people have I pushed away, how many times have I isolated myself out of this fear and self protection? One of the hardest parts is to first catch myself doing it. Since I don't want to live this way, I need to examine each situation and figure out what's really going on.  In that sense, I think there's really no such thing as being "done." Maybe after going through the process a few thousand times, it won't seem so exhausting and painstaking, but I think there will always be an extra bit of work involved.

When you finally have compassion on yourself enough to spread some around to other people who don’t seem to deserve it either.

That's the nicest definition of grace I've read in a long time.