N damage: Itentional & Unintentional

[Gaining Strength]

but why couldn't I stop trying???... hoping for a miracle.

I take this from another thread - these words are PR's

I am writing about myself when I try to answer this question for myself though I must phrase it in the present - but the "why" I have an answer for and it is quite simply this - every human needs "family".  Every infant needs parents to give it life and to raise it, sucurely, and nurture it.  That need, particularly if not met in infancy, simply does not dry up and wither away but eats at us and sucks us in.  Why can't I sto p trying - because that need, that whole that craving is so HUGE and because it is provided for so many, for most  - so much so that those who have are utterly dismissive (or condemning) of those who never had.  That dismissiveness and contempt and rejection is gasoline on the fire.  The answer to the suffering is nurturing and the only source is not nurutre at all but torment. 

No small disjunction that those children's fables were so often moralistic ass though the world around us were filled with morality when in truth it is just the opposite but that must be bearable for those for whom family is solace rather than those of us for whom family of origin or any other family is simply the opposite.  There is no succor.  There is no solace.  There is only pain and suffering.

[Gaining Strength]

GS, I know you don't like it when I say stuff like this, but, dear GS,

not really Ann.  I know that sometimes something bumps me the wrong way but I'm not bothered by your point here.

I don't take issue with what you have written here but
I do take issue with the patness of this line:
I think the best way to "stop trying" is to mourn it & accept it.
as though it is like putting a dish away in the cabinet.

[Gaining Strength]

I don't think it is about gentleness.  I think written conversation loses much in translation because tone and body language are completely absent and that leave so much out.  I didn't intend to suggest anything about a lack of kindness or any other lack by calling those phrases "pat."  So let me spend a little effort to try to convey what I am responding to or about.

I guess, first and foremost, that although each of us here have something in common, none-the-less, our wounds are different and our experiences are different and our needs are different and our suffering and healing are all different as well. And so to there are variations in our sense of and experiences of voicelessness. 

for me "accept it" is code for a form of voicelessness - don't talk about it any more, don't fight it, don't (fill in the blank)  just go on and take what you get and accept it. 

yesterday I spent quite some time writing here but my entire post was lost in ethernet somehow but one of the very issues I was writing about is this need for so many to tell some people to quit trying to get changes or more specifically, if there is a problem just find a different venue.  If there is injustice - go somewhere else. 

For me, telling someone to "accept it" is one of the most voice removing comment that can be made.  It is dismissive.  And being dismissed, is in my experience, one of the most powerful tactics that Ns use to render their victims devalued.

I find "mourn it and accept it" like a check list.
mourn it - DONE
accept it - DONE
Now I can put it away like a dish in the cabinet.

As though "it" can be mourned and accepted in one fell swoop or even defined as though it has a singularity or any definition what so ever as though the detriment of such a childhood and the disastrous destruction left in its wake is as simple as sweeping up a shattered vessel and thrown away.

It is so complex and filled with nuances and needs and emptinesses and longings that know no end.  there are victories and triumphs and ups and downs and on and on.  And there are few places at all on this green planet where people who have suffered from such psychological devastation can voice their struggles and pains and workings out.  this is sometimes such a place but sometimes even it is a place where we are expected to "mourn it and accept it."  What ever that it may be.

[Gaining Strength]

Well I guess it is I who should have been walking on eggshells.

[sKePTiKal]

I find "mourn it and accept it" like a check list.
mourn it - DONE
accept it - DONE
Now I can put it away like a dish in the cabinet.

GS - I've quoted this, because I think it's excellent! I want to add some more detail, tho....

Step 1 - mourn it - has no "rules" or right way to do this; it can take years to really complete this. This is the getting to know those feelings so well, going back to them over & over making sure you didn't miss anything... that eventually, one develops a short-hand for this one particular mourning. It feels like an "OH, there's that again".

One needs to feel safe and acknowledged; to know that one matters - and know that their feelings are "allowed" - to mourn. I had to learn how to do this, accept myself and need to mourn, away from the toxic environment that created the need, in the first place. Pretty much by myself - alone - too. I needed that kind of privacy because of the old level of fear I had over showing any feelings... I'm opening up about that a little more these days; it's still not an "ordinary" thing for me.

Step 2 - accept it - is similar; it is not a decision one makes... there's no real "doing" involved at all; it's more a feeling that happens - again, on it's on it's own timetable - once one starts to feel the "OH, there's that again" about the mourning one was doing. It can be so gradual, that it's imperceptible - one just doesn't notice one is starting to feel this and accept it (and importantly, it's not the kind of acceptance that happens in one's mind; I've known about my mom & bro's P-A characteristics for probably 30 years. Knowing isn't the same thing at ALL....) Right now, I can look back and see a few milestones where I was starting to accept the reality of my mom and bro... and where I started changing myself... to stop the game for myself, to express myself very clearly, to start releasing my expectations for specific outcomes... and simply let what will be, be. There's another step in that changing of myself... but it doesn't belong here.

Step 3 - putting it away like a dish in the cabinet - YES. When you do finally feel the finality of acceptance, letting the obsession go and moving on is no more significant emotionally than a simple physical act like this. All the blood, sweat & tears... wails... longing... yearning... feeling and fearing that one will be obliterated and cease to exist if one gives up the struggle --  all that takes place in step 1; echos of it happen in step 2 but without the emotional intensity... step 2 also has some elements of forgiving oneself for not being able to overcome the obstacles to relationship, presented by the FOO... and this might be the genesis (I'm guessing) of finally getting to the acceptance feeling. Step 2 can be shorter than step 1... one thing I found that helped was to make as many new connections with people I liked and to strengthen connections I had that already existed. Developing that group of non-FOO people to create my Phamily. This turned out to be as important for me as therapy.

But that finality - the complete and total emotional acceptance that one is simply NEVER going to be able have that relationship that one wants (and after years of anger, rage, sorrow and resentment... how in the world could it be possible?) - that finality feels no more signficant to me right now, emotionally and personally, than putting a dish away on the shelf. Truly. It's not sad or painful at all. All my emotions are used up... I don't depend on their approval, acceptance, agreement nor cooperation (soon) for anything about me. I don't even care if they think they like me - their actions tell me their true feelings; I don't matter to them. It's like trying to get the attention of a rock...

I only hurt myself - over & over - if I pretend that I do matter to them and go through the empty (and hurtful) motions of trying keep up the charade of having a relationship with those two people. I can still care about them, mind you. I don't hate them. I do have empathy for the trials & tribulations they create for themselves - and I know that both of them have feelings.  But they're like alcoholics who are so addicted to their brand of mental illness that they actually prefer this over reality. A professional might be able to eventually get through to them; I'm no professional even with all I've learned in this process. I don't have the objectivity.

This particular brand of sickness uses a "normal's" empathy, their normal relationship style... to suck them into the spider web of P-A deceit... and then they violate boundaries without cognition; repeatedly... and gaslight and deny what they did or excuse it and blame and shame the normal angry reaction that is the result of a boundary violation. They are dangerous and toxic to me... for me to survive and stay sane myself... I must keep referring to step 2... and keep putting that dish back on the shelf.

It's not my fault; it's not my responsibility; and life has decided that I'm not going to find what I need and want - with THOSE PEOPLE. Lucky for me, there are lots & lots of other people in this world - like you, GS.... and the rest of my Phamily here and in 3-D.

[Gaining Strength]

My mother does her nasty work in a mix of intentional and unintentional states.  
It is impossible to sort them out.
Easter, she invited my little boy and me over for dinner along with 5 or 6, 70+ year olds.
On Monday before Easter my child asked if his young cousins were "coming as usual."
I got on the phone to find out.  My cousin was having her mother and sister and nieces over.
I decided to cross the line and invite ourselves - only I couldn't get my cousin on the phone - day after day.
I called her mother and Facebooked her sister.  
MY mother responded to my Facebook message (my cousins "friend" not MINE) with the comment, "You can go next year."
When I finally reached my cousin on Saturday she said to come on over, that she had invited us all but that my mother had declined the invitation.  (Never mind that my son's and my invitation was a call to my mother - which she never passed along.)

My mother intentionally did not let me know.  She could care less that Easter with a bunch of septegenarians is boring for a 10 year old (much less a 50 year old).  I can borrow some language from PR's post and insert here.
"It's abundantly clear that MomBro doesn't have a clue about me, what I need, and they flat out, write it on a billboard - DON'T CARE. I think I'm over the idea of expecting "family" to instinctively, naturally, see me as a human being with free will and value. Hell, they don't even acknowledge that I care and try to help them!!"

It is so negating as a human to know that there is not a single, solitary soul on this earth who cares about what I need or want.  It takes a toll that I cannot describe.  Today my trials and tribulations are more than I can take.  I am grinding down into an abyssmal hopelessness, helplessness.  for me - a huge percentage of the burden is having few if any who can understand and who don't chime in with (to borrow again from PR) "why don't you just let it go and move on?"

[sKePTiKal]

It is so negating as a human to know that there is not a single, solitary soul on this earth who cares about what I need or want.

These are the kinds of thoughts we need to learn to talk back to, GS.

I CARE ABOUT YOU, and I think - not sure yet - that I'm still a solitary soul (as much as I've been obsessing about the others, you know?).

And if you saw me or Hops or CB or tt out on the street... you wouldn't know that we cared about you, until we started swapping stories with each other and gave us a chance to demonstrate caring. And it's funny - even folks with "good enough" families - have this instant recognition and even some of their own stories to share. What we're going through isn't that rare, GS... I'm beginning to think it's way more common that the "official" studies know. But no one knows this about us, unless we talk. The "happy family" is less common than popularly believed, I think. It's mostly a myth. There are issues in every family - ours are just more extreme and everyone else in our families are denying they're the problem.

We have to beware the kinds of thoughts like this, GS - the external control over us, that gets internalized, so that we do it to ourselves - the self-isolating for various reasons, the refusal of help, and in my case deliberate self-abuse as a form of resistance, my own kind of "control", a plea for help - externalizing internal wounds... and a not very succesful means of trying to get my FOOs recognition that I am a human, I feel, and they're mean.

Even if I set myself on fire - that still doesn't change them or how they don't care about me. They wouldn't even show shame or remorse or sadness... so all I can do is put one foot in front of the other, figure out what I need & want, and go get it. I'll start my "training" thread soon....

[Gaining Strength]

I hear you PR.  I hear you loud and clear.
I do know that I am talking about something here  - not yet articulate about it.
In my 3-D, day to day life, the dad blame struggles are so endless and so difficult.  Each and every aspect seems so darn hard with absurd number of obstacles and barriers to get over. No doors opening with ease, no humans there to lend a helping hand but plenty of "family" there to knock me down a notch and sabotage and belittle (sometimes directly but mostly behind the back.)

You are right about setting self on fire - very clear about that.  Clear too that people in hosptiatl who have attitude that pain is going to get better are the ones most likely to get better.  I am much better on that line with physical pain than with pain in my soul.  That pain feels at times like a burgeoning fireball.

But I do hear you and receive your message. and will use your energy to put hte brakes on and start to shift into a different direction.  Thank you for that.

[sKePTiKal]

It's just that I know from sad, frustrating, crazy-making experience... sigh... that the harder we want, the harder we try, to get through to the ones who feel free to abuse us - even emotionally (the sick ones) - all we're going to wind up with is more of the same. To me, it was a revelation to find that WOW - other people aren't like that! They don't see me the same way and don't treat me like that. And that's when I started to question all the things I thought I knew about me - the things my family believed about me in their delusionary world; drilled into my head; and forced me to accept about me - to satisfy their own need for control and ego-trips. For me to be their emotional puppet... with them pulling my strings.

"OH SHAME on Amber... how selfish to think only of all the things on her to-do list at home, in her own life, with a husband who waits patiently like a well-trained border collie (sorry sweetie) for me to come back, instead of giving up weeks or months taking care of my mom and making my bro's life "all better" again ..."  As if they were gonna let me do this, in the first place. No way, Jose.

I realized I had a whole lot of learning & experiencing to do that I'd put aside for this buried issue of my FOO. And the ONLY way to do that was to engage, meet, hang out with and talk to other people. At that point I had a part of me that belonged in, was accepted in and connects to - the real world. That began to balance the insanity of MomBro's warped reality... offset it and even the effects on me... and I started to define myself by what I knew about myself in that "other world". .. now, I realize I'm allergic to those sicko people!! Yeah, occasionally I find people who set off my sicko radar - and if I can't avoid them, good boundary work seems to do the trick.

At 54, I'm finding I really didn't even know myself for most of my life. My real emotions have real substance; validity. And given those emotions, and all the accumulated-the-hard-way life lessons... I really can "operate" by the seat of my pants pretty well; I can trust myself and my instincts. And my emotions aren't overwhelming... the obsession I've been fighting is more an old mind-program that got kick-started by being in the toxic proximity of all that madness. Today, I've hardly thought about it, except when writing here. YAY.

Maybe it would help, in the day to day stuff, if you realize what you always felt you WERE; always told you WERE; always blamed for being... was then - in the company of sickos who were quite possibly incapable of even seeing you for who you are. And that each day we get another chance to BE something else... because each swiftly progressing present moment is the only possibility we have of changing - trying something different - feeling something different - BEING who we really are. We get another chance, every single second. We can't change in the past and the future isn't here yet - the "now" is the only door to something else. Maybe it's wearing a pretty spring dress - for no other reason than you want to. Maybe it's stopping for an ice cream cone and enjoying the flowers and sun. Maybe it's being assertive about what you need/want with some bored, tedious bureaucratic flunky... and not letting who they are, get to you. Bye! and you're off to another task - or just being - in the real world, with real people being the real you. Maybe it's setting boundaries for yourself about how much contact with Nmom is really good for you... and finding ways to socialize with people YOU like (liking you, comes later... it takes second place to people you like; not like the superficial, fakey country club women - if you don't like them, who cares if they like you? God doesn't ask them for recommendations about who gets into heaven).

A person's identity - personality - character is meant to grow and change over the years. Even the way we see ourselves, in our own mind's eye... changes over time. Or it should, if we're growing, evolving, human beings. And the only thing effective to stop that - is ourselves. Everything else - the old abuse, the habits & reactions and old emotions from "way back when" or yesterday - the delusionary "control" abusers think they have over us - is just brainwashing nonsense. It's probably not you, at all.

This is just my way of thinking about it; maybe a self-soothing rationalization - but it works for me:

if trying to please, get the attention, love, acknowledgement of the sick people in my family made me miserable - and I still didn't get the result I wanted - why not just be me and if the result is still the same as before (and other people haven't been frightened away from me or offended)... well then, maybe I'm just fine the way I am and it's THEM as has the problem.. and ya know what? Under those circumstances, I'd just as soon keep as much distance between us as possible. I really do prefer the company of people who are NOT MomBro... and there seem to be a lot of those people; plenty for me.

Who needs 'em? ya know? There are plenty of people who don't have family and they're just fine. We're all grown up - and I for one, couldn't care less what a bunch of sickos think about me. I can pat myself on the back, give myself a break, and go work & play & make big & little decisions that might or might not turn out well... and well, that's life. Life is too short to make myself a slave to people who don't appreciate me - just ask my 2 ex-husbands!! I used to think that "blood was thicker than water"... that one is obligated and tied to family forever - no matter how warped they are. Myth - and some brainwashing, too. The fact that MomBro offends & outrages me... well, that's a new development. But I'm just tired of just talking about it; I need to DO something about it now. I just haven't been ready, because I still believed there was a slim, miraculous possiblity that 54 years of experience was wrong... and they really could change. No more.

But I can. And so can you. Just grab the present moment and breathe - into now - who you really are and let it push all the yuck out. Build the foundations of YOUR life, the way you want it, in the real world... and just walk away from people who cause you pain, anger, consternation, and make you crazy. You're allowed.

[Gaining Strength]

I always get something so valuable in reading your posts.  They often trigger in me some thought or understanding that is not quite or not directly related to your writing but it releases something for me anyway.

I did quit long ago trying to or even hoping for any kind of love from my FOO.  So that is not a goal of mine but there is a bitterness that is somehow related to the struggle or disparity between reality and the lie - the pretense - and for some reason I take this rejection and the the pain of it all and the expectation and the searching for sabotage (juxtaposed against the support and help most people I know actually receive) at every corner - I take this out into the world around.  This is an outgrowth of the experience of my family experience that was so deeply ingrained. 

I have written about this so many times but it is not yet exhausted.  Of course i know that the bitterness or the pain need to be let go but it is the process that must be discovered.  It is not simply by knowing that anger or bitterness or jealousy or any residual of a psyche formed by N parents, is not good.  The release or the work is about making the connections, much like connecting a powercord to the outlet and thus the grid.  These connections must be made - it is the brain's need for structure and organization.  It is the connecting of unconscious, subconscious and conscious that does the RE-ordering and that re-ordering brings the healing.

Working it out, making the connections, telling the stories over and over and over until the pieces are finally connected.  It is a giant puzzle that take meticulous, relentless work.  tireless work.

[Gaining Strength]

My neighborhood was hit hard this morning by a series of tornados.  One neighbor was killed when he was assessing the damage after the tornado and was hit by a falling tree.  If I can figure out how to upload photos from my phone I will post them.  Whole swaths of wooded areas just leveled.  Our local toy store and Starbucks damaged and closed until further notice.  No electricity expected for over a week at our home and surrounding area.

[sKePTiKal]

Oh MY... well, you're OK - and your little boy? how is your house? I know from experience how one house is completely spared while the rest of the neighborhood can be levelled. A couple weeks ago, a tornado from the mainland just missed us as it sped across the sound to Duck, NC.

What are your immediate needs? Can you handle those?
I can't imagine what you're going through right now. But I'll stay online till my eyes close tonight and check back to see how you are, if you think to post.

[Gaining Strength]

Another storm is raging now.  Many tornados htting all around.  What a day!
Truly PR, in the case of emergencies I am very, very good. 
And in this case i am beyond fortunate.
So much destruction around me and yet my child and I and our home, pets and car are all ok.
I cannot ask for more.
A friend's relatives lost a total of 3 homes this morning.
It is scary just waiting for the storms to pass.
Schools were closed early, Most businesses except for functioning Starbucks and other coffee houses, entire shopping malls - all closed.  gorcery stores - closed.  In my neighborhood all grocery stores and gas stations are closed except one which has a generator and it has long lines and is out of the mid-level gas (and their prices are the highest in town - surprise, surprise.)

[sKePTiKal]

How are you situated for surviving for a week without power? water, laundry, cooking, bathroom etc?
Any important medications you're short on?

Glad to hear you're good in emergencies! Living where I do, we start hurricane preparedness about now and continue through early fall; and my other life experiences meant that I also managed well without modern conveniences. Others, I know, don't have the first idea how to function - they never had to. Maybe you can share your resourcefulness with your neighbors? Hubs has a cousin who's now in Atlanta; she's wondering what to do in her apartment building if they go under warning. In Norfolk, tornados are rare - as they are here, in OBX. The ones a couple weeks ago were the first in 13 years. We get your severe weather tomorrow - so I'll be busy battening hatches early a.m.

If you have photos on your computer, you should be able to add them as attachments to a post. I think!

[BonesMS]

GS,

I'm glad you're OK.

Has the local CERT, (Community Emergency Response Team) been mobilized?  What about the Red Cross?

Pat McCoy