Finding voicefulness......losing......finding.....practicing..

[sKePTiKal]

Those are the kinds of parents that are a threat to a child's ability to be their own person.

But with some self-reflection - and persistent determination - it's possible for the child to overcome and become invulnerable to the parental threat.

I'm not so sure the parents have that advantage.

[Gaining Strength]

Imagine, just for a moment, that we are that infant, that "Who would want it?" child who somehow, against the odds managed to survive physically.  But the internal scars and the psychological wounds left a prickly pear that society was quick to throw stones at or uninterested enough to allow to lay fallow on the streets of life.  

Now, in a non-sequitor, shifting to an outsider with wisdom and empathy and extraordinary insight, what would we tell that being about getting into a space in life where there is flourishing????  Shifting again to the being - how could we receive that wisdom and insight that is the elixir of true, substantive life and living?  

Shifting back and forth - between being the "Who would want it?" child and the person of wisdom and insight, might we create a dialogue that we could understand and give and receive all that we need to guide ourselves out of the knot of destruction and into the light of life-giving life?

Phoenix Rising is writing about a dichotomy between pain and feeling good (if you feel good then you are bad but feeling bad is good (permissible) [my interpretation]       .  As I read your extraordinary writing -terse and powerful I am seeing parallels and I am longing and determined and seeing an organic development of individual cells symbiotically developing a map, a system to overwrite the scarring, to use the scarring organically to become the fuel into something no longer debilitating but on the vanguard of consciousness shifting into a healing that is beyond what is baseline and normal for those born into the love and nurture and protection of a loving family.

[I am not going to reread this even though I know this needs editing but I don't want to lose these thoughts and trying to rework them would mean I would not express them b/c there is no way to get them written in a way that would suit me.]  MB - I am reading your thread as something more powerful that I suspect you are aware.  I think it significant and I truly believe you are on that razor's edge of something that is  transformative on one side and dangerous on the other.

[Meh]

Just writing here, it may not make a lot of sense. I've decided that rehashing and complaining about my Narcissist mother no matter how old it gets even to myself is important because it's a venting that I need to do that helps me to not haul off and kick her poodle.

Mind's-eye sometimes sees myself punching my mother....the image flashes through my head in an instant....but I don't do it... I better just avoid her as much as possible...punching her would equate to assault. On a personal level there must be some sort of crime of violence that is done to children of Nar-parents but of course it's not visible to most people.

I have childish ideas. I believe that there is the opposite of prayer for goodness. I believe that there is prayer for badness, not against badness, but instead in favor of hexing a person. So when I get very pissed off I pray that my mother's husband gets sick and seems to have worked because he did get sick right after I prayed for this. It's not very enlightened or Buddist like of me but there is only so much hope for people once they reach a certain age. I figure they are not contributing members of society (ha ha), only depending on unearned increment and behaving as if they are more deserving.

Yesterday I managed to get some of my boxes of paper work etc. that my mother had at her house. I reminded myself very clearly in the middle of it that I had a plan to...Get in and get out.

I have noticed that when I spend some time having discussions about the news and current events that it helps me to exercise my ability to have a dialogue or a debate.....and then the conversations with my mother that occure after this are easier for me to feel confident in holding my own verbally. There is something key here in the true meaning of "Voicelessness"....and the myriad of ways that Narcisists manage to remove the voice.

My mother is not very good at true debating or conversation and she rarely ever backs herself up with facts.
Therefore if I have the energy and have been practising I can usually out-debate her....
I just can't......out b*tch her.

I suppose a good defense for me would be to elevate a conversation beyond her own capacity for debate....that would probably close her yap.

My mother has actually told me literally to "shut-up". I realize how rude it was and didn't want to go down to that level but I did just to see what her reaction would be so I told her to "shut-up".....at that point she told me I was being disrespectful as if I was a teenager.

I find this to be a strange psychological thing where she can be disrespectful to me but I can not be disrespectful to her.

Confirming this through my little "shut-up" experiment also shines a big floodlight onto some aspect of my personality....the part of me that somehow does not believe that I am good enough or worthy. I think my mother knows that her ability to beat me down emotionally must be coming to an end.

I just wish I had understood more of these things when I was a teenager....but honestly I don't think that would have been possible.

This morning when I woke up I stood up on my tip-toes and peered out of a little window that overlooks water and a gray sky and so much fog and rain that it almost looked like it was snowing. I got in the shower and thought about how much energy it takes to keep things clean and organized without having a real place that belongs to me. A type of community exists in some homeless shelters because it is a collection of people that all share certain challenges--the challenges of scraping by, so we can exchange details and tips about the best food banks to go to, and also the ones that attract the most criminals. The area where I'm in right now is not a hardcore city area, it is more of a derelict industrial area where there are men who never left "out in the sticks" mentality behind.

This Sunday I'm sitting in a coffee shop facing out a window onto a street that once had a steamtrain railway along it. One block away there is an old building that houses the main Newspaper for this town, there is a big sign on top that lights up at night, it makes me think that maybe I'm somewhere important but no real news comes out of this place! Oh well. No news is good news. I've been in places where there is always a shooting in this neighborhood or that, so I'm a bit relieved to be temporarily away from that. I'm tempted to paint but I have no paint with me right now.

Ok, possibly I should go find something fun to do today.

I'm ashamed to admit that between the shelters that I have stayed at there were a few nights I stayed at my mother's house. The women's shelters fill up quickly in the winter and the only other option I had was to stay where all the chronic inebriate men and probably sex offenders end up--the entryway of that place has a man that sits behind a wall of plexiglass. So I avoided that place as much as I could because I don't have my own box of plexiglass.

At times I wonder if I'm a loser at Social Darwinism. I suspect that my Aunt views my father and me and my brother as such.
I have to look out onto the world and not believe this 100%.


 

[Meh]

The "missed-calls" area of my phone showed a distant area code, so I traced it down to an area where my father may live.

If my father was to die, my alcoholic brother would probably tell my nar-mother and she would email me.

I haven't talked to him in over 10 years, I think. Not one day went by that I missed him. There are many days that I don't even think about him.

As a kid I was too innocent to realize how degrading my parents were on my spirit.

I'm not in a position to help my father, right?

Right.

There is a pressure there, an obligation, it's a feeling that makes me feel stiff and stressful.

I don't enjoy avoiding my father, it is not a good feeling of revenge, it's just a sad remorse. Not personal remorse for not doing something I think I should but a remorse for my whole family and their whole collective disfunction.

[sKePTiKal]

I can tell you to "shut up"... and you can't tell me the same thing... when I'm physically bigger than you; when I can punish you for saying it - go to your room & forget about eating supper; don't come out until I tell you to... and you think about what you did wrong... you're going to have to apologize to me (but because I'm bigger, I don't have to apologize to you... I'm the "mom" you know - you have to do what I tell you.)

I've been calling this stuff "RULES" in all caps...

it doesn't work so well now, 'coz except for spewing negativity all over you... she can't really punish you anymore, huh?

The negativity washes off - and if you don't put it on yourself, no one knows about the negativity "back in Foo neighborhood"; they don't see it - it's not tattoo'd on your forehead. You can just be YOU.

[Meh]

I can stand up on my bed and look out this window at industrial buildings with towers and I don't want to go outside today. I can see a slide of brown shingles, water sheeting down over them. Fog in front of orange-yellow lights.

I don't have anything to write about really, I just feel so disconnected from a plan and a strategy and meaning and structure.

Recently I heard a statement "when we are in a position of weakness we don't make good long-term decisions". I'm trying to recall who said it.
Was it political commentary, I think it was.

I have people around me who will say "bless you" when I sneeze but I don't keep in touch with anyone any longer that I once knew.

When I first started writing on this Voicelessness Message Board, I was only about 50% sure that my mother might be a Nar-mother. After reading enough of other people's stories I figured that, yes my mother is exactly that. Then I started writing what I thought was my experience as a child growing up, and I questioned my interpretation of those childhood experiences. Recently I have been able to verify that my perceptions were accurate about my childhood.

The day is close to being over and I'm glad because I'm so darn tired today. I indulged myself and ate bacon and chocolate with my foodstamp money.

There is an older woman here who says that she has been working seasonal jobs at national parks for the last 10 years. She looks too old to be doing that type of work and she doesn't appear to be a passionate traveler she seems a bit "out of it". I think this sort of thing is OK for young people, college students but I feel that I'm passed a certain phase in life.

[Meh]

I got connected with a group that helps homeless women, I was assigned a social worker who is a blond haired and blue eyed college student. She suggested that I go to a local church and ask for alms. This to me is one of the strangest things I have ever had any person say to me. It is like something from a movie, a very old movie, not year 2011. I will probably do this once I figure out how it is done, of course I'm mortified but if I do it a few times I could get money for a gym membership after I get a gym membership scholarship to reduce the price then I could go get on a treadmill and look out at the fog that way.

Being "poor" is really a lot of work, no one would believe it if they had not experienced it but it is a pain in the rear end just to get the most basic things taken care of. I don't even know what being "poor" in America really means because all of the women in the shelters I have been to have stuff and objects. They have stuffed animals and junk. The challenge is building a life when at this level.

I went through my paper work and found the tax returns for 2009 so I could try to apply for financial aid in 2010. Now it's 2011 and I would have to get my two months of tax return documents from 2010 to apply for financial aid. I drag my feet because I don't believe I can string things together. I'm also tired of trying to be someone I am not.

I have to think about this a bit more.  

Really I feel like a creature with my tail nailed down to the floor.

Again, I would say I have to think about this a little bit more to decide if it's true or not but then on the other hand I've had people give me the advice "don't over analyze it".

[Meh]

I don't know if I should write this or not, I think I have mentioned it before. I'm laughing as I write this, I get the feeling that my mother is into beastiality just a little bit. She has told me that she needs to take special care when she is washing her dog's genitals (Ha Ha) I'm laughing. It's so sad and strange. She gives me the creeps.

I know that there has been a prior message posted relating to the immaturity of nar-people's sexuality.

From what my mother describes she actually thinks she needs to stimulate her dogs genitals when she is giving it a bath??

I'm laughing because it is close to the weirdest thing someone could say about their mother.   ?    ?

Why am I writing this here?--Probably because it bothers me.

I thought I knew her....and then I thought "Who the hell is this person?"

I really don't know if this makes my mother a little weird or a lot weird or not weird at all.

I've heard from my mother that dogs have anal glands that groomers have to clean or something...but my mother explicitly has said she feels that her dog needs her to stimulate it's doggy parts ????

Oh, my god, I must seem like I am from the most f-ed up family. My mother dresses nice and has a long-career in a mediocre job and her co-workers like here quite a bit and all I can think is what if they could see the mother that I know? The person who truely has a demented relationship with her poodle? THAT person. That person that tells me to "shut up".

Oh well.

[Meh]

What is real and what isn't real. That is something I have asked myself while I get re-acquainted with my mother's personality as an adult.

I ask that about myself also. There is probably no right answer to the question.

Even if I get clear about how I ended up exactly where I am, I wonder if that would give me any power to do things differently or not.

I think about how my mother's problems are not mine, even though she impacts me and interacts with me it still isn't mine.

I imagine that people my age shouldnt be so dirrectionless. I don't really understand myself at this point in life? I mean what defines me?

[sKePTiKal]

Hello. I'm struggling with this, too:

I mean what defines me?

I feel like an adolescent with an identity crisis, you know? I can describe a whole lot about the "outer" me... but it's not really "ME". I wish I could concoct some elaborate, wordy, pseudo-philosophical bullshit that might give me some clues... but unfortunately, this is the one time I find myself tongue-tied and silent.

I could... and perhaps it's all we're allotted (I don't know, in other words)... I could just accept the feedback that people tell me about me. Of course, my N-mom won't be one of the people I include in that focus group... but when other people tell me I'm "such and such" - well, if I trust their perception and their wisdom and etc... why should I doubt what they perceive about me? Maybe they're seeing me more clearly than I'm seeing myself.

But on the other hand... that's giving them a lot of power over my own self-image - how I see myself.

Where oh where is the middle path?

[SilverLining]

I imagine that people my age shouldnt be so dirrectionless. I don't really understand myself at this point in life? I mean what defines me?

I'm with you on this.  Here I am six months short of 50 years, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up...  I feel like I was so swamped by my parents "stuff" early in life that I didn't have a chance to figure out myself until my 40's. 

On the positive side, a lot seems to be coming together in recent years.  And I escaped being tracked into someone else's idea of what I should be.       

[Meh]

Just a random thought:

Now that I have realized how much I missed out on with my FOO, I can look at other people's children and feel jealousy or bitterness.

When I was younger I never felt jealously towards anyone and I didn't feel bitter either. I also didn't understand jealous people at all.

I try to compare my feelings of jealousy to what I think my mother's feelings are for me. I'm not sure that I can explain or justify everything my mother does and I wish I would stop analyzing her.

I compulsively analyze my mother or my family. It's probably not "just something to focus on".....I'm sure that the compulsive focusing is somesort of attempt to resove deep wounds.

I think most of the counselors I have talked to try to focus a person on something other then paying too much attention to the disfunctional family...it sort of makes sense.. but whatever wounds we may have we still carry with us.

My mother doens't seem unaware of her behavior she seems fully aware of what she does but with a weird element of denial.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I'm sure I will end up somewhere.

[Meh]

Tonight I'm going to go to a free meditation class at a Buddist Center, operative word is FREE. I've been to similar classes in other locations a couple of times in the past when I was 20-something.

The truth is I hate Buddism. I like to meditate for my own selfish benefit, I don't want to become more compassionate. Maybe I have to justify myself, I was a very sweet person when I was  younger but I'm tired now and really need everything in my life to be about me. Maybe that is not really 100% true. There is going to be a meditation and a lecture that goes along with it and the lecture sounds like it may be relevant to my life. This class may be about being kind to one's SELF rather then to other people. We will see.

When a person grows up with parents that turn them into a doormat those selflessness classes just arn't appropriate, it took me a while to figure that out.

When on a zero level budget it's a challenge to find things to do that make me feel like a regular person with a schedule. I also find it challenging to commit to living here until I am more stable so how can I get involved with anything?

Note about community services--I have never really thought about how other people get by in life that were less fortunate then me, I didn't really care, and I didn't want. I use to look at people that lined up at food banks and think of them as the "others". Maybe it was the way I was raised, my mother is quick to call people "low-lifes". Anyways, I'm surprized to find out how absurdly meager some of the resources are such as bus passes. Many buses I've been on have extra-room here. This is not the most congested city in the world....so I would think that they could give out a few more bus passes to people without weighing down the bus.....but they only give out two bus passes per week. That means a person can get to a place and then get back to where they started from with the second pass.

I don't know why I'm writing this here, I just think it's stupid......if the bus is going to go somewhere anyways even when it is half empty, then doesn't it make sense to let people ride the bus?

Anyways. That proves how incongruent Buddhist philosophy is. Buddist on the inside and Republican on the outside?

I'm exhausted and I didn't do much today, I went for a walk. I hate this sort of physical tiredness, I wonder if it's because there are still lights on when I fall asleep..that can screw up a person's circadian rythems.

 

[Meh]

Went to the Buddhist meditation and lecture. I'm not a Buddhism scholar at all, I've read maybe 3-4 books on the subject and have done a few versions of meditations, not enough to grasp very well the full scope of the practice.

What if I don't want to be a better person you know? What if I just want to be a powerful control freak for my own sake?
I like the idea of being in control of my mind and my life. Other people.......well....they are all  "others" to me right now.

I have evolved into a different person compared to who I once was, I'm not sort of a grumpy b*tch.

I sat down to meditate and the thought popped into my mind "I hate these people"---and I don't even know why I was thinking that? Maybe in life, after a while of too many bad experiences, you just sort of give up on being socially "normal" and see some truth that others don't want to admit really exists.--That people are not so great and nice and fantastic--maybe not worth getting to know? I'm seriously insulated and alienated or alienating myself and maybe thats ok for now. Maybe just give myself a break. Sorry Dalai Lama but I'm tired and I feel like I deserve to be a b*tch every now and then I feel like I need to be on attack mode and just be a turtle shelled swirling mass of "I hate you".

When I'm at the building and I start to meditate I realize how out of touch I am with myself. I've done all this new-agey spiritual stuff in the past so I feel like I've been there and done that. I'm really out of practice though. I felt all scatter-brained and caffeinated.

When I sat down to meditate, I felt like I had a tick sucking blood out of my eye lid and a brown recluse spider crawling in my pants. Getting figetty is part of the process for me. Over all it wasn't mind-blowingly life changing.

The lecture included the concept of --"THE STORY"-- as if the story is sort of a bad thing or a pitfall. So it made me wonder if the antagonistic relationship with my nar-mother is "The Story"...It might help for me to see it that way a little bit but I wouldn't minimize the value of self-analyzing my relationship with my mother....I'm convinced that I would have at least hauled off and hit her by now if I hadn't spent so much time reading on this board and writing.

I'm going to eat a pot-sticker and come back to this thought. I'm obsessed with food. I really like to cook especially when I don't have a proper kitchen to cook in that is when I want to cook the worst. Bake a pie, like a fresh lemon or coconut pie.

I feel like Buddhism is a trick to play on myself. I think that my problems with my mother are real and are not just an illusion.

I think there is some useful stuff in Buddhism but I don't believe in reincarnation and maybe not even bad karma.

The story of me and my mother is definitely a bigger story to me then it is to my mother.

Between meditation and lecture there is a 10 minute tea break where people happily untwist their legs, get up off the ground, then walk over to a bar where there is something to drink and chat and talk and blah blah blah.

The blah blah blah face to face with people I don't know mortifies me. I would rather meditate or sit on the toilet in the bathroom or look at a brochure or stare at my fingernails then talk to people that I don't know.

I wish I could relate what I heard in the Buddihist lecture to the way I deal with my mother and my own personal situation better then I am right now. I often feel like I am memory challegeds, I understand what he is saying in the lecture, I dont' ask dumb questions, I really do understand it but repeating it back is a bit difficult. He discussed mainly the idea of three poisons.--agression being one of them, I was surprized when he said that agression describes when a person is just very iritated like we all are here on this board. The way that we react to our Nar-family would be catagorized as agression. I never thought of it that way before, I would agree with that definition. I do feel agressive or angry towards my mother. Although I usually think of agression as being an action word and even though I am angry I don't burn her house down or anything.

It makes me wonder if there is a difference between healthy contemplation compared to compulsive analyzing.

It was pretty boring, I was trying to decide if the guy giving the lecture could pass as sexually attractive or not and how annoying he would be to screw.

[sKePTiKal]

Some random thoughts for you...

I think you're right, that there is a way to use meditation to heal yourself... and not just to cover up, escape, or ignore old wounds by seeking some imaginary place within yourself where anger & pain don't exist. The new-agey idea that we become "better people" when we are all peace, love & starry-eyed nirvana-addicts... didn't appeal to me either. There are other ways of understanding buddhist concepts.

I will probably hang on to the idea that there is a good type of anger till I'm ashes blowing in the wind... that was a total revelation to me, when I was introduced to it. That I'm ALLOWED to be that kind of angry - and it doesn't automatically tar me as a bad person. Telling this apart from toxic anger - now, that's a trick and a half. That kind of anger doesn't do a person any good at all... and yes, it is like a poison... maybe there are antidotes... things that render it non-toxic... break it down into non-dangerous single chemicals or something. But the easiest "home remedy" I've found for toxic anger is to simply "get it out of my system"... to vent, bitch, kvetch, whine, accuse, blame... to let it all out... oxygen and light have a magical way of burning all that kind of anger out; removing the radioactivity - and when it's gone... you don't need an antidote. I wrote all mine down; some here... but I didn't think it was fair (I absorbed some buddhist philosophy) to spew that out all over others, all the time. Writing let me do things like write in really BIG letters... really bold... in colors even. Keeping it bottled up - protecting others from how angry I was - only destroyed me. But I didn't want to be a viking pirate running amok all the time either... so the writing was sort of the middle path... to a way out. It let me have my cake & eat it too... coz once my writing session was done, once the "hangover" of intense emotion dissipated... I could more easily go about my day.

I had a weird reaction to meditation for awhile. When I was finally quiet enough mentally, the tears started to well up and roll out in torrents. Since that time, I've noticed that when I'm really, really, really angry... I cry. There is a symbiotic relationship - sometimes - between anger & grief. At least for me. Anger I was used to... but grief scared me half to death. I really didn't want to face what I felt was an endless black hole of feelings of sadness and loss. I felt my loss was of epic proportions... and that, like Pandora's Box, once I pulled the lid off that can of worms... there would be no end to it. Well - there is an end to that kind of toxic anger; and there is an end to "endless" overwhelming flooding loss and grief, too.

But to get started on letting all that out - I needed safety. I needed to know I was safe while putting it all on paper; safe to express it verbally with other people; safe to just finally let the tears roll out until I almost dehydrated myself. Safe to recover from all that emotion and to begin to feel different emotions, too.

When it comes up again now - and it does - it's nowhere as intense; it's more like a fly buzzing my nose or a leg cramp while I'm trying to center and sink into a centered, open meditation. And ya know what? I'm still different than a lot of people - because of having been to hell and finding my way back from it. But, it's in a better way now.

I don't know if there's anything in those thoughts or my experience that would work for you... but help yourself to any of the DIY-healing or home remedy "recipes" that look interesting and feel free to rework them & adapt them to yourself.