Subtle Damage to the Senses

[Sealynx]

I just left my mother's after spending a few days there for Thanksgiving visiting relatives. She and my aunt are both N's and it is hard to explain to someone who hasn't been there how hard it is to go days without even a slight sharing of emotion. The short attention span (virtually non-existent) for anything that isn't somehow connected to them and the negative comments that rain down in the form of "their (unsolicited) opinion" take a toll, but I always find these visits instructive.

Having learned to back away from most arguments, I have turned my focus during visits to discerning the more subtle patterns, the ones that I believe made up those parts of childhood that I can't remember and were disastrous in terms of developing my decision making ability. One instance that sticks out from this visit was a stop at an adventure sport store with my aunt.

I was looking for a warm kayaking hat and had a few simple criteria. I needed something that would fit snug, cover my ears and have a brim to keep the sun off my face. It also needed to dry quickly and resist wind. The store had one of the largest selections of hats that I'd ever seen so I had every reason to believe I could pick out a hat.

I thought I knew what I wanted until my aunt began her diatribe on how "masculine" all my choices were. She kept picking out little Peruvian knit hats with dangling pomp pomps and was growing increasingly annoyed with my refusal to buy one. I even offered to buy her one to make her go away but she didn't want one...she wanted ME to validate her choice.

I felt my anger began to rise as she continued to degrade everything I looked at. I noticed that as it did, I lost that subtle sense of what I found attractive and could no longer make a decision. Suddenly the sea of hats all looked the same. Even after she admitted that her definition of "masculine" was any hat with a brim, no matter how prissy it might look on a man, I couldn't even choose a color. My ability to know what I wanted had been effectively turned off by my anger. I spent the next few minutes picking out a birthday gift for a kayaking buddy and then left the store.

I know my childhood was filled with these overrides fueled by their need to have my every choice validate them.  It is not about believing what my aunt said, it is a feeling of loss of passion for a choice. I am sure that this reaction didn't start at the store. I learned to erase the need to want in order to save myself form the pain of refuting their attacks. It was part of why my childhood felt so bleak and why for so long I let others tell me what to think and feel.

[Portia]

((((Sealynx))))

I probably learned to erase the need to want because I couldn't have. Even now I have to want something quite badly for me to buy it at the time, instead of walking away and 'seeing if I really want it'. I guess I pretend I don't want anything much.

But I have dreams about lavish, luxury food, where everyone else eats before me and I'm scrabbling around towards the end, desperate to taste the things that look so good. It's always in a work context too, a fancy dinner, where I couldn't enjoy the food anyway (this was reality for me).

A Peruvian knit hat with dangling pomp pomps? Guess who gave me one of these, and it's too small. It's in a suitcase with some of the other totally inappropriate gifts. What I really really want is Sarah Connor's desert weapon stash. And those sunglasses.

[Butterfly]

A Peruvian knit hat with dangling pomp pomps? Guess who gave me one of these, and it's too small. It's in a suitcase with some of the other totally inappropriate gifts. What I really really want is Sarah Connor's desert weapon stash. And those sunglasses.

    Funny.  I always liked Sarah Connor--we need more characters like her . . .

Sealynx, your ability to analyze from an emotional distance is astounding.  I don't know if I would be able to be in her company and look at her under the microscope so to speak.  But, my experience being used by NM simply as a mirror to validate her is similar to yours.  And, I have striven for years to find my own passions. 

[Sealynx]

Portia, You got one too??
Peruvian hats must have been in the N shopping guide for that year! Do you think there is a secret publication they all read?? I can just imagine kayaking across open water with two soaking wet pom-poms hitting me in the face.

Perhaps we should start a magazine especially for N's, one that praises all their bad choices. We could do fun articles on how to best abuse the waitresses at busy restaurants and what to say to anyone who has the nerve to treat you like anything less than God. There would of course be a special Christmas issue dedicated to all the inappropriate gifts we can think of. My all time favorite was the gun mentioned in "People of the Lie" that was presented to a young boy after being used to kill his brother. We could do a whole page of suicide weapons.

I think you should at least buy yourself some of those cool shades for Xmas. Those look a lot like the welding goggle shades that Amazon sells. Go for it!!

[Sealynx]

Hi Butterfly,
I've always been the sort who loves to do research so I guess I turned that talent inwards. I study myself a lot and ask why things happen. I've also been at it for a very long time. If I can understand something as a process of thinking that was taught to me rather than judging myself in a global manner as bad or good (as I used to do) then I have hope to change some of my reactions.  

In retrospect if I should have cleared my mind of her badgering and realized that every comment she'd made since we walked into the place was really about her own need to feel feminine and "pick the right" things to find attractive. As annoying as it would have been, I needed to stop and explain my criteria to her and start a technical discussion of the effect of wind and water. Her femininity had become attached to the hat and she was now assuming that I had just judged her by not wanting the hat. She was ready to take anything I said as rejection rather than a simple statement of opinion and my needs.  I needed to praise the hat highly but bore her to death with the details of my search. It has been my experience that they see any failure to agree as a put down. If I had said, "That hat is much too pretty to get dirty river water on" she would have backed off. In other words, I needed to treat her like the emotional child she is.

When I was leaving the house I got in a similar and very stupid argument with my mother. She had been trying to make me eat a banana for the last half hour Each time she gave me a different reason why I SHOULD eat her banana. I didn't want it, nor was I in the mood to have it in my vehicle because the smell lingers. I had said, No, No thank you, I'm not hungry and I don't like bananas. I finally said I didn't like ripe bananas. This unfortunately allowed her to transform my refusal into the value judgment  and mount a nasty defense. She immediately responded with...You could have just said NO if you didn't want it. I buy good bananas. The whole thing had been about my praising her decision to buy these bananas. I know it sounds stupid but they are just like small children.

When a child brings you some worthless "treasure" it just found, you praise its beauty and say "thank you". I've found N's operate the same way.

Sound familiar??

[Ami]

Dear Sealynx
 That last post was brilliant! You really distilled what an interaction with an N is like!  It is always about them in some way. It seems like always need to assert that they have value. Do you think that is what is under it?    Ami 

[Sealynx]

Hi Ami,
Your comment made me think, "Why does a child do this?" It is not to share a fascination with the object because once a child has your attention it will often bring you every available object in the room in order to keep the interaction going. It is creating a kind of social contract with you, but a very simple one. Children luckily grow beyond this stage. N's seem to get stuck there. Just like the child loses interest in the object once it is "delivered", I find that my N's lose interest in things once they no longer carry an N supply. There is no ability to treasure something for sentimental or intrinsic value to the self. My aunt did not want the hat in fact her wardrobe is very predictable.

[Portia]

Oh God, that gun in POTL Sealynx. Horrific, astounding. Too horrific, I wish everyone would read the other chapter about the parents of the boy who doesn't want to go to boarding school. That conversation he has with them towards the end, and how they turn on him and his profession...so neatly. I don't want to look it up; it's too sick.

I think many gifts given to me are cast-offs, bought for the child herself, then passed on to me. I wonder if I've had anything brand new, unworn, unused? Sometimes instead I got exact replicas of her stuff, because I'm a mini-her I gues. Because we are the same person! To her.

I'm gonna look up those Amazon shades. Thanks.

[KatG]

Thank you Sealynx, this is insightful and helpful.  You are good at it.
KatG

[teartracks]

Hi Sealynx,

Procrustes
Procrustes was a host who adjusted his guests to their bed. Procrustes, whose name means "he who stretches", was arguably the most interesting of Theseus's challenges on the way to becoming a hero. He kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers, who were invited in for a pleasant meal and a night's rest in his very special bed. Procrustes described it as having the unique property that its length exactly matched whomsoever lay down upon it. What Procrustes didn't volunteer was the method by which this "one-size-fits-all" was achieved, namely as soon as the guest lay down Procrustes went to work upon him, stretching him on the rack if he was too short for the bed and chopping off his legs if he was too long. Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes, fatally adjusting him to fit his own bed.  

I give you credit and admire your ability to step back and see your aunt's ploy for what it was without becoming  Procrustes or Theseus!  

tt

[sKePTiKal]

Hey Sealynx...

about anger blotting out all ability to choose - the "give up" option - I've recently had a similar experience with a designer/store clerk. Rather than letting me choose what I wanted she designed what she thought I "should" have and (unconsciously) put down every single swatch that attracted me. By the time I left the store, all the fun & excitement about designing this custom piece of furniture had turned into a sneaky thought-pattern of "what I want doesn't matter, ergo.... I don't matter". And yeah... I was pretty irritated - at her "taking over" and at myself for not stopping her early on... for not setting a boundary with an explanation that a.) I am a degreed artist with 20 years of design experience and b.) I've been trained to sew and work with fabrics since I was 6.

When I walked into the store, I only wanted to see and look at all the fabric swatches. I wasn't ready to choose until I saw the selection - the whole big box of crayons - that I COULD choose from. My NM used to do this to me ALL the time and my only options - then - were to be angry and walk away or give up. This sort of triggered that old pattern.

Maybe it's ego on my part... that list of experience & credentials, you know? The designer was my daughter's age... and I really didn't want to hurt her feelings by rejecting her choices, either. But every which way I look at it, I see that I gave up control of what I wanted to do and the responsibility for the impasse is mine. There were a LOT of ways I could've redirected the situation, if I'd been just a bit more present in the moment. But no harm done... and I may go back, if logistics of the move permit.

[Sealynx]

Hi Portia,
If I didn't need scripts in my glasses I'd have a pair of those goggles!

Hi TT,
I do have to say that both options for fitting the bed attracted me strongly in my early years of dealing with this N mess.

Hi Kat,
Glad to be of service.

Hi PR,
I think I am so trained in resignation that it has become a physiological response to some situations, not that different from the stomach buzz of fear or the shivering at the thought of cold. Once I find one of these behavior traits (and I've uncovered quite a few) I can at least not feel bad about myself or trapped. Like you my body sent the message, no way out, give up and I took that nose dive into anger and in my case a bit of depression even though I didn't believe her words.

Notice the other thing you assume, that you will hurt her feelings by rejecting her choices. Is that true or was she just brainstorming choices for you? Where did we learn that disagreeing with people hurts them?? Do we assume that disagreeing has to become ugly and hurtful?

 What I would do with this event is do some brainstorming of my own. I would mentally explore some alternative ways of dealing with it. If you didn't feel that you were being forced into color choices could you have enjoyed some of her choices and simply labeled them as good but not for you? This would give you a chance to compliment her while stating your objective.

How could you have asked to be left alone with the colors to think? Might you have slipped in your artistic bent (and taken the "ball" out of her court) by saying, "one of my paintings is going to hang above this and I need to compliment it". I need some time to think about these fabrics. I might have backed that up with, "Can I have take home samples of some of the fabrics I think might work?"

I find that when I am confronted with disagreement I immediately assume that the other person will not hear my words or respect my opinion and back off. I have to get past that to enter into any kind of negotiation. My thought process is, "this is wrong and you won't stop doing it because I obviously don't command respect." I find that a host of bad feelings about self can flood into the simplest interaction that doesn't go my way. I try to remain aware of those thoughts and feelings and catch them before they erupt into full scale recreations of previous failures...I don't know about you but my head is very prone to creating dramas.
S

[BonesMS]

Hi Butterfly,
I've always been the sort who loves to do research so I guess I turned that talent inwards. I study myself a lot and ask why things happen. I've also been at it for a very long time. If I can understand something as a process of thinking that was taught to me rather than judging myself in a global manner as bad or good (as I used to do) then I have hope to change some of my reactions.  

In retrospect if I should have cleared my mind of her badgering and realized that every comment she'd made since we walked into the place was really about her own need to feel feminine and "pick the right" things to find attractive. As annoying as it would have been, I needed to stop and explain my criteria to her and start a technical discussion of the effect of wind and water. Her femininity had become attached to the hat and she was now assuming that I had just judged her by not wanting the hat. She was ready to take anything I said as rejection rather than a simple statement of opinion and my needs.  I needed to praise the hat highly but bore her to death with the details of my search. It has been my experience that they see any failure to agree as a put down. If I had said, "That hat is much too pretty to get dirty river water on" she would have backed off. In other words, I needed to treat her like the emotional child she is.

When I was leaving the house I got in a similar and very stupid argument with my mother. She had been trying to make me eat a banana for the last half hour Each time she gave me a different reason why I SHOULD eat her banana. I didn't want it, nor was I in the mood to have it in my vehicle because the smell lingers. I had said, No, No thank you, I'm not hungry and I don't like bananas. I finally said I didn't like ripe bananas. This unfortunately allowed her to transform my refusal into the value judgment  and mount a nasty defense. She immediately responded with...You could have just said NO if you didn't want it. I buy good bananas. The whole thing had been about my praising her decision to buy these bananas. I know it sounds stupid but they are just like small children.

When a child brings you some worthless "treasure" it just found, you praise its beauty and say "thank you". I've found N's operate the same way.

Sound familiar??

Oh God, does THAT sound VERY FAMILIAR!!!!!

NDoofus would go on and on and on and on, ad nauseum, about FORCING HER food choices on you AFTER BEING TOLD "NO THANK YOU" for about a half hour or more!!!!!  Dense Ditz!!!!!

Bones

[Sealynx]

Bones,
To me this kind of subtle crazy making is harder to deal with than overt abuse because no one will side with you over a fight involving a banana. It would seem silly and even mean spirited to most people that you chose to argue with an 86 year old over something so trivial. However the problem lies in the pattern which is repeated throughout the day in many many ways until you are ready to pull your hair out. When I realize that this was my childhood I'm not surprised that I don't remember much of it and always felt depressed and frustrated growing up. How can a child even know it exists when a parent doesn't appear to hear a word it says.
s

[BonesMS]

Bones,
To me this kind of subtle crazy making is harder to deal with than overt abuse because no one will side with you over a fight involving a banana. It would seem silly and even mean spirited to most people that you chose to argue with an 86 year old over something so trivial. However the problem lies in the pattern which is repeated throughout the day in many many ways until you are ready to pull your hair out. When I realize that this was my childhood I'm not surprised that I don't remember much of it and always felt depressed and frustrated growing up. How can a child even know it exists when a parent doesn't appear to hear a word it says.
s

It IS crazy-making! 

In the situation with NDoofus, I was not her only target so I had allies with me to tell her to BACK OFF!!!!!  Her usual response to that was to give us all the "glassy-eyed blank stare".  She even went so far as to say, and I quote:  "Does 'No' mean 'No'?"     Sheesh!!!!

Bones