aversion and backing off

[river]

This is a quote from Dr G's essay, 'Little Vioces'.

voices" are the polar opposites of narcissists.  The former relinquishes all "voice," while the latter gobbles it up.  ...............   Interestingly,  the same voice-depriving family can produce "little voices" and "narcissists." 

...........Why is this so?  Genetic factors probably play the biggest role.  Narcissism requires aggression, "little voice," passivity.  Birth order may also count: if one child strives aggressively for family resources, it is that much harder for the next in line to compete using a similar method”

I identify a lot with the first part, how the N. gobbles up what the other relinquishes.   
For me, tho it didnt seem that it was about genetics, or the other being more powerful.  Its more about one child being designated for one role, and one child for the other.  Like one sister was designated the N role, she was to rescue the self esteem for the family, even recently I found myself feeling that what she paid attention to became magically important/ embued with life.  And after all those years in recovery too!

The other sister was designated as 'the one who needs to be helped and protected', so, she became the borderline.   
And I was unplanned, and became the one to feel ashamed for my NM's  shameless behaviour.  I took in, or got installed with her disowned shame.  When I read Ralph Klein, he calls it 'the human dustbuster', or one of his patients did! 
Than at adolescence, I became averse allergic and disgusted by her behaviour. I think it was more an instincitve moral aversion to her behaviour, and desperate need to differentiate myself from her.  Her way was to say 'we do ....  / thnk...' in other words, her children are an extension of her, thinking differntly form her doesnt exist.

So, my moral instincts were right, but the combined consequences have been continued and destructive over my lifetime.    Im doing all I can to recover, and have been for many years. 

 

 any thoughts, expereinces?   


 

[Ami]

Dear ((River))
  I hear your question but am not sure what happened in my family . It is a good question , though.
  Certainly the roles exist in the N family!    x o x o  Ami

[river]

Hi Ami,
Thanks for your answer. 

[swimmer]

River-

My NM is one of six children, the third one.  The fifth one born has always had a hard time with my NM.  NM has actually said her life was so different once that fifth one was born... The fifth born says my NM never forgave her for being born.  The second born is quiet and has stayed out of my NM's way her whole life.  The second one born is naturally quiet, likes to read and is reflective, I think this helped her DEAL with my NM.  The second born says my NM has always needed all the attention, ALWAYS.  My NM had a torture type relationship with the fifth born.... Would pick on her while waiting for thier Dad to get home from work knowing she had low blood sugar at that time of day.  This would result in a fight, and the weaker one (5th born) always lost and was thrown in the basement each time when thier father arrived home at dinnertime.  Cruel!!

Swimmer

[HeartofPilgrimage]

Also cruel that the Dad could not see through the tactics, at least eventually. Eventually you figure out when one kid is deliberately setting another one up to get in trouble --- I had one that did that to his sibling. You feel stupid when you figure it out, for not realizing it sooner. But then you get over feeling stupid and start disciplining the bully for his tactics.

I think there are many factors that go into what role a child is chosen for in an unhealthy family. I think that the very idea of "rigid roles to play" is unhealthy. We are all a mixed bag of talents, gifts, faults, and sins. One day one person can be down, and the others pull him/her up. Then the next day it might be somebody else ... in a healthy family. In an unhealthy family, what is fixed is the roles and behavior is interpreted to fit with the pre=existing role. In a healthy family, what is fixed is reality as it is shared by all the members, and one's view of each person flexes to fit with what actually happens.

I think rigidity is the key to all of these personality disorders ... you have stupid and inflexible rules and roles for life that must be adhered to (such as "Sally is the social butterfly," "Kara is the black sheep," "Donald is the smart one," "Bubba will always need extra help." .... "I am always right,"If you disagree with me, you are rejecting me," "Don't air your dirty laundry in public"). People who have a personality disorder have a built-in set of reactions to the world, and they don't learn from their mistakes (what doesn't work). So they have to gaslight (find a way to twist the truth into a pretzel so that what they did is interpreted as right no matter how wrong it was), keep kids dependent (so they won't deviate from the party line and so that they always provide validation for the parent's form of reality), and exert massive amounts of control over others (so that they will never dare to say that the Emperor has no clothes). 

Adult life has beaten flexibility into me! Because being rigid caused more distress than bad circumstances in and of themselves. But somehow my mom is still trying to beat the world into submission instead.

[river]

wow!  Im learning about the degrees of .. how it goes, so your NM was frankly abusive.  What strikes me abou this is ~ she didnt seem to win any friends, like, isnt it also quite common that an abusive person will set it up so that some are linked to her, sort of 'bought off' so to speak?   
My situation was different in that my NMs behaviour was subtle, she sort of spoiled me and siblings, but victimised my father.  ( its even hard to share that).   I was caught up in that, but woke up to this as an adult, and then lived out the pain of realising awful chunk by chunk what I'd participated in.   And I realised too late to be able to make amends. 
In some ways also, one could say, it was a riot of a childhood, we wer allowed all manner of adventures, but in other ways, that doesnt make up for everything having to be so, so extra and abnormal, it was having everything but the ability to learn to address normal realtiy,  and have adequate self esteem.

River-

My NM is one of six children, the third one.  The fifth one born has always had a hard time with my NM.  NM has actually said her life was so different once that fifth one was born... The fifth born says my NM never forgave her for being born.  The second born is quiet and has stayed out of my NM's way her whole life.  The second one born is naturally quiet, likes to read and is reflective, I think this helped her DEAL with my NM.  The second born says my NM has always needed all the attention, ALWAYS.  My NM had a torture type relationship with the fifth born.... Would pick on her while waiting for thier Dad to get home from work knowing she had low blood sugar at that time of day.  This would result in a fight, and the weaker one (5th born) always lost and was thrown in the basement each time when thier father arrived home at dinnertime.  Cruel!!

Swimmer

[river]

and they don't learn from their mistakes (

Yes.  :Yet one of those painful things for me was that I did learn, in that I knew what I SHOULD do,  and then went and did the same thing over and over, like when triggered, not say what I meant, or etc. and then the anguish after!!   
I conseder myself as having a disorder, for this and many reasons, but feel some recovery now.  Thankfully. 

r.

[Lucky]

River, so in your family it was mostly your father who was the target? Or were you and your siblings also your mother's target?
How was your relationship with your father?

[river]

Wow!  You got right to the heart of it, and of me, and what I've carried all my life, with this question: 

  How was your relationship with your father?   

Like I was trying to say, I was 'enlisted' by my mum.   So, I missed my father, I mean I missed the connection we could have had.   ( Y'know, I'm longing to say more, about ths, but feel odd because of the public context, theres nobody here that I'd feel uncomfortable sharing with..... but still, you just got right to the heart of this, and of my life.....  - in fact, quicker than any T. I feel I need to be careful about how much I say for now.        Not only did I miss it, but I participated in the madness, being a puppet sort of describes it, full of her will, not me.    Theres a photo of me about 4 ys old, doing something in a sort of pose which would be being the sort of person my mother would have approved of.  I can just tell by the photo, its not authentic me, not  real self.   After my dad died, there was nothing, 10 years later I started to wake up to the reality of what had happened.  And over many years I had seriel dreams, dreams of trying to get to him before he died and being too innefficient to get there, stuck at a station or something.  And each dream bought me closer to him.  So it was like I had to try to fulfil my relationship with him pscychically, but that doesnt make up for the loss. For this, and for many more things I becam inconsolable.  My life has been abou trying to unravel this, and that brought me to discovering all the understanding about the disorders of the self.  And that gave me the full picture of the dymamic that has done so much destruction and toxicity in me and in those I love. 

Furthermore, I can also see the same underlying dynamic behind everything from witch burning to the holocaust to the Islamic fundamentalist violence, the list goes on.  And its all this that I want/ need to share with others.   To "flood my life with retrospective meaning".   This has been the organising principle of my life for a long time now. 

thank you for asking, and thanks for listening.
thats a sketchy gist, hope to share more over time.

[Lucky]

It sounds a lot like Parental alienation, that can happen while parents are still married but it also happens a lot after parents have divorced. The narcissistic parent tries to alienate the child from the other parent. The narcissistic parent is blackening the other parent's character and abusing that parent (often also the child) and driving a wedge between that parent and the child. A lot of these children in later life suffer from anxiety and depression because of the alienation. River, I am very sorry that this happened to you and that you were never allowed to really have a relationship with your father. It's such a loss especially now that your father is dead, you can't catch up with what you did not have in the past. I hope one day you will be able to accept this but it must be hard to deal with.

[Lucky]

Here is a link about alienation: http://parentalalienationhurts.com/

[HeartofPilgrimage]

It's sad if you and your dad had a wedge driven between you, and that you do not have the opportunity to repair it. However, I want to emphasize that YOU WERE A CHILD. Your family of origin was the only reality you knew.

You will also never know how many times your father decided to go along to get along instead of having the courage to spit in her eye. One of the things we have to face and it is painful, is that when the mom is a N, the dads that don't leave probably colluded with her at some level. Threw his kids to the wolves, although he might have been a basically decent person. Or, to the wolf. It's significant what we call female wolves, isn't it. (Wolf being a type of dog ...)

I don't mean to put down your realization that your father was mistreated. Just you have to put it in perspective --- you were a child, he was an adult. He had more choices than you did. You had none (or pitifully few).

[river]

Thanks for these replies. 
Tho people have said this to me before, about adults have choices, sometimes its just not true.   I know this flies in the face of much current thinking.  I just know, as I was there.  The help, the understanding just wasnt available in those days, and its not that common even now.

[Lucky]

River, did your parents stay married or did they separate?
I think indeed that for a father it can be very difficult to precisely know what is going on and what to do about it. When I think back my mother always seemed to treat my sister and I a bit better when our father was around. However our father also often enough got the brunt of my mother's moods. A few years ago my mother said that in the past it often was our father who stood up for me and my sister to people outside our family. Looking back I thank God on my bare knees that my parents never separated and that we had our father around. He is not the confrontational type and that may be why they are still married. Although he is always quite low profile life for my sister and I would have been worse without him around.
My husband is a father who separated from his N wife. I can see things from his side now and indeed often there is not much what a father can do. He was also abused by his devious ex wife, psychologically and physically. The woman is very smart and very manipulative. In a way my husband is no match for her deviousness, her scheming, her manipulations, her hostility and aggression. Their children are now 17, 25 and 30.

[river]

Thank you so much Lucky, that fits  my experience in some deep ways.   I want to get back and answer again in more depth.
 (when I've done all  those musts and oughts   : s