Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: vunil on February 16, 2005, 08:15:44 AM
-
Hi, alll--
I have been realizing something about myself that I haven't see mentioned in books or readings-- I wondered if anyone else has my same experience.
Throughout childhood, my narcissistic family was fully supportive of my parents not being truthful with me. Sometimes it was out and out lying and sometimes it was more subtle-- "correcting" me all the time when the motive was to be superior, for instance, and not to help me or provide information. A couple of times when I was an adult, to keep myself sane when I was with them, I played a game where I would say something ("this car is big!") and wait for their response ("well, it's the smallest car in its class. It has been known by the whole world to be extremely small. Big is wrong. SMALL!"). Then a few minutes later I'd say the opposite thing ("this car is cozy and small") and wait for their response, which of course would be correcting me and the opposite of what they said before ("no one thinks this is a small car. It is the biggest car in the world.") They never seemed to notice this game, including that I said opposite things. I finally stopped because it was freaking me out.
For a narcissist, the truth doesn't exist-- it's all about two things (1) getting something they want right then, and/or (2) exerting superiority. And they don't even seem to form memories like the rest of us do-- my parents remember almost nothing of the past when it comes to me, even the recent past.
This makes a child nuts. My reaction was to become obsessed with the truth. It isn't that I don't get that there are multiple perspectives and perceptions-- I want to know all of those, too. I want to measure the car, then read on-line about what different people think about the size of the car, and the sit in a lot of cars to draw my own conclusions (to continue the metaphor).
Anyone else have this reaction to their upbringing? It has its benefits-- I'm pretty very well-informed (I think I vote for the right person -- at least for me ;-) , and I'm a great scientist-- but underneath the benefit is some dark stuff, because for many years most of what was said to me at home just wasn't real. That has to leave scars (and lack of trust). I'll never join a crazy cult but on the other hand I'll never have the pleasure of just surrendering to the wisdom of someone's words (without this little voice inside telling me to find out if what they are saying can be trusted, and if they can). When I meet religious people who have fundametalist views, it's like meeting space aliens to me. But part of me envies them their ability to give in to something like that.
Thanks for reading! I would love to hear others' views.
-
Vunil,
Good question. I have often pondered the same and have noticed instances in my life where analysis led to paralysis. Having an N-Dad, I think this hyper-examination emanates from intuitively knowing things were wrong while growing up but being told that my perceptions weren't accurate. This has spawned lots of mistrust and self doubt. We can get hardwired or programmed to view life and others this way. It can be quite a task to unlearn these reflexive perceptions and deactivate subsequent behaviors. Good inquiry. Thanks for the post.
Best,
bludie
-
vunil:
If you have read my posts on other topics you know that I have a disabled son who is autistic. Autistic individuals do not process or receive information in their brains and interpret as we do. For example their balance can be off as they walk down the sidewalk because they interpret the edges of the sidewalk differently than we do. So they are not quite sure as to where they are in reference to space and time. Why do I tell you this:
I remember my son when he was learning to use the swing on the swing set, he would always drag his feet on the ground while swinging, never losing touch with the ground. I would always be in back of him. He was not a small child, he was around 8 I think. Well at any rate I could not figure why he did this. It finally dawned on me it was because he was so insecure as to how his body moved in realtion to the swing. He had to keep his feet on the ground because that was the only secure reference point he had.
Such is the case with your with "obessession" with truth. It is the only true reference point you have had living in a distorted reality with narcs. Truth was the only "ground" you had to place your reality, your feelings in order to stay sane.
My father used to play "mind games" with me as well. It can be a crazy making experience. If what you see, feel, experience gives your frame of reference meaning then it is true and not false. A Cadillac Escapade is a large SUV, it is not a VW. Conversely a VW is a small car and not a SUV. The space each vehicle occupys determines it truth and not what you want it to be. To bad for your family that their idea of time and space and experience is so distorted. Patz
-
One other thing I notice that may relate to this is that for years I had friends and romantic attachments that would correct me and tell me what to do, a la my parents. They were always very confident about their opinions. I would be secretly furious with them. But I always chose them! Funny how that works.
I was remembering this morning some of the more egregious lies my parents have told me-- they actually told me when I was 21 that they would wait to have the childhood dog put so sleep (she had cancer) on a monday so that I could come to their place over the weekend and see her for the last time. Then on that Friday they took her to be put to sleep as they had always planned. I never got to see her.
Can you frigging believe that? It's enough to make you want to scream.
No wonder it's tough for me to just settle in and believe things on first glance.
Sorry, venting :)
-
Wow, Patz. How insightful. The analogy between the truth and your son's need to literally stay grounded is quite powerful. Thanks for that thought this morning.
Best,
bludie
-
One other thing I notice that may relate to this is that for years I had friends and romantic attachments that would correct me and tell me what to do, a la my parents. They were always very confident about their opinions. I would be secretly furious with them. But I always chose them! Funny how that works.
I was remembering this morning some of the more egregious lies my parents have told me-- they actually told me when I was 21 that they would wait to have the childhood dog put so sleep (she had cancer) on a monday so that I could come to their place over the weekend and see her for the last time. Then on that Friday they took her to be put to sleep as they had always planned. I never got to see her.
Can you frigging believe that? It's enough to make you want to scream.
No wonder it's tough for me to just settle in and believe things on first glance.
Sorry, venting :)
-
(sorry about the double post!)
Patz--
That is exactly what my childhood felt like, and how I feel around my family even now (when I am around them, which gets rarer). I feel like I'm floating in space, no sense of where I am or who I am, and no sense of what's really going on. What does this conversation mean? Why am I here? What is motivating all of these weird interactions? Why do I feel so incredibly uncomfortable?
When I really made myself read about narcissism instead of just "knowing" that's what it was, I felt a lot more of that grounding because I had labels for what was going on (they were feeding themselves off of everything including me and that's why I didn't feel like I was there-- to them I wasn't! Not in a way apart from them. I was just food.)
But your metaphor was so beautiful to me because it really made clear that if you don't have that grounding really deep in your soul, you'll never truly have it. You have to just do the best you can and keep dragging your feet along the ground...
thanks :)
-
Vunil: Your post made me think of my good friend, who I think has major N tendencies (ok, maybe full blown NPD). I have to keep my boundaries with her, but I think we are friends because I do, and she needs that, perhaps.
Anyway, she is one of the smartest people I know....ivy league grade, engineer, now an MD. But her childhood was marked with the same kind of crap you describe. She finds a way to find out the "truth" about the world as a way to use her incredible brain, and after reading your post, probably as a result of being told otherwise growing up (and because she is way smarter than her N mom). Her personal relationships are unfortunately marked with this same kind of analysis and desperate need to be "right", so she does struggle with those.
Thanks for giving me some insight today.
-
bludie and vunil:
My autistic child has taught me much about nature and people. I had to separate how he viewed in his distorted way with the real truth of his experience. I had to do this in order that the information he was seeing and experiencing was interpreted in a fashion that he would respond appropriately to it. For example he had to learn that a stove was for cooking and if he touched it he would harm himself. Rather than seeing a stove as a car and was for transportation.
Such as it is with life. If what you are seeing, feeling, and experiencing is telling your brain information...........no matter what a narc is telling you.....then it is the truth. If you are feeling uncomfortable, if you have a feeling of unreality in what they are saying, chances are it is a distorted version of what is actual.
Another example:
I worked very hard to get myself through college. My parents were to come to my graduation. I waited, and I waited. I was due at the ceremonies within 30 min. still no parents. ( It was about a 1 hr drive from my home town). My father calls the actual 11th hour to tell me they were not coming because my mother had the flu. I was sitting waiting and waiting. Just how hard to do you think it was for them to maybe have called 2 days before to let me know that they were not coming? How hard do you think it was for me to know that as hard as I worked, has hard as I tried to make them proud of me, it was only at the 11th hour they THOUGHT I might need to know not to wait. Yet, when my younger brother graduated from high school, the carpet was really rolled out. What am I to gather from this difference?
No matter what you do.......you are less than. At some point you stop trying to have a realtionship because the messages you are given are so indifferent. I would rather have someone verbalize they don't like me any day than cope with indiffence. In other words, I don't care if you come or if you go. Invisible even to this day.
So what you see, what you feel in reference to what you are experiencing.........it is true. It was true my parents did not think enough of me to even congratulate me on a job well done, it was true my parents did not think enough of me to call in advance they were not coming, it is true my father did not come regardless if my mother had the "flu", it was true none of my other extended family acknowledged my graduation.....you begin to see the picture. It would be different if they had not seen the difficulty in which this was achieved. It would be different if we were from a wealthy family and it was de facto that my college expense would be taken care of. It would have been different if my family had been educated as well. Maybe they did all of this out of ignorance. However having said this. Just how difficult is it to be thoughtful and kind. Not difficult at all. All of this is factual, it is grounded information.
If any of this helps, just remember to go over what is the "facts" and you will see narcs are truly mirage type people. The image of what they see is just shimmering on the horizon and they want you to see that to. Only when you arrive it is discovered nothing is there. Then the narc will say, oh, there it is just over the "next" horizion.........you just keep travelling with them horizon to horizon only to discover none of it is real and grounded. Patz
-
Patz: your writings are thought provoking and beautiful. Thank you.
Your image of the "next horizon" thing makes sense to me. I found that experience with my ex N as well. I also realized much later, that I had that same habit....it will be better when (XYZ) happens... That kind of thinking was different than HOPE for me. Instead, it kept me miserable in the present time, until I realized there is nothing BUT the present time. If I didn't learn how to be happy right now, in whatever circumstance, how would I know how to be happy EVER? When the future comes, it will be the present again. Will I ever be able to appreciate it?
Happiness is a habit....and unhappiness is to. So I set to work on becoming happy, regardless. I still INTEND to get out of my uncomfortable circumstance, I still work towards that, it's not like I do nothing to improve my or my kids' lives, I just am HAPPY on this road.
Pema Chodron has an interesting idea: "Give up Hope". It's a tough one to wrap my brain around, and my fiance and I have had heated discussions over the concept of it....but it makes sense in a non-depressing way, if you see where hoping for the next better thing to come along to "save us", really keeps us so unhappy in the present moment (all we really have).
Patz and Vunil: your stories of the graduation and the dog are so sad. I am sorry these people were so mean. You've done a good job recovering.
-
Pema Chodron has an interesting idea: "Give up Hope".
The reminds me of something a friend told me. She has a very narcissistic husband and when she was starting to really see what was going on she started telling herself "no expectations" when she was around him. That helped a lot. And he's gone enough that she can keep this mantra.
It works for me too as long as I have some distance from my family. It's too difficult if I'm around them all the time-- I mean it's just human to expect something that looks kind of like normal interaction!
-
desperate need to be "right",
And the sad thing is she probably doesn't see it that way- she's just trying to make sure she isn't fooled or doesn't get her hopes up about something that might turn out to be false, or she's just trying to find her grounding when it's so tough to believe anything.
My sister does this a lot (I think more than I do, but it's tough to see oneself!)-- and it makes conversations strange sometimes. She keeps coming back to the thing she wants to be 'right' about, when I either don't care or don't agree. I sometimes have to leave her alone for a while until she forgets her "mission" to make me "see" the truth about whatever she's stuck on.
We have talked about it and we both know we became scientists in part because of our N parents lying to us all the time.
I am hoping knowing about this, both sides of it, will help me avoid its pitfalls. It's so tough...
-
Hi vunil,
Thanks for posting your experience so we could see where you're coming from. And it's quite fascinating.
I played a game where I would say something ("this car is big!") and wait for their response ("well, it's the smallest car in its class. It has been known by the whole world to be extremely small. Big is wrong. SMALL!").
LOL!
They never seemed to notice this game, including that I said opposite things. I finally stopped because it was freaking me out.
And the experiment was successful and you got some results. You were already a scientist... :)
This makes a child nuts. My reaction was to become obsessed with the truth. It isn't that I don't get that there are multiple perspectives and perceptions-- I want to know all of those, too. I want to measure the car, then read on-line about what different people think about the size of the car, and the sit in a lot of cars to draw my own conclusions (to continue the metaphor).
I don't blame you. But it's kind of a high price to pay. It takes a lot of time, not everyone is going to go along with it, many will lose interest in all this empirical testing, and especially a romantic partner will feel 'tested' all the time. (If you make others prove what they're saying, or if you correct them a lot because they're slightly inaccurate or something.)
I wouldn't surrender to the wisdom of anyone's words unless I happen to agree with them anyway. I used to go to a throw-down church every Sunday (I'm jewish), and I envied the congregants who had total blind faith. I couldn't feel that no matter what. I'm way too skeptical and a questioner.
Another thing, there is the "truth" and there is "honesty." IMO truth is more of a shared agreement about reality. And honesty is being open with one's knowledge or information. However, honesty can be used abusively and so can the truth if a child is influenced to accept a bunch of distortions called the truth by messed up adults.
hope that wasn't too confusing.
bunny
-
One reason why I love the internet so much is because whenever I want an answer, which is quite often, I just google it. Finding the "truth" as you so well put, is so much of who I am. I never really put it together as stemming from the N's in my life, but I guess you are right. Friends and co-workers think I am this incredibly smart person and always come to me with questions. I just call it a head full of useless information which makes me feel more like Cliff Claven than an intelligent person. You know that annoying mailman who hung out at Cheers. It is true though, nothing annoys me more than someone spouting off as an expert know it all with incorrect information.
It reminds me of something that happened with my exN. We were having a discussion one day and it included the Mason-Dixon line. We live in PA and he siad that it was down south. I told him no it was not, its the border between PA and MD. Well you would have thought that I commited some mortal sin the way he chastised me, calling me a stupid bimbo, and he went on and on. He carried on so much that I gave in and believed him. It continued to bother me for days and weeks. He even told his friends what a stupid bimbo I was for thinking the PA-MD borderwas the Mason-Dixon line. This happened prior to having internet at home. Eventually, I decided to look it up. We had a really old set of encyclopedia's from the 60's. When I looked it up and found that I was right, I was really mad at how he belittled me over it and decided to give it back. For several weeks I would bring it up in front of many friends. He would do his normal routine of how smart he was and what a stupid bimbo I was etc. Whe I felt that enough people had heard it. I got the encyclopedia out and showed it to him. The first thing he said was "thats wrong". I couldn't believe my ears. I looked at himand said "you are so obsessed with being right that your saying an encyclopedia is wrong." Then he said "then there is 2 Mason-Dixon lines." I laughed in his face and said "do you realize how ridiculous you sound?" He continued to insist he was right. Then for weeks afterward I made sure everyone heard about his Mason-Dixon line knowledge as well as the incorrect encyclopedia. I set him up good, he deserved it.
-
Narcs are totally obessessed with being right. Even given empirical information ......it is just like them to say the encyclopedia is wrong! What a hoot. Patz
-
I've had a lot of boyfriends like this, too. They would lecture me on my own fields of interest, tell me what I was saying was wrong before they had the chance to even know what I was saying in the first place, and sometimes would even give me a long lecture about something that (they forgot) I had told them in the first place.
but here's the crux of the matter-- why did I choose them? And did I sort of like competing with them and sometimes winning? When I remember them I just remember wanting to strangle them, but there was obviously more to it.
And something else really bugs me and I'd like some help with it-- I sometimes find people without the sort of arrogance that my ex-es all had kind of boring. Is this because I don't have the chance to prove myself with them? And because I sort of want to try to win, and if the opponent isn't a good foe then what's the point? Why do I still find narcissism kind of exdciting in a man? Is that just cultural, or is it because of my childhood exclusively?
If all that is true it really pisses me off because it means I am still being led around by the nose by my ridiculous upbringing. Bleah!
-
but here's the crux of the matter-- why did I choose them? And did I sort of like competing with them and sometimes winning? When I remember them I just remember wanting to strangle them, but there was obviously more to it.
Maybe you needed someone similar to your parents to consider your opinion as valid as theirs. And you were testing that out.
And something else really bugs me and I'd like some help with it-- I sometimes find people without the sort of arrogance that my ex-es all had kind of boring. Is this because I don't have the chance to prove myself with them? And because I sort of want to try to win, and if the opponent isn't a good foe then what's the point? Why do I still find narcissism kind of exdciting in a man? Is that just cultural, or is it because of my childhood exclusively?
Narcissistic men are charming, exciting, and very seductive. They're alluring as all get-out. Their arrogance can be quite exciting and thrilling even. It's not abnormal to find them attractive and exciting. I do. The q is, can you tell whether the man is a big jerk N, or just kind of puffed up and basically not a bad guy.
bunny
-
vunil:
We are so drawn to N's. They are charming, articulate, showering you with affection etc. Classic narcs. How you shake out the good from the bad still remains a mystery to me. However I think we repeat situations that we are "used" to. As someone pointed out you might be "recreating" how you were treated at home, it feels comfortable and known. Patz
-
Hi again Vunil, glad you started this thread :D
I'll never have the pleasure of just surrendering to the wisdom of someone's words (without this little voice inside telling me to find out if what they are saying can be trusted, and if they can). When I meet religious people who have fundametalist views, it's like meeting space aliens to me. But part of me envies them their ability to give in to something like that.
Recently I’ve been wondering why I look for people to look up to, to learn from, to admire. And when I find people I think are interesting (like authors), I listen and read until I find something I disagree with – then – I want more. I’m deflated. I want answers! Now I’m beginning to accept that some of the answers lie in the differences: not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but ‘different’. And accepting the differences as interesting and okay. Maybe trusting myself more too?
They were always very confident about their opinions.
What is this thing we call ‘confidence’? Self-confident. Like they have the answers and we want to know? I’m not confident in my terms because perhaps like you, I don’t think I ever have all the answers about anything. It’s always a fudge of some sorts (this person is a better bet for the country than the other, but none of them are really any good).
Confidence comes from having fixed ideas and beliefs about reality – which I think can be a very harmful way of being. God on our side and so on. And also, when unpleasant reality hits (like Vietnam) that self-confidence can be temporarily shattered. Isn’t it better to be continually ‘not sure’? Always learning? I don’t know why society admires ‘confidence’. Is it because we’re all lost really? (Fundamentalist religion is a great way of not thinking about life’s uncertainties. A cop –out. It might be cosy, but it’s a cosy prison.)
No wonder it's tough for me to just settle in and believe things on first glance
I think this is a gift! A trait to be celebrated!
What does this conversation mean? Why am I here? What is motivating all of these weird interactions? Why do I feel so incredibly uncomfortable?
Yep, me too. It was horrible. It was destructive, life-draining. Crazy-making. Cue drink and drugs to escape.
(they were feeding themselves off of everything including me and that's why I didn't feel like I was there-- to them I wasn't! Not in a way apart from them. I was just food.)
big *sigh*, I’m sorry Vunil, it’s awful, I know. Like we just don’t exist as separate thinking beings.
I mean it's just human to expect something that looks kind of like normal interaction!
Yes! This is what an interaction looks like to us? Maybe it looks different to others. My mother likes to monologue at me. Maybe she likes monologues. And I guess if you do, that’s okay. But monologues don’t require two people, just one. And maybe a pet, or a photo to talk to. :? Cruel perhaps, but true to me. (Is it better to be kind or honest? Honest for me, at the last analysis, tell me I'm dying, I want to know.)
Bunny: IMO truth is more of a shared agreement about reality. And honesty is being open with one's knowledge or information.
I like that about truth. I might go further. I might agree that your internal truth is true to you (delusions, hallucinations) but it’s not true to me. But that doesn’t make it true or not true in external reality……like seeing religious visions…I’d love to subject those milk-crying statues to scientific study. But then science is very limited. So truth is too. Absolute truth? – we’re not equipped to know it, if it exists. We are made (constructed) to live with uncertainty (partly because we perceive uncertainty)….if we weren’t here to perceive uncertainty, would it exist?...ha ha…sorry… getting ‘up myself’. (The second-order religious conversion comes when we think: uncertainty is only in my head, therefore certainty must exist externally, therefore God exists….nonsense, dangerous stuff). Less seriously, I like to think of my truth vs your truth (both are valid).
but here's the crux of the matter-- why did I choose them? And did I sort of like competing with them and sometimes winning?
Maybe because you’re hopeful of finding some absolute truth? You want the answers? I think that’s okay, striving for answers. But with a little balance – taking time to protect yourself against people who want to feed off you and also learning how to enjoy life as well, sod the truth kind of thing, just enjoy the colour of the sky without thinking about how it isn’t really, actually blue…
Hey and I want to say, maybe I sound entrenched in my views(?), and what I want of course, is disagreement, other opinions, more learning. It may not appear obvious so I’m saying it? Honesty also exists in saying this is my opinion now and I’m happy to hear other opinions and maybe change my mind…best, P
-
Patz,
about your graduation and the extended family not knowing or acknowledging: Is it - because your parents didn’t attend, it meant nothing to them? They weren’t there, therefore it didn’t exist kind of thing? This is like my mother and her family. I tried to reach out to them after decades, to find nothing there, like I don’t exist except as a story my mother might tell from time to time. I think that’s what I am, a story she can relate. And if she wasn’t there at my graduation, she wouldn’t be able to tell a story of how she did this and she did that (she tried on my gown and posed for a photo, saying she could fool people into thinking she’d graduated if she showed them the photo..). Hey, if they had of been there, it wouldn’t have been pretty. :roll: Those expressions of love and acceptance that we look for, they don’t come I’m afraid. :( P
-
May I just say that you guys are amazing? Insightful and also able to articulate it. I'm really enjoying this!
I think that if I am really honest, then bunny is right that I am secretly trying to once and for all win the big argument (not sure what that argument is-- "yes I AM SO someone worth listening to and not inferior to you!"). I don't want to spend my life on that dumb argument.
Just to add another wrinkle, too-- being a successful woman puts me in situations all the time where an arrogant (and sometimes full-blown narc) man "puts me in my place" or dismisses me. It's just ubiquitous-- not every week, but certainly every month it happens. The irony is I'm pretty good at fighting back, but BOY does it get tiring! And I never stop getting mad about it (I stopped showing my anger a long time ago-- other techniques work much better). It's just this button that keeps being pushed.
As I read somewhere "they are everywhere"!
I wonder if women are victims of narcissists more than men are. Little girls on up to grown women-- my brother certainly had a cushy time of it compared to his sisters. Sometimes when I first meet someone at work who has these clear narc. tendencies I can see him almost lick his lips-- I guess I seem like someone it will be fun to treat badly on purpose-- this young-looking female. The road is strewn with many of these guys :)
How all of this can translate to my being able to have a genuine relationship with a great man, I have no earthly idea. Does that competitiveness and mistrust always enter into romantic relationships between men and women? Especially for women who survived a narcissistic family? How can you ever let go and be ok with this person who society gives more power than you have (and who needs to feel some sense of power) when you have been treated so badly by those with power over you before? Especially if, ahem, one sort of very much likes men with a little swagger in their step?
Maybe that's a new thread...
-
PS I was thinking about that poor guy and his mason-dixon line (where did he think it was?). It reminds me so much of dates I've had when men "told" me the most outrageously incorrect things. Here's the thing-- clearly it isn't that sexy to explain to them in detail why they are wrong. I know this, because when I do that they don't call back :) Also, at some level I don't care about what they know, as long as they aren't outrageously incompatible with me. (not sure that last statement is true, will need to ponder...)
But on the other hand it is just too irritating to nod and go "oh, my, really? Whales are fish? The world was made in 7 days? Iraq is in Africa? WOW!" Even non-narcissistic men act in this macho way sometimes (I think. Right?) How can we tell when it's a narcissist at our table, or just a guy? Even super-terrific guys love to be the expert in things, I think. Unless they really are an expert, it's hard for me to let them play this role to any large extent, and if they are spewing utter nonsense it's really really tough. Sometimes I might pick what's true over a really sexy guy. How dumb of me.
(I sound like a total shrew. Alas.)
-
Vunil, you don't sound like a shrew, just a really funny, smart woman. A lot of men get threatened by that and a lot of men like it as a challenge to make a show of their "power" (the jackasses....yes they do look like the majority, huh?). If you are in a predominately "male" field, you might find a lot more of them (can't you smell the tesosterone in the air, ugh).
I married two such swaggering idiots before I woke up. Magically, the calm, quiet, secure, sensitive, strong, feminist man who I dumped twenty years ago (not "edgy" enough) came back into my life when I finally decided I deserved true love. We have exciting, flirtatious exchanges that I didn't realize could come as a side to true respect. I guess what I found out what true love means for me...it is NOT "edgy" or any other semi-scary feeling.
The "flashy" guys don't even turn my head anymore (if you knew my past, you would know what a change this is).
My second (ex) husband had a repetoire of "smart" sounding sayings that would impress people (unless they had to live with that for a while) and one of them was: "A walk through the valley of most souls would scarcely wet the feet". It was, as he is, rather negative, but the amazing thing is that under his facade, he was pretty much a void himself. In our last ditch efforts to communicate, he told me he didn't believe in souls. Then he went out to get drunk again and see his "public".... people who think the flash and witty banter are the real thing.
-
Vunil said:
Just to add another wrinkle, too-- being a successful woman puts me in situations all the time where an arrogant (and sometimes full-blown narc) man "puts me in my place" or dismisses me. It's just ubiquitous-- not every week, but certainly every month it happens. The irony is I'm pretty good at fighting back, but BOY does it get tiring! And I never stop getting mad about it (I stopped showing my anger a long time ago-- other techniques work much better). It's just this button that keeps being pushed.
I had a similar experience yesterday. Have been working on a long-term project that is in its vestiges. I have a big boss (woman) and a intermediary boss/supervisor (male). For the most part I get along with both. But lately the male boss seems to challenge me a lot and did so publically yesterday in a demeaning way.
I usually try to take this stuff in stride especially in the business world. It can be filled, I'm afraid, with narcissistic corporate types. I won't go so far as to say my male boss is an N but he does flex his superiority now and then.
Anyway, normally this would be a bump in the road during a working day; a blip on the horizon. But for some reason yesterday after we finished the conference call, I got very angry and then started crying. Mmmh...I am hoping this is progress. Because a year ago I would have internalized this or, at best, hopped on my bicycle and pedaled up a storm. Not to say that cycling isn't healthy. Point is I would not have dealt with the feelings in a conscious way.
So, vunil, when you say you're "pretty good at fighting back" how does that play out? What do you do and say? Do you feel okay afterward and how do others react or respond to this?
As for yesterday's business foible, I felt irate. In an effort to observe and honor my newly-found 'voice,' I wonder what is appropriate. As bunny has suggested these scenarios, perhaps, are a score I've been trying to settle with my parents for most of my life. I continue to wrestle with it in adulthood. I'd like to settle that score, so to speak, with my parents and not be so vexed by a$$holes sometimes.
Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble and share.
Portia, I always like hearing about your ponderings. Insofar as being introverted: How long did it take you to feel comfortable with preferring solitude to social scenes? I worry about a tendency toward reclusion and think that could really settle in when my daughter leaves for college in a couple of years.
Best,
bludie
-
Hi vunil,
Let's put aside the patriarchy issue for a minute. A man (or woman) on a date who is spouting a bunch of wrong factoids in a humorless way, and who will not be contradicted, sounds very boring and obnoxious. I'd be ending the date as quickly as possible and not seeing him anymore. Maybe there could be a non-negotiable, required standard of intelligence and sense of humor for anyone you would see romantically. It might weed out all these losers.
As for the higher-up N's at work, they will put down anyone, man or woman, in my experience. If it's a woman, they'll use that vulnerability. If it's a man, they'll find another vulnerability. These men are always demonstrating who is the alpha male. And I am around scientists.
bunny
-
How can we tell when it's a narcissist at our table, or just a guy? Even super-terrific guys love to be the expert in things, I think. Unless they really are an expert, it's hard for me to let them play this role to any large extent, and if they are spewing utter nonsense it's really really tough.
A nice guy doesn't bore everyone with his expertise. If he is excited about something and wants to show off his knowledge a bit, I see that as the little boy part of him and I cut him some slack. Unless I get totally bored and then I have to somehow block it. There are ways to interrupt someone's monologue or at least shorten it without totally deflating them. And no, you aren't a shrew. You just have a low tolerance for people inflating themselves. Seems reasonable.
bunny