Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Ales2 on January 10, 2014, 01:41:57 AM
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Hello to all my friends here at the Board:
While visiting my NMother last month on her birthday (she is 77 now, I am 45), I noticed a communication dynamic, a negative communication pattern, that has existed between us for years. For some reason, I saw it with a new clarity and wanted to share this discovery. This is an abstract description, to understand the dynamic, not necessarily the argument itself.
I present a problem or complain about how I was treated
---NMom doesnt empathize or understand
---NMom blames me, invalidates me, tells me I'm oversensitive
---NMom discourages my assertiveness in the situation
---NMom has a negative bias, can't be objective, uses faulty reasoning so a solution is never found, problem not resolved and frequently, the problem repeats with another person/situation.
I don't get validated, my problems don't get solved, I feel demoralized, frustrated and depressed.
NMom is then surprised to hear that I don't feel supported or understood.
Okay, if you have ever been in this dynamic with a Narcissist, especially a parent, but it could also be a boss or sibling, or other significant relationship, its a very vicious circle. Im old enough now where I am aware, it doesn't bother me anymore, I know I cannot ever discuss my problems with my Mother (Im an adult, so I don't, but growing up with her was impossible and now I know why!). Its actually a relief to see it written out, because it all makes perfect sense now.
Im so grateful I now see it for what it is....
All the best to everybody here for a great 2014!
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Hello to all my friends here at the Board:
While visiting my NMother last month on her birthday (she is 77 now, I am 45), I noticed a communication dynamic, a negative communication pattern, that has existed between us for years. For some reason, I saw it with a new clarity and wanted to share this discovery. This is an abstract description, to understand the dynamic, not necessarily the argument itself.
I present a problem or complain about how I was treated
---NMom doesnt empathize or understand
---NMom blames me, invalidates me, tells me I'm oversensitive
---NMom discourages my assertiveness in the situation
---NMom has a negative bias, can't be objective, uses faulty reasoning so a solution is never found, problem not resolved and frequently, the problem repeats with another person/situation.
I don't get validated, my problems don't get solved, I feel demoralized, frustrated and depressed.
NMom is then surprised to hear that I don't feel supported or understood.
Okay, if you have ever been in this dynamic with a Narcissist, especially a parent, but it could also be a boss or sibling, or other significant relationship, its a very vicious circle. Im old enough now where I am aware, it doesn't bother me anymore, I know I cannot ever discuss my problems with my Mother (Im an adult, so I don't, but growing up with her was impossible and now I know why!). Its actually a relief to see it written out, because it all makes perfect sense now.
Im so grateful I now see it for what it is....
All the best to everybody here for a great 2014!
I had a very similar scenario, last night, trying to talk to two politicians. The end result left me feeling frustrated and ANGRY!
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Hello Bones,
and Happy New Year to you. Thanks for your response, I appreciate it.
I sympathize with your experience with politicians. Since Pols tend to be Ns, its very common. They dont understand, they blame the victim, they discourage folks from using the system or going to a higher authority, cant look clearly at what is occurring beyond their political bias and nothing gets resolved. Same old, same old.
With an Nparent, its worse, as these are the people who should TRY their damnedest to understand and validate their own kids, but dont, see the kids as the cause of the problem (if someone was rude to me I must have deserved it) and discouraging your kids from asserting themself and calling that "troublemaking" is a lifelong handicap in work and relationships that I struggle with to this day. Nothing was ever resolved for me from talking with my Mother. I never had the support other kids did and its hurt me enormously. And she wonders why she doesnt have the mother worship she thinks she deserves.
So much of a relief to understand this.... you have no idea. Best gift ever. Im free.
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Hello Bones,
and Happy New Year to you. Thanks for your response, I appreciate it.
I sympathize with your experience with politicians. Since Pols tend to be Ns, its very common. They don't understand, they blame the victim, they discourage folks from using the system or going to a higher authority, cant look clearly at what is occurring beyond their political bias and nothing gets resolved. Same old, same old.
With an Nparent, its worse, as these are the people who should TRY their damnedest to understand and validate their own kids, but don't, see the kids as the cause of the problem (if someone was rude to me I must have deserved it) and discouraging your kids from asserting themselves and calling that "trouble-making" is a lifelong handicap in work and relationships that I struggle with to this day. Nothing was ever resolved for me from talking with my Mother. I never had the support other kids did and its hurt me enormously. And she wonders why she doesn't have the mother worship she thinks she deserves.
So much of a relief to understand this.... you have no idea. Best gift ever. I'm free.
Thanks, Ales2. I can relate as NWombDonor also used the same tactics of attempting to discourage me from asserting myself when a neighbor was blasting their stereo through my ceiling and accused ME of "trouble-making". She ignored the fact that I had just gotten home from being hospitalized with injuries and being blasted out of bed by a neighbor's stereo was intolerable. Yeah, she was a DUMB BITCH!
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No resolution and it's on-going. This describes it for me also Ales.
Except that my last straw blew away so I've gone to a new plain where most of the time I'm emotionally disinvolved at this point. Yep
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Hi Ales. That's been a common communication pattern for me with both of my parents. I finally started to see it in my forties. They were both too self absorbed to ever be much concerned with any problems I brought up. But when they did acknowledge an issue, it was either trivialized or blamed on me. I should do something different, act differently, BE something different in order to solve my problems. But of course THEIR problems were always the fault of something outside themselves. Situations or people outside themselves had to change in order for them to be happy. So they applied an incredible double standard.
With N's as parents, our problems are our problems, and also their problems are our problems. Is it any wonder life with them is so demoralizing?
My mother is also 77 this year. The combination of age and narcissism is really showing. She yaps constantly about her own problems without acknowledging others. Iin my fifties I'm finally gaining some mental distance from the situation.
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Bones, Yes the NWombDonor! Ugh.........
GreenBean - no resolution its so very frustrating!
Green and SilverLining....mental distance, Yes x 100. Its the only way.
All the best to all of you!
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Bones, Yes the NWombDonor! Ugh.........
GreenBean - no resolution its so very frustrating!
Green and SilverLining....mental distance, Yes x 100. Its the only way.
All the best to all of you!
Thanks, Ales2.
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Mmm you've just described just about every conversation I ever had with my mum, Ales!
The ones I found particularly hard where the ones where I was becoming aware of how bad things were and asking (begging at times) for her to change her ways because I felt I didn't want to be around her anymore. She just couldn't do it. She couldn't hear me, she couldn't see where I was coming from and she couldn't, couldn't change. She's lost so many people over the years because of this. It's like watching someone clinging to a ship that's sinking and refusing to let go, even though there's a lifeboat there they can swim to.
One of the key conversations I had with her was the first time I told her how much she hurt me with the things she said and did. I was crying so much. I really loved my mum. I didn't want to lose her, I just wanted her to stop doing the things that hurt me. But it was like talking a different language, she just kept saying that people had spoken to her like that all her life, her mother had always told her she was stupid, etc, etc, like a broken record. When I said "but it must upset you mum, wouldn't you like people to stop doing that, can't you see that it's not right for you to do it to when you know it upsets you" she'd just repeat the same thing again.
I don't know. I've kind of got to a place now, I think, where I just feel sad for her that she's never been able to do what we're all doing, which is to at least try and change things and make our lives better. The good thing about spotting those sort of patterns, I think, is that you can try and avoid people who do it and mix more with people who don't.
Happy new year to you too, Ales.
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Thanks Two... your post is insightful!
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You described a very painful dynamic and I wonder how you survived and found your way to being insightful and compassionate. That was how it was with my mom too. I loved her but she was obliviously cruel. I would beg her not to say the things she did and she would act like I must be crazy. Or say,
"Other people like me just the way I am". So invalidating, minimizing that at times it seems evil.
I am glad that you can protect yourself now. Or recognize people who do that. They are to be avoided if possible.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings about your mom. So hard to go there but it is part of breaking the code ( someone else said that and I think it really explains a lot. )
So many people here have moved out the the nightmare of voicelessness and being ravaged by some narcissist but the damage is done and it is important to keep trying to be whole and healthy.
Sea
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Hi Sea, yes, invalidating and minimizing! I understand that very well. Thank you for your post. Not sure exactly how I got to being insightful and compassionate except those were learning tools that kept me sane. I thank God every day for my intelligence and work ethic and integrity that I got from my Dad, without that I would likely have not survived her.
Had it happen again yesterday and thursday. Thursday night I talked to her, NMom on the phone and towards the end, I said something and noticed she was not listening. I asked her if she was listening and she dodged the question. She asked if I could call back. I said "Why? I dont need to talk to you if you are not listening to me." We hung up. Next morning (friday-yesterday) she calls me to tell me I was being rude to her.
Huh? She thinks it was "rude" of me to end the conversation because she was not listening. Really? Should I continue talking to a wall?
When I am "assertive" ending a conversation because she is not listening, I am the "rude" one. Somehow, though, not listening is a totall acceptable behavior.
When I then told her she had been insutling to me in a previous call, she told me that she never said that and I am oversensitive.
Same old dysfunctional communication dynamic. So predictable and I am so tired of it. Anytime I need a reminder to stay NC as much as possible, I get one.
Hope everyone here is doing well. :)
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Basically, when the doormat becomes assertive, the controller becomes abusive, because their controlling tactics don't work anymore, which is exactly what is happening here. Something Ive said before but need to be aware in the short, brief abstract, so I can't get stuck again.
Hope everyone is doing well.
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This thread touches me and moves me on so many levels. I am elated, jumping for joy in the connection I feel with several of the posts and posters in this thread, so profoundly thankful for the connection.
With an Nparent, its worse, as these are the people who should TRY their damnedest to understand and validate their own kids, but dont, see the kids as the cause of the problem (if someone was rude to me I must have deserved it) and discouraging your kids from asserting themself and calling that "troublemaking" is a lifelong handicap in work and relationships that I struggle with to this day. Nothing was ever resolved for me from talking with my Mother. I never had the support other kids did and its hurt me ."
This describes m experience. I have often written about my father's explicit and implicit evocation that I got what I deserved. If it was unkindness, or meanness or bullying, I deserved it. If it was sabotage or bullying, I deserved it. While part of me understood that I didn't deserve bad treatment, a deeper, unconscious part of me believed it wholly. Why would my father whom I loved say so if it were not true. It set up a subconscious belief that if I got myself straightened out then everything would fall into place. If things went wrong then I deserved it. That thinking set me up to be a kind of permanent victim, a powerless victim and worse yet, resentful because I saw that other people who were mistreated were actually sympathized with or empowered to overcome it. It sure has taken me a very long time to figure out how I internalized these things as a child. But late is much better than never.
Bones, when you write about your mother discouraging you from asserting yourself, I am reminded of Peter Levine's writing about the value in being empowered to overcome traumatic events. These N parents do exactly the opposite. In my case, and perhaps for some of you, I am finally seeing it as a power play. My parents, and more particularly, my father, manipulated me to feel powerless so that he could exert more power over me. I totally bought it. That's the learned helplessness. I was forever waiting for my fathers permission and support and encouragement and was befuddled that it never came, befuddled and crippled, unable until recently to understand that unwittingly I had given away my power to a man whom I (falsely) believed had my best interest at heart.
When I read your post Bones, I read real damage done by a mother who discourages from being assertive and who blames for what happens.
Silver lining - your words strike me as a truism of N parents. With N's as parents, our problems are our problems, and also their problems are our problems. Is it any wonder life with them is so demoralizing?
it is too much to bear to hold all the problems. We are meant to live in community and to bear up one another - not to hold all the problems. It is just too much. The lack of concern for their progeny's difficulties is incomprehensible. The first time I was completely aware of it was when my husband died. I was a new mother, had lost my husband and our primary income and my parents were utterly unconcerned for me or my child. I was stunned but looking back, I suddenly realized that that had always been the case. I had been so blind until then. I was totally on my own and needing great help. It was too much.
Ales2 - the controller becomes abusive to keep us under their control. It's effective because as humans we long to connect to our parents. We are wired that way and society pushes it having no sympathy for ones born to parents who cannot love and encourage. Your words are so accurate and so painful. But we can heal from their wounds. Putting them out in the open is helpful, makes them more visible and clear. It's an "aha" for me. "that's what they were doing?" It was so abusive yet as a child I was totally oblivious. I had no idea that I wasn't loved. I just thought there was something terribly wrong with me and I hopelessly tried and tried to get better.
Ales2, thanks so much for this thread. It had been a God send to me, like a silver platter, offering up other's experiences that are similar to mine. It is such a gift to not be alone with these horrific experiences.
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This thread touches me and moves me on so many levels. I am elated, jumping for joy in the connection I feel with several of the posts and posters in this thread, so profoundly thankful for the connection.
With an Nparent, its worse, as these are the people who should TRY their damnedest to understand and validate their own kids, but dont, see the kids as the cause of the problem (if someone was rude to me I must have deserved it) and discouraging your kids from asserting themself and calling that "troublemaking" is a lifelong handicap in work and relationships that I struggle with to this day. Nothing was ever resolved for me from talking with my Mother. I never had the support other kids did and its hurt me ."
This describes m experience. I have often written about my father's explicit and implicit evocation that I got what I deserved. If it was unkindness, or meanness or bullying, I deserved it. If it was sabotage or bullying, I deserved it. While part of me understood that I didn't deserve bad treatment, a deeper, unconscious part of me believed it wholly. Why would my father whom I loved say so if it were not true. It set up a subconscious belief that if I got myself straightened out then everything would fall into place. If things went wrong then I deserved it. That thinking set me up to be a kind of permanent victim, a powerless victim and worse yet, resentful because I saw that other people who were mistreated were actually sympathized with or empowered to overcome it. It sure has taken me a very long time to figure out how I internalized these things as a child. But late is much better than never.
Bones, when you write about your mother discouraging you from asserting yourself, I am reminded of Peter Levine's writing about the value in being empowered to overcome traumatic events. These N parents do exactly the opposite. In my case, and perhaps for some of you, I am finally seeing it as a power play. My parents, and more particularly, my father, manipulated me to feel powerless so that he could exert more power over me. I totally bought it. That's the learned helplessness. I was forever waiting for my fathers permission and support and encouragement and was befuddled that it never came, befuddled and crippled, unable until recently to understand that unwittingly I had given away my power to a man whom I (falsely) believed had my best interest at heart.
When I read your post Bones, I read real damage done by a mother who discourages from being assertive and who blames for what happens.
Silver lining - your words strike me as a truism of N parents. With N's as parents, our problems are our problems, and also their problems are our problems. Is it any wonder life with them is so demoralizing?
it is too much to bear to hold all the problems. We are meant to live in community and to bear up one another - not to hold all the problems. It is just too much. The lack of concern for their progeny's difficulties is incomprehensible. The first time I was completely aware of it was when my husband died. I was a new mother, had lost my husband and our primary income and my parents were utterly unconcerned for me or my child. I was stunned but looking back, I suddenly realized that that had always been the case. I had been so blind until then. I was totally on my own and needing great help. It was too much.
Ales2 - the controller becomes abusive to keep us under their control. It's effective because as humans we long to connect to our parents. We are wired that way and society pushes it having no sympathy for ones born to parents who cannot love and encourage. Your words are so accurate and so painful. But we can heal from their wounds. Putting them out in the open is helpful, makes them more visible and clear. It's an "aha" for me. "that's what they were doing?" It was so abusive yet as a child I was totally oblivious. I had no idea that I wasn't loved. I just thought there was something terribly wrong with me and I hopelessly tried and tried to get better.
Ales2, thanks so much for this thread. It had been a God send to me, like a silver platter, offering up other's experiences that are similar to mine. It is such a gift to not be alone with these horrific experiences.
Thanks, GS.
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Hi GS Thanks for your comments. Glad this thread was helpful.
We are not alone, but of course, abusers like to make us feel like we are. While I recognize its not nice to gossip about others behind their back and there is good reason to obey this golden rule, I dont think that includes situations of abuse. Abusers like to isolate us and use things like "family business is for family only" and "mind your own business" and "keep it to yourself" etc to maintain that control and create isolation and crazymaking. Ive always said Im just here to learn and that usually works for me.
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I agree Ales2. Isolation is a way to keep the abuser safe but it wreaks havoc on the abused. I'm glad we have this place to share and find commonality in very uncommon treatment.
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Another dynamic - I bet this one is common here on this board.
Ive always said my NMom's #1 problem is she doesn't listen (see my thread from the weekend) so when I asked if she was listening and she wanted me to call back, I ended the conversation. Keep in mind I have probably told my NMother 100 times over the years "you dont listen/you dont understand" so I am reluctant to explain it again as she has had more than enough second chances. If she doesnt hear me the first time, her loss, I no longer repeat myself with her.
Here is what I just learned this week. I repeat myself. EVERYDAY. To friends, therapists, co-workers, basically any poor soul that has had to listen to me. This is the unconscious conditioned result of not being listened to as a child, teenager and young adult. When I repeat myself, I sound selfish, I dont allow for a response, and when I say things a second time, I unintentionally offend the listener. They now think that I am condescending, dont have patience or assume they are dumb. I just discovered it this week while making cold calls to people I want to work with and establish business relationships. It became obvious to me that I needed to shorten my message, pause and wait for them to ask a question, not to fill the gap by repeating myself. This is a vital communication cue that I grew up without and probably overcompensated for!
This is a huge discovery! :D
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Wow.
That IS huge, Ales.
And it helps me see one of my own habits in a compassionate light.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
love
Hops
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What a great revelation Ales2. Change is so quick when the scales fall from our eyes. How I wish we could will it for all of our issues. So glad for you.