Feral Children of Narcissists??

[Portia]

Amber:

Some people will freely pass through that opening, being self-confident, comfortable or attracted enough to enter into my shoes, my world as a visitor.

Interesting description. I think i do this, although I do it out of interest...(oh to see if I can *help*?!) ...perhaps I do it now simply to get a check on someone (i.e. 'mostly harmless', or not). Very very rarely will I invite someone into my space, although my other half does get invited, probably a lot to his chagrin. Well it's reciprocal.

Sealynx
I know about the wee critters but it's *fun* to observe my reaction to the harmless, big,hairy ones that really get me. The tiny fatal ones don't bother me! I think it's the movement that's the worse thing....scuttling...yuk. I can't kill any of them though.
The 'mild apprehension' before meetings - I can get this, but I think it's based on being too realistic. I have a very good idea of how things will turn out with people, and I can imagine too well how I will be tired, ratty, head-full-up etc. I can imagine the good feelings too, so try and concentrate on those.

PS agreed aboutneighbours. I'm one and I can be a right PITA.

[Sealynx]

Portia,
Before Katrina I was unknowingly living in a house that was a virtual breeding ground for Brown Recluse Spiders! My landlord who lived behind me in a flourplex had the building raised and didn't replace the mud under the slab because he wanted watch for plumbing leaks for several months. It filled with water, attracting breeding insects to the dark space and made it a perfect spider nest. He was bitten by a spider hiding in his jeans!!! He was also an engineer who lived a spartan existence, giving the spiders very few dark places to hide. Apparently my love of furniture, books and art supplies gave them more room to hide and allowed us a peaceable existence! I never saw one out in the open.

The 'mild apprehension' before meetings - I can get this, but I think it's based on being too realistic.
Don't we always give a name to the things we feel in our bodies?? But the question here is more chicken or the egg. When we look back, we see all the reasons we have for feeling the way we do. But before we knew those reasons...when our mother didn't come when we cried, when we didn't feel safe in her arms...at all of those times the brain was putting out stress hormones. So the tendency may have preceded the reasons because the body preceded the logical mind.

[seastorm]

Good grief. Brown recluse spiders. How do you cope with that?????

It is like a metaphor for what lurks out there.  If we focus too much on our fears we cant function. But there is a point where you have to call the bug specialist.

Body memories are so powerful and offer a key to the feelings of anxiety, loneliness and downright panic at social interaction. If we ignore them, they get worse. They provide such good information and intuition about what is going on.

I've been reading Alice Miller and she feels that one has to look at toxic parenting and really get into the feelings involved. Most people would rather die than face that their parents did not love them. Or they repeat what happened in childhood with uncaring narcissistic partners. It is all part of the same labyrinth.

Sea storm

[Sealynx]

SS,
LOL!! My landlord was a "piece of work" in many ways. He wasn't a bad guy just a very bright young man from a very bad family. His dad was a terrible alcoholic and his mom a heavy smoker who died of cancer when he was in High school. If  you wanted bug spray you had to buy your own! He hadn't been socialized for such things!! I would have done something had I realized what was going on but the spiders never bothered me because they had lots of cool places to hide other than my jeans!! I learned of the issue right before Katrina, I was at that time looking to buy a home anyway.

I like Alice Millers work and don't in any way think that denying what happened to us is a good thing. I just don't think that dwelling on the feelings is a good thing. I've read several recent studies on the toxic effects depression has on the brain and feel it is my best interest to limit feeling sorry for myself once I have an understanding of what went wrong. I see no reason to look back and every reason to ask myself what small or large pleasures I can create for myself in every moment.

[Gaining Strength]

I like Alice Millers work and don't in any way think that denying what happened to us is a good thing. I just don't think that dwelling on the feelings is a good thing. I've read several recent studies on the toxic effects depression has on the brain and feel it is my best interest to limit feeling sorry for myself once I have an understanding of what went wrong.

The balance between the two is difficult indeed.  I have been walking that line for some time.  I finally landed in the concept of going back into the pain in order to transform that memory.  It has been very helpful.  Had I been able to find any other way to get out of the omnipresent anxiety I would have but I still think that going back was essential for me.  I could not have done it without having identified a way to take that memory and shift my reaction to it - a way to detach while holding the memory so that the pain was visible but not sending the stress release to my brain.

I'm not sure why I am writing this.  i don't think I am trying to persuade you but maybe it is a part of my own process - not quite sure.

[Meh]

I'm trying to make sense of this topic relating the neurotransmitters to emotions and emotions to objects and conditioned responses.
I think I'm really not knowledgeable enough from a science perspective to piece it together that way.

Stop me if I'm psychoanalysing too much: it seems to me that the contentment you feel around your rabbits may be like self contentment. When a person feels very comfortable and whole in one's self. Maybe the rabbits represent the vulnerable childlike side of you. I think that maybe you trust your rabbits more then you trust people. Maybe you plus rabbit=a wholeness.

I wonder if that kind of contentment is not exactly the same as a conditioned response. I'm not sure.

I almost wonder if you are suppressing feelings around humans but not around the rabbits?
In terms of brain chemicals I don't know how that works. If one is suppressing emotions it means that the emotion is happening on a more unconscious level, so it's occurring in the brain but the person is not experiencing it?

There is a feeling that sounds like what you have described: The feeling of numbness.
Could it be that the current feelings are there within you but you are not tuned into them. Like the radio is turned way down low.

I see that you have written that you don't want to dwell on the darker sad feelings of the past. So not masochistically reliving the past continually.

About the emotional processing: I think there are different types of emotional patterns. Some people do get on a go nowhere obsessive thought-emotion loop. There are also emotions that come and go like laughing with friends, or crying with friends.

I think emoting is good and bad, the pleasant and unpleasant come together.  

It also depends on the people and the social situation right, I mean all dynamics are different.

I personally don't go out to clubs, I live in a very club-filled city it's what people do for entertainment. They get all dressed up and then they go out and judge each other. The whole thing is not about contentment. It's about achieving a certain social image I think. When someone is trendy enough, hot enough, rich enough then they have won that social competition. So they drink and present themselves then look around and accept or reject based on fashion magazine type image.  

I think it's ok if not every person likes to do that. Some people go to Antarctica and study neutrinos instead.
But I guess even Antarctica has a club.

[Sealynx]

Hi Helen,
I've always had a really big question for traditional talk therapy....What if you already know all your deep dark secrets have worked through them and nothing changed???

The dominant belief that most people have today is that therapists are supposed to uncover emotions and the issue surrounding them at which point some magic happens. They are supposed to create "ah-ha" moments for the clients and help them discover things they didn't know about themselves. That process is supposed to effect positive change unless the problem is biochemical such as is evident in bi-polar disorder. Then meds are used in conjunction with supportive therapy to help the patient manage and stay on an effect dose of the drug. The few times I went to therapy in my early thirties I spent a lot of time nodding my head to the therapists insights...I'd already knew those things. I'm a very insightful person.

With the exception of the drug therapy this is the model that has been around since Freud and Jung. This is the approach that majority of books have been written about and are still being written in support of. Knowledge about the biochemistry of the brain and how it develops is a much more recent advancement and one that is still developing. The best science comes from long term studies which means a new idea may take 20 years to be validated..

A good example of this is the way Alcoholism was treated when I was 30. It was treated as a personal problem and people were placed in a 12 STEP programs that relied on some form of a "higher power". Today, the first thing a treatment center will do is run a full spectrum of tests to look for a chemical imbalance, assuming that the person is self-medicating for some biochemical reason.

At 40 I was probably very interested in what I was "hiding emotionally" because I bought heavily into the idea that I must have buried something and once I dug it up, I'd feel differently. I think I even invented a few feelings I didn't have and agonized over their possible existence just to make sure I wasn't skipping anything. After all, we daughters have no problem finding things that are wrong with ourselves!

But no matter how many feelings I uncovered, those feelings did not alter my need to be around people . In fact what I learned in that decade was more in the realm of behavior patterns encouraged by my parents that were causing me problems with others. It was much more "healing" to put an end to the people pleasing and acting out to avoid my insecurities than to uncover some deep dark fear or hurt.

At 59 I don't feel I suppress much of anything and tend to express what I am feeling at any given point very clearly (which a few men have found rather disconcerting!!). I don't feel that some deep psychological issue is "holding me back from joy." Looking back I just see that my general feeling about being with people has a lifelong undercurrent. I use the bunnies as an example of what it may feel like to have a positive emotional response to being around people because it is the best one I can come up with. As I watch my neighbors gather just to be together every afternoon I really don't know what they are feeling.

[sKePTiKal]

Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith--faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.  Madeleine L'Engle 1918-2007

CB - your tag line seems really apropos to this topic, at least for me. Portia... that gate and inviting people in... if I don't invite people in - take a chance, give people a chance to tell their stories... if I don't do that, I'm afraid I might be missing something!! Not sure what that something is, though... it's not like I have a strong herd-instinct; in fact, I'm not overly fond of herds of people or being in them. But individually, each being in the herd, I know have their own stories.

Maybe I'm just insatiably curious about people and things and the universe. Or maybe I'm just suffering "terminal ennui" all alone in my own story, you know??

Sea: I get what you're saying about indifference. And I do agree with you about how tedious certain social activities are, especially when centered on alcohol and a self-centered group dynamics. Frankly, it's pretty boring. I learned early on in those HS years, that I didn't need to "belong" to any cliche and after one or two attempts, decided that I was happiest being able to "float" through lots of them - not really belonging as "member"; not needing that level of acceptance - but I was interested enough in one or two people in each group, that I would get to know them. I sort of developed the role of being an outside observer this way... maybe lone wolf... but it wasn't so much that I was preying on these groups; just subsisting at some primal level.

I would hesitate to try to fill in the blanks of a "norm" for social interaction and friends, still. For me, it is what it is. I'm a hard person to get to know (in person) and I don't have the same level of need for external stimuli in the form of other people, like "normals" do. So, for me - no rules about what's good/bad, normal or weird - is best. I'm just trying to decide if I'm rejecting other people out of ingrained habit, and perhaps missing an opportunity to hear their stories and I am willing to set aside judgement based on appearances & first impressions to see if there is "more" to the story than is first projected. How I feel about invitations and other people, is sort of irrelevant to that kind of curiousity. I just don't want to hide or be a hermit - because that's what "I've always done". I want to get out of that comfort zone some... just for something different. Who knows? maybe I'll end up right back where I started!

(((Sea)))  This is still, to my way of thinking, an important line of inquiry... have at it!!

[Sealynx]

CB,
Glad someone else didn't find that talking fixed things... Based on the theory I've discussed here, I worry about people who are encouraged to re-experience the intensity of the pain of their childhood to the extent that it results in extreme depression. I think one day the value of re-traumatizing the brain in that way will be called into question. It is one thing to know that you were traumatized and to find the reason why you feel a certain way or learn the traits of people traumatized in that way so you can work to deal with them more effectively. It is quite another to be encouraged to concentrate on recreating the pain of things that you can do nothing about in the present. As noted studies seem to indicate that depression is not good for the brain and can even lower immune responses. It would make more sense to me to have someone engage in trust and positive experience exercises such as the volunteer work you suggest than to engage in the prolonged recreation of terrible feelings. Once is more than enough!

I have to say my 50's have been very satisfying too, but as I approach 60 I realized that I don't have much time to enjoy the things I've always wanted to do but didn't because I was alone. I get on very well in short encounters with strangers and can engage literally anyone in a conversation. However those conversations are often all I feel the need for. I seldom develop 'friends" though I would really like to have more people who share my interests, like kayaking. I'd love to have some people to go out boating with who were equally involved in a hobby like photography. Some of the area sporting goods stores offer outings but most are centered around fishing.

PR,
I hated high school, don't attend any of my reunions and certainly don't miss the people I knew. I retain almost no friends from the time before I was 35 or so and cringe at the thought of meeting anyone from that time period. I just finished a book called "Where's My Wand" by Eric Poole. It is a story of very sensitive little boys journey from outcast to a sense of self-reliance. He moves from magical thinking based on his love of Eudora in Bewitched, to bargaining with the Baptist version of God and then finally learns that the only way to make sense of the world is to rely on himself and not hope for external miracles. It reminded me a lot of my childhood.

I tend to favor groups that share intellectual interests more than social. I have been wanting to attending a Manifesting group that meets in New Orleans but it meets on Wednesday nights and the round trip dive is 90 miles. Living where I do means I'm safe from flooding and don't have to evacuate but it is also very isolating. I know there are some cool people here but I've yet to find them.

[Portia]

Amber:
 Portia... that gate and inviting people in... if I don't invite people in - take a chance, give people a chance to tell their stories... if I don't do that, I'm afraid I might be missing something!! Not sure what that something is, though... it's not like I have a strong herd-instinct; in fact, I'm not overly fond of herds of people or being in them. But individually, each being in the herd, I know have their own stories.

Maybe I'm just insatiably curious about people and things and the universe. Or maybe I'm just suffering "terminal ennui" all alone in my own story, you know??
Agreed. But: I've heard quite a few stories; people seem to like telling me....then again, it depends on who you mix with, perhaps. - I'm reading Dan Gilbert atm and every so often I think: you're not writing this book for people like me, you're writing this book for middle-class degree+ educated people with a certain income level and type of lifestyle. He drops me from time to time because of that. There are also cultural differences which stop the flow for me. $1.80 for a Starbucks???!  Am i missing something...I don't feel like it any more. But we have to structure our time somehow and like you, I remain curious about people, life. Not as curious as I used to be. 'All alone in {your} own story' - not sure what you mean by that Amber?

[sKePTiKal]

P, being comfortable alone is like repeating a one-note melody... being with other people, in all degrees of relationship, allows for chords, harmonic & bass lines that weave in & out of the melody... with multiple rhythms... etc for a whole symphony. Sorry that's not a direct answer to your question; not sure I have much better than that to describe what I mean. By myself, I have only my own perceptions, thoughts, knowledge, history and emotions... interacting with others, sharing, talking, doing things... expands that "universe" or "story".

All alone in my own story, I feel like Clint Eastwood in Josey Wales when he says: a man has to know his own limitations. All alone in my own story, I felt unable to do a damn thing about those limitations... I was simply working with too small a data set... and once I found a way to interact with others outside my normal comfort zone... the data set grew; the sample size increased; and the range itself even seemed wider. All alone in my own story, my definition of those limitations - my perception of them - were all WRONG and I couldn't even know that... because I was only seeing, knowing, perceiving, experience the inside of my own story-bubble.

I know I'm probably not making a lot of sense... it's a hard thing for me to put into words; not sure if pictures would help - haven't thought about that until now.

SEA: I just finished a book similar to the one you described, that is "feeding" some of my creativity again and probably adding some shading to what I've said on this thread... and that you might like too. It's The Magicians - by Lev Grossman. It started out seeming like a Harry Potter story for adults; but by the end of it, I was finding and being touched by some very deep themes that still haven't completed reached the verbal part of my brain yet. I haven't read a novel like this, in some time (have been a lifelong voracious reader). I dove in and finished it in 2 days - and literally couldn't put it down. It was one of those books I'd picked up out of a table full somewhere... added to the stack... packed up in boxes... moved... and finally decided to open, last week. Even if the themes I see in it don't resonate with you... it was still quite entertaining and a good distraction while we have a pretty grey & rainy week.

[Sealynx]

Thanks PR,
I just downloaded a copy using the Doc's Amazon link.

[Portia]

Amber:
All alone in my own story, I felt unable to do a damn thing about those limitations... I was simply working with too small a data set... and once I found a way to interact with others outside my normal comfort zone... the data set grew; the sample size increased; and the range itself even seemed wider. All alone in my own story, my definition of those limitations - my perception of them - were all WRONG and I couldn't even know that...
I think I understand and can agree exactly with what you mean. It's finding that way I guess.

[Meh]

Hi Helen,
I've always had a really big question for traditional talk therapy....What if you already know all your deep dark secrets have worked through them and nothing changed???

Yeah, I know what you mean, my experiences with talk-therapy have been disappointing also. Taking antidepressants hasn't improved the way I feel about socializing. The only thing that changes the way I feel about socializing is if I like the people a lot and the event.

[Portia]

I 'socialised' today: a meeting with a neighbor and a public body, at my instigation. It was a stressful subject for all parties. I monitored myself and the others and it was interesting. I heard emotional appeals, blame-shifting, pure bullshit, covert bullying and I ended up thinking (1) why does it seem that the vast majority of people simply cannot do their jobs? and (2) it's pointless me listening to any more BS from these people, I'll have to write and see it what happens. Which is a shame. And someone, somewhere in a position of authority (their bloody job) is telling lies about events and facts. Crazy. But other than that, i found the 'socialising' pretty easy and stress-less. It helps knowing that most people are completely screwed up. It shows in their language and their attempts at manipulation. Pathetic. I think: just do your job. Just get it right. Follow the damn rules. I like a quiet life. But other people behaving badly interrupts that and <sigh>. It's no big deal. I choose to divert myself with it. And it's always good experience to 'socialise' and see how you get on. Isn't it?