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Voicefullness Employed - Cents of Self

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Acappella:
I am struggling to find employment and find my self in it.  

My husband, with major N traits, and I just moved to a new city.  

I just discovered this forum and the N/Echo terminology (been living it for ever, just discovered it is not only my ancient history – those Greeks, and I suspect other cultures and earlier centuries, knew all about it.)  I gravitate now to this forum and all the full voices living out loud here.

AND, like we all do, I want to move forward too.  Right now for me moving forward is important in the area of finding work.  My motivation to connect, through work, to the world outside my home is ironically negatively effected by my isolation. I am isolated so i loose steam to become less isolated so i am still isolated and loosing steam.  Circling the drain!   :shock:  :?  On the other hand, each time I come to the forum and don’t feel so isolated I also loose sight of my job hunt!  

I can relate to what CC said in the “discovering self” post:

--- Quote ---“My therapist has mentioned several times that if I if I begin involving myself again more socially that the answers will begin to come to me. But isn't that just a temporary distraction? I am lacking focus?”  
--- End quote ---

I feel socializing can go many ways (escape, growth, both) depending on how I/we do it.  This topic post is my attempt at merging socializing with mindfulness of issues and a forward focus – focus on finding meaningful authentic work.

I have considered joining a career support group.  I’ve read about ones in which the members meet once or twice a week and stay focused on their job/career search issues.  That sounds great AND some of my job/career search issues are a bit complex, deep for the café venue or for folks who feel less cluttered and not in need of similar support.  Like NPenny says,
--- Quote ---"How do you explain to others?".
--- End quote ---


Arrrg!  As Rob’s “It is always there” post articulates.  I want the “issues”, the pain to end AND I realize where ever I go there I am.  No place is far away enough.  So perhaps getting closer is the only way to get away?  I saw my mom again after 20+ years and saw how STILL I am sharing a map with her although I swore I was on an entirely different path!   When does it end?!  I imagine (on a good day) it is all about feeling it out, feeling out the beginning, the middle, the end and feeling when it all begins again a little bit improved, a bit less intense or consuming next time.  This post topic is my attempt at creating a future that integrates those topics, those pieces of my past that I wish would evaporate  – integrate the past issues with future goals, integrate the voicelessness with a voice, a chorus, integrate survival with thriving. THRIVAL?  :shock:   Transition. BALANCE!  I want to bring up issues and not be consumed by them.  I don’t want sympathy (well sometimes i  do  :oops: ).  Yet, I don't want to be defined or identified by my issues or be the broken "friend" of someone vested in my not mending or the lost soul of a group dependent on my being lost.  As Toni Morrison puts it so brilliantly:  
--- Quote ---"Your charity depends on my poverty."
--- End quote ---
 I want teamwork, exchange, empathy, insight, constructive criticism and very occasionally a bit o babying.  Know what I mean?

As Neko noted:
--- Quote ---“So I pushed myself to do what I enjoy”
--- End quote ---
– it isn’t automatic.  Isn't that a TRUTH!  Ironic.  Isn't being, having fun, having a passion, interests instinctual?  Natural?  Underneath "it" all yes I still believe.  Like restoring the garden in the house we rent...there is some nature under the concrete.  Takes some digging.  

And yet the push can't be an insensitive bully shove.  This post is my attempt to find and give sensitive support, momentum, to notice out loud how is that work quest, plan etc. going?    

I have considered therapy, again.  And, I am feeling like I simply cannot squeeze my emotive moments into a scheduled hour once a week with a stranger.  I feel when I feel and I like that participation is more spontaneously in this forum than in an hour of therapy.  Also, on this forum I hear/read voices filled with emotion instead an impassive other across the room in a chair.  Synchronistic voices....

I have considered joining an emotional support group – co dependents, woman’s group, anger group, adult child of alcoholics etc.  I have gone to groups before and found the experience very healing.  AND I like that this “group” is defined by a goal, emotional survival and a universally human quality, voice (or lack thereof) and not by a diagnosis.  I like that this forum focuses on a quality (or lack thereof), voice, that is itself a manifestation of an integrated self instead of the dissection I feel with the diagnosis defined groups – I am a woman in this group a codependent in another, an adult child of an alcoholic in another – ok for focus and now I am interested in integrating my functions and dysfunctions.  

Furthermore, I do want to focus on my job/career quest. I don’t always want to focus on the deeper issues.  I also need an environment where deeper stuff isn’t taboo either.  Is such balance the stuff of a more real, normal life?  I hope so, am aiming for that anyway.

Anyone out there relating?   :?:

I am thinking that posting the same topic again later (October?) and adding a date such as a month like I did for this one would give the topic a forward direction not just a longer and longer, deeper thread.  Not having posted to on line stuff before though i dont know if that is allowed or would work.  Any thoughts, feelings, insights about this anyone? :?:

Some structured stuff I may post and hope to see from others here in the future: a job history (I was paid to be quite when i was five - known that for a long time and just realized THAT was my first job!   :cry: ), a plan/s for the future, situations at work resolved win-win, tooting my horn (let the silenced trumpets blare! :D ), the shame resume (what I say to myself when I list accomplishements and in so doing diminish them/me) the answer to the shame resume - the horn tooting resume I'll never send (boastful with humble humor), mentors - people who seem to have accomplished the integration of giving and getting at work - avoided burn out etc, the resume of what i imagine i could of been had my childhood been different - put it to rest, mourn and move on.  Books that have helped:  Here is one - What should I do with the rest of my life by Po Broson.

Does this make sense to anyone, sound like something of interest?  :?:

Less structured stuff I struggle with regarding work and may post about here and I’ve heard/read in other’s post in this forum:

Self (at work) Interrupted:
                 …by chaos, now what?
                  Not fighting chaos anymore, now what?
                  Where to start the search?  Taking Breaks? Breaking down.  
                  End, does it ever?
Balance:     Lacking focus. Motivation stalled.  How to keep an eye on the  
                  prize.  What is the prize?  Easily distracted.  
                  Socializing is it avoidance or support?  
                  People pleasing at and thru work.  Win - win instead of win -  
                  lose: how to recognize and create and maintain that?  
                  Pride, tooting my horn?  Does that mean I am acting  
                  Narcissistic?  Am I being humble or a hiding ECHO?

Alan:
I can relate to the isolation.  Due to my mistakes, I find myself with no friends at this time.  I just haven't reached out to get them back.  But, during this type of crisis (I'm unemployed also) I feel better to isolate so I don't keep dumping on friends and I know how to take care of myself.  

If you will, join the groups, message boards, therapy, or whatever works.  I am a fan of mood altering, anything just short of any kind of substance abuse.  Find a way to love yourself, physically or mentally, anyway that is non-destructive.  This board does that for me, surrounded by like minded people that I can related too. It is working for me now, as it has in the past.  But, I have been down the isolation road before.  And it too shall b

I have my ups and downs, got closer to my family, all non Ns.  That was one of the problems I had in my marriage.  She broke my boundries, I just didn't realize it and became emeshed.  I will get out of it.  And so will you.

Guest:
Hi.  I'm new to the board, and haven't posted my "introduction" yet, but I saw this thread, and had to respond....I completely relate to many of the concepts addressed in both of your posts - wanting the "issues" to end, wanting the pain to end, intentional and unintentional isolation, socializing for escape and socializing for growth, sometimes wanting pity, losing friends because of my own inner intensity....etc.

I've spent so much of the last fifteen years "dumping" my issues on my friends, that I currently find myself with mostly superficial (albeit helpfully distracting) friendships. For years, I struggled to restrain my intensity, knowing that it was driving people away, yet i was unable to temper myself.  I think this was because I knew in my soul that there was something inherently "wrong" with my life, and I was searching for validation in the outside world - especially from my friends - that there *was* in fact something wrong, and it wasn't the result of a flaw in me....even though deep down I already knew that. The problem with this is that there is little-to-no validation for our problem outside of this board....(Ns and the havoc they wreck on their "vicitims" are not exactly a popular storyline on television or in the movies; no one is ever publically applauded for overcoming the clutches of an N; and quite franly, few people, even those going through the tortures of a relationship with an N, can identify what exactly it is an N does to cause such trauma in those around them...it's not physical absue, often it is not outward verbal abuse, and Ns are very good at creating apprearances that things are just swell.)

I say this, not to be discouraging, but rather to tell you that I was only able to start "letting go" of my own intensity (and this has been a recent development for me) when I realized it wasn't the issues themselves burdening me, but my insatiable need for validation for my "problems." Accepting that I wasn't going to find validation in the places I was searching for it was the only way I was able to *begin* to let go (for I still have not fully let go)

So i will say this to you...I know how how painful a current or past relationship with an N is, and I am so sorry you have to go through that. Your life *has* been altered because of an N, and that really sucks.  It isn't fair that you have been victimized by an N, and it isn't fair that the burden for cleaning up the mess is on you.  But also know that you have not been unalterably changed...you can reclaim your life for yourself, and that's exactly what it is...relaiming your life as your own.

I still have very far to go...I really only recently cut the N mother out of my life, and I'm not sure how strong I will be as the first holiday season since then approaches.....But know that I know how you feel, and it really stinks.  I'm sorry that any one of us has to endure this, but I know that each and every one of us started out with our own lives, and that the N in our life took that away, but we can reclaim it for ourselves!

I know I have a long way to go, and I realize there will be bad days and there will be better days...and someday there will be good days....and whether or not we ever communicate with each other again, I know you will have good days again too!

Neko:

--- Quote ---Accepting that I wasn't going to find validation in the places I was searching for it was the only way I was able to *begin* to let go (for I still have not fully let go)
--- End quote ---

Very well put :) I've noticed this too lately. I've been lucky, having a brother who recognizes that we have an N mother and a husband who wouldn't touch my parents with a ten-foot pole, but part of me still needs validation. Finding it on this board has changed things more than I imagined. Just reading everyone else's experiences and sharing my own has been incredibly helpful and calming. I'm finally starting to accept that others most often won't understand at all. I've always known it, and intellectually I knew why they couldn't understand, but have only recently accepted it.

Guest, I too am going through the process of cutting off contact with my N mother, and father as well. It's going to be rough... my brother's still in contact with them, and no matter how strong I try to be, there's still a part of me that yearns for a normal family life and is weak to "it's the holidays, your parents at least deserve to hear from you". :? My parents-in-law are the sticking point there - both wonderful people, but they just don't understand how a daughter could want to cut off all contact with her parents. It frightens them, as parents themselves - my mother-in-law is always putting herself in my own mother's shoes, and I always have to tell her "see, just by doing that, you show that you're totally unlike my mother: empathizing with her." She just doesn't understand though... which I suppose goes even further to show how different she is from my mother, she simply can't fathom someone treating her daughter like I was treated!

Anyway, the stress at holidays isn't much fun. My mother will phone my parents-in-law, knowing they're too nice to refuse to talk to her... *sigh* So, I can definitely relate! But,
--- Quote ---I know you will have good days again too!
--- End quote ---
:)

Guest Again:

--- Quote from: Neko ---I'm finally starting to accept that others most often won't understand at all. I've always known it, and intellectually I knew why they couldn't understand, but have only recently accepted it.  
--- End quote ---


That's EXACTLY it! I always knew rationally that people didn't and wouldn't  understand, but it was so hard to let go of the hope that someday they would just "get it."  I don't really blame them for not understanding, I mean they really have no frame of reference for this, and N's make it so that everything looks fine from the outside....the more I talked about it to my friends to be understood, the crazier *I* looked! Such irony! So, slowly I began to accept that it wasn't going to happen, and in some ways it was a relief....I could finally just stop trying....I still yearn for it, but I know better...


--- Quote from: Neko ---parents-in-law don't understand how a daughter could want to cut off all contact with her parents. It frightens them... she simply can't fathom someone treating her daughter like I was treated!
--- End quote ---


The last time I confided in a good friend (also the last time I spoke with this friend), she said to me "Oh! Don't get too upset about it...your parents love you unconditionally, and everything will eventually just blow over!" That's when i realized she would never get it! The experiences we've had are just something non N families can not comprehend.   Sometimes I can barely understand how I could cut off my family....a year ago, this idea would have been unfathomable to me....but as I said to my father the last time I spoke to him..."If someone hits their head against the wall and it hurts, the 'normal' reaction is to stop hitting your head agianst the wall."  I know he understood, but he is too deep in my mother's N that he will continue to hit his head against the wall for the rest of his life....I just hope he understand in his heart why I cannot do the same.

I worry how I will explain my relationship with my family to any future partner... Hopefully you mother-in-law can also put herself in your shoes for a moment...I hope she can!


--- Quote from: Neko ---there's still a part of me that yearns for a normal family life and is weak to "it's the holidays, your parents at least deserve to hear from you". :?
--- End quote ---


I absolutely yearn for a "normal" family life.  For years I thought I had the perfect family, and that my borther was just a troublemaker, but now i see he had broken free of the N grip, and I was still part of it.

I am worried about the upcoming holidays...but the reality is that I have relatives now that say "You should call your parents." And I know for my own sanity that I cannot.

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