Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Gabben on August 12, 2009, 04:10:38 AM
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This past year I was laid off my job of 4 years, but not because of a slow down in the investment banking business that I was in but rather because there was cheating by my bosses, padding their expense accounts in large amounts, I refused to be a part of it; they, in turn, slowly orchestrated my lay off with the excuse of "company restructuring." I cared about my bosses and liked my job - it was a loss, it was sad, but I was OK with it just being life on life's terms.
There was severance pay but that eventually ran out. I was told that I could receive unemployment benefits along with the severance pay, so I filed a claim and was approved for money....BUT, then, unemployment fouled up , they neglected to follow through in sending me money, someone made a mistake and my claim was overlooked. For over two months I have consistently not been able to receive money from them. I submit resumes, weekly, getting a few interviews but not getting the job.
In the last month I received no money from EDD , zero checks. I have had to take distributions from my retirement account (I'm only 41) to stay on top of paying bills and just to cover basic needs. I've called them, there is absolutely no way to get through their message system, they hang up on you with a message that they are too busy with calls to handle your call. I send emails with their delayed response telling me that I need to wait until the end of August to receive a call from them to determine eligibility, again, for benefits even though I already received a call from them, way back when I first filed, I have already been awarded benefits. I have sent letters, no response... and then finally a response that gave me hope but then they once again someone neglected to follow through in sending the payments to me and my hope was smashed to receive money. It is triggering wounds....
As I write this out I can see that I am not REALLY bothered by the lack of money although it does help to feel financially secure when you are deep in FOO pain, but it is mostly the being denied benefits that is triggering my baby wounds of Neglect.
Ami/Helen wrote on another thread that the pain of neglect is such a hard wound to see and take responsibility for because it is so invisible, especially if the emotional neglect was the first and most of the reality that you experienced as a child, how could you know or comprehend another reality?
After having expressed my pain here on the board I received an internal message, MN introjection, that my pain was too much, that I should lighten up and stop talking about it, writing it out and deeply owning that deep hurt of what it was like to be neglected as a baby and child, not just for a day but for years and years, day in and day out. The message that I tell myself is that I already wrote about the pain once or twice here so I should just shut up and forgive in order to not suffer the pain, but forgiveness is a process, not an idea that you apply in one moment of reflecting or understanding. The heart moves slower than the mind. I'm afraid that I will bother people with the "recycle." But, that is exactly how I felt as a child, afraid that I would bother my mom with the recycle of my needs, I needed once and that was enough, I cried once, and, for the N that is more and enough.
I can hear my mom saying "enough!"
So I am still in the deep wound/memories of child neglect but I am afraid to write about it and just take good care of myself around the wounds because I feel ashamed for having old baby rage and old baby needs...I feel ashamed for being in pain, I am afraid, just like when I was a baby, that my pain is TOO MUCH for you, too much for life. That is exactly how I felt as a child, that my VOICE of expression of need, was TOO much for my mom. So I shut it all down out of fear, and now, I have repressed anger that needs a channel, but I feel too ashamed to be in anger, so then the anger gets acted out in self-abuse.
Bleh....writing this out is helping me see and take ownership for my pain, which was not my fault, but I still hang, or cling, to the belief that the pain was my fault; since I was just a baby and my needs and pain was how I identified myself. I feel like one big blob of self blame who punishes herself for being "bad...............because I need too much."
Lise
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That is too bad about your job! Unemployment process sucks. I got it but my company threatened to take me to court over it, they set up a court date, stalled for a second court date and then those bastards didn't show up for the second date. I was soooo ready for them!!!! I wonder if they were just doing it to be jerks. The judge told me that the truth comes out in the end, and the company probably realized they didn't have a case against me. I got the unemployment but I had to go through a lot of hassle.
I'm currently unemployed, that is part of how I came to this board. My job loss was not due to the economy, this event increased my depression and brought up all over again stuff that I thought I had already healed from. I was so physically in shape and spiritually light and mentally sweet when I started that job, it changed me, my self esteem plummeted. I've also gone through my "life savings". Not to complain about paper money but I worked hard for it and there were some hopes and dreams in there....
I've never felt so much anger in my life. I know my anger is real but I think it has lingered too long for my own good.
One step forward..and two steps back... I had planned on writing about this but haven't gotten that far yet. I'm not sure if I want to relive it one more time, I already went over the story in my head too many times. That story is going to have a lot of *bleeps* in it.
Wow...I think I can relate on this one!
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Dear Lise
I have that feeling a lot--- that I will be TOO much for s/one and they will reject me. I had it last night with the person I talk about who helps me so much. I felt like I was too heavy and too needy and I started feeling weird and pulling away.
A FOO pattern feels real to present life but it is a replay,as you know. However, we must play it through but with s/one who won't repeat the abuse and will help us to see that we are OK having these feelings.
I did that last week with a similar pattern.I was sobbing that my guitar teacher was "good"(white, perfect) and *I* was 'bad. I really saw it as true b/c he was not screwed up from his FOO.
I sobbed and the person said,"No, it is not about good or bad. You had different experiences than he."Later, I saw the distortion from both crying and a person giving me a different path than my M who told me I WAS bad if I was not perfect.
I think you need to be needy,needy,needy and have people love you and say it is OK. Then, it will break and you will see the truth under it.
I think you see the truth intellectually but STILL feel you are "bad" cuz you have needs. That is my feeling. Reject what doesn't fit.
I don't think your little girl is being too needy or in too much pain. She is in pain. Let s/one else go through what you did.Then, let them judge.
XXXXOOOO Ami
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Dear Lise
I have that feeling a lot--- that I will be TOO much for s/one and they will reject me. I had it last night with the person I talk about who helps me so much. I felt like I was too heavy and too needy and I started feeling weird and pulling away.
A FOO pattern feels real to present life but it is a replay,as you know. However, we must play it through but with s/one who won't repeat the abuse and will help us to see that we are OK having these feelings.
I did that last week with a similar pattern.I was sobbing that my guitar teacher was "good"(white, perfect) and *I* was 'bad. I really saw it as true b/c he was not screwed up from his FOO.
I sobbed and the person said,"No, it is not about good or bad. You had different experiences than he."Later, I saw the distortion from both crying and a person giving me a different path than my M who told me I WAS bad if I was not perfect.
I think you need to be needy,needy,needy and have people love you and say it is OK. Then, it will break and you will see the truth under it.
I think you see the truth intellectually but STILL feel you are "bad" cuz you have needs. That is my feeling. Reject what doesn't fit.
I don't think your little girl is being too needy or in too much pain. She is in pain. Let s/one else go through what you did.Then, let them judge.
XXXXOOOO Ami
I love you Ami -- that was a comforting thing that you wrote to me..so helpful. It is 2:31 AM here and I have been in stabbing pain for hours, I cannot sleep. After reading your post, which I will take to heart, I think that I can finally fall a sleep. Just like a baby...I am up, crying in the night and in pain....needing.
Your post is very insightful, I will dissect it tomorrow to see more what you wrote especially the intellectual part, that is true for me. I need to reflect on that.
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Dear Lise
I got up early and am glad I put on the computer. It takes a special person to help us out of our shame. I found it with the person I talk about here. Most people don't have enough stability themselves to help a hurting person still in the FOO shame. They push us away b/c they feel weak inside and don't want to look at themselves.
That is why it took Alice Miller 20 years ,I think , to find an Enlightened Witness . Look at the resources SHE had and still it took so long to find the right person.
I think I am realizing I am not bad but it took s/one loving me and letting me pour out the baby shame, needs, tears and baby thinking and not re-shaming me.
((((((((Lise)))))))))) XXXOOO Ami
PS Alice says that you need another person to walk with you when this shame and pain comes out b/c it is too hard to bear alone. They do what the good M would do----NOT re-shame us.
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Lise don't do the the self abuse ok?
I'm ok with you writing about any of the needs that you think are too big or too many or recycled.
I figure if people don't want to read it they don't have to open the post.
No fear is too small to write about.....
Gosh people write about their fear of spiders, losing a job is a big deal. - and then the old feelings on top of the current event
I'm sort of new here on this board but as far as I know there is no rule that says that you can only need one thing, one time, and you can only write about it once. I did not see that rule.
Here is a stress scale, you have probably seen it before, job loss is near the top, I like to look at it sometimes, it helps me put things into perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmes_and_Rahe_stress_scale
Every single person has needs. Needs are pretty darn universal. Needs never go away, you can't reject yourself enough to make your needs go away.
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*I* am with Helen. Talk about needs, shame, pain, all of it. *I* am here and I won't get tired. If people do, they can ignore. If they harrass ,you can get a NC and then you will be around the people who will encourage your baby to heal once and for all. Love you very much, Ami
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I am finally getting a more solid sense of self like I had in my teens. The NM demands that you become an object. Your value is in what you do for her. You get punished when you don't meet her needs. I took this paradigm out in to the world.
I did not feel like MY self was a valid entity.
The main ingredient in my healing was letting my terrified little girl show her face to s/one.
Whe you have an NM ,you have a certain set of experiences and you must let them go at a deep level in order to reclaim your right to live as a human being, not their object ,still. We deserve that. Don't let anyone take it from you!
XXXXOOO Ami
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I think that what happened to us at a bodily level was we could not attach. So, there are parts of us that ARE still the little baby . We want to heal so keep letting them out in the cry for s/one to help us heal but many people reject us b/c the needs are past and the people don't know what to do with them.
Maybe,people who could attach have no idea what we are talking about. I had been rejected for years until I gave up. When I came on the board ,I was crying from this deep part which couldn't attach.
Many people did not understand but I did find a person who did and I did attach--over time.
Attachment was so much more visceral than intellectual. It was my body learning to trust.
It was God. XXXXOOOO Ami
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Hi Lise,
I am so sorry about the unemployment and the bleeping bureaucracry's inconsistency and terrible performance. I can imagine how that would re-trigger feelings of neglect. As to:
The message that I tell myself is that I already wrote about the pain once or twice here so I should just shut up and forgive in order to not suffer the pain, but forgiveness is a process, not an idea that you apply in one moment of reflecting or understanding. The heart moves slower than the mind. I'm afraid that I will bother people with the "recycle."
Bracketed by the self-judgment is the truth. Nobody else has your healing timetable, and you are not going to neglect yourself.
You've picked a wonderful place, imo, to write and process and describe ad infinitum. It harms no one for you to say things as repeatedly as you need to say them, or to look at them from new micro angles.
It is what it is. You have identified a little girl in need, you have even come to identify with her. And there's no creature more repetitive in this world than a loving mother who is nurturing and determined to protect and love her child.
So one way of looking at all the restatement of your reality is that you are mothering. A child cries over and over, eats, messes, cries...many cry daily. The mother listens to see what the crying is about, does what she can to ease the distress. Eventually, your inner child learns she will always be heard and always be loved.
You're just catching up, and the board is a very absorbent, entirely voluntary place. Don't punish yourself for something that is victimless.
I think that little girl, when she's past babyhood, is going to look at you with trust and she will relax. I don't know when, but I think that's the inevitable result of good self-mothering.
And it takes whatever time it takes.
Hops
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Helen, Ami and Hops, thanks for all that you wrote...it helps, I'm still trying to digest will have response later, maybe.
There is a voice in me that says I need to read the threads here and posts to connect with others, getting out of self.
But, honestly, the pain and memories for me are just getting worse and worse, it is as if my defenses were just being stripped down to expose a peek at the rawness of child neglect wounds, giving me a short preview of what to expect, easing me into the intensity of the pain. My chest is burning in a stabbing pain as well as I can feel raw terror running through my head and heart - it is old terror, there is in reality nothing to fear in the present, well, maybe, if I do not get a job or money, but I just have a really hardtime believing that God would leave me so stranded for so long....but then lately I am starting to wonder....things could get worse. AND, that is exactly how I felt has a baby....stranded.
We can repress every emotion except love, love will never stay down. The memories of repressed terror and stabbing pain is up for me....I have no idea how long or how much worse it is going to get AND that is exactly how I felt has a child.
As far as having an enlightened witness, I have no one...except God, who I know accepts me (ALL of me even my smoking and chair throwing angry self), I am just turning to Him.
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I'm ok with you writing about any of the needs that you think are too big or too many or recycled.
Thank you Helen...this is very affirmative for me to read, it helps me to stay with the pain rather than try to avoid it. I knew from reading your thread that you had a big heart.
Lise
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Whe you have an NM ,you have a certain set of experiences and you must let them go at a deep level in order to reclaim your right to live as a human being
The letting of these old experiences is exactly where I am, I am stuck in the pain, and, as you said somewhere else here that it is so hard, partly it is hard because the pain is immobilizing pain, incapacitating pain. Helen reminded me that I do not have to incapacitate myself.
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It is what it is. You have identified a little girl in need, you have even come to identify with her. And there's no creature more repetitive in this world than a loving mother who is nurturing and determined to protect and love her child.
Hops, all that you wrote was very helpful. This line above sticks with me most though, because it affirms the need to have a mother, a need for me that was so squished, when I can fully allow myself to experience that need, fully, then I feel hope, the hope that even if I can't get money or a job there are resources and I am not money or a job, which is a no brainer for me, so I will survive. But that is part of the pain too, that instinctive need to live, not just survive.
We all want to live, to be emotionally well enough to take in the goodness and beauty that surrounds us rather than caving in on ourselves in order to JUST survive. That is exactly what I did as a baby.
I'm hearing her, I am listening to her pain and what her experience was...it is just coming up and out.
Thank you...thank you.
Lise
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I think you see the truth intellectually but STILL feel you are "bad" cuz you have needs.
Ami - I feel bad for having the need to LIVE, not just survive. I want to live, not just survive. Living means fully alive, alive to all of life, people and life on lifes terms...but then I do not know...I feel like am still just awakening to the pain of what it was like to have my soul, or spirt murdered in childhood, instead of being fully alive, having spirit, I was fully squished into survive mode....life was about surviving the pain, surviving the abuse. So here I am, surviving, just surviving.
God does not want me to just survive, does He?
Lise
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Dear (((((Lise))))
If I had one wish it would be to send you an Enlightened Witness. There are injuries that heal only with attachment. We have a body that is where the "little girl" lives. It is not logical and often people reject us when this part comes out.
It is crying to heal. That is why it keeps coming out.
I have healed enough to see where you are. You are flailing .You are fighting for breath, for life. It is your fight to live, NOT just survive.
I think many people want to hear your hearts cry on this Board.
I do. Love, Ami
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In the muck of the wounds and memories, my day is just pain, crying, carrying my heart with me, eating and sleeping - I am reliving the experience of emotional neglect but instead of neglecting my emotions I am allowing to fully come into my reality, no matter how painful and work thier way through. The pain is excruciating, my heart stabs the pain colors my world black -- I just keep telling myself the way out is through and this too shall pass, even though it does not feel that way, but that is just the black and white thinking of a child in me.
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Lise,
you've spent as much or more time than I have on this "path" we're on. You know about triggers... and how to separate feelings about now from then. You've done everything you were supposed to - and the "system" failed to provide.
YOU didn't fail; the system has. You also didn't "fail" to gets your needs met by your mom - she failed to meet your ordinary infant/child needs. You don't own the responsibility for the wound; you didn't make it hurt - you're just responsible for the healing.
So, on to rays of hope... you are ALSO mothering baby Lise... you've heard her and rocked her to sleep even while crying... every time that you hear and respond you are building that bridge of trust between you now - and you then. Healing the wound and meeting the need. It takes a lot of repetition - a LOT - before infants, toddlers, and small children begin to rely on "mom" being there always... for anything, however small or large or unspeakable. Your baby Lise has been "needing" for longer than normal; it will take an equivalent amount of time to soothe her and teach her you can be relied on. Be patient; she'll surprise you!
The other ray of hope, is that I found that all that "old pain" comes up the most intensely just as I'm attempting to let something go... once and for all... finally. It makes letting go frightful and difficult... and I've retreated from the attempt more than once, thinking OK, maybe there's another way... a safer way... one where I don't have to feel this - YET AGAIN...
for me, I had to turn and face it... state clearly: I know you... and allow it to do it's worst - but this time - I defended myself. And it retreated with it's tail between it's legs. All it takes is once and the "monster" of pain will look for an easier target. Remember last week? Yeah... what my tai chi teacher says about "trying things out" is absolutely true:
nothing bad happened. Twiggy didn't get abandoned again; didn't go away - but the pain about "that" did; for me and for Twiggy. Maybe things will still remind her, from time to time... but now she knows that I will stand between her and the pain, protecting her and chasing the monster off... and then soothe and calm her.
Hey - it's worth a shot! But I think the "moment" has to be present, seriously painful and threatening... real... for this approach to work. It doesn't work for me, to try this on past situations. The old stuff has to be awake and hurting... because of a present situation.
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you are ALSO mothering baby Lise... you've heard her and rocked her to sleep even while crying... every time that you hear and respond you are building that bridge of trust between you now - and you then. Healing the wound and meeting the need. It takes a lot of repetition - a LOT - before infants, toddlers, and small children begin to rely on "mom" being there always... for anything, however small or large or unspeakable. Your baby Lise has been "needing" for longer than normal; it will take an equivalent amount of time to soothe her and teach her you can be relied on. Be patient; she'll surprise you!
The other ray of hope, is that I found that all that "old pain" comes up the most intensely just as I'm attempting to let something go... once and for all... finally. It makes letting go frightful and difficult... and I've retreated from the attempt more than once, thinking OK, maybe there's another way... a safer way... one where I don't have to feel this - YET AGAIN...
Amber...those were some very powerful rays of hope, I almost had to put some sunglasses on 8) Thanks. I just awoke from a dark night nap in the middle of the day...just letting the stabbing pain move through me as if there was nothing else more important than getting it out, or going through.
You hit the target with rocking myself, the pain is so painful, how many times I write that and say that but in me speaking about the pain, writing about the pain I am bringing back to life the baby Lise; she is coming out of her cave because her voice is not dead, stuck in the darkness of my own self-neglect.
After I awoke from nap land today a word came to me - "precious." I heard a question in myself asking me to reflect on the word and what it means to me in my life. One dynamic of the N mom is that we are objects, unprecious objects. We are not treated, at least our emotional needs, as precious. That is one of the reasons that I smoke still and the habit has gone from light to extreme -- I am in the wound of what it was like as a child to be treated, my needs, as insignificant.
I thought that I had completed this healing process last spring, I was expecting to begin living a life of levitation and love out of the dysfunction of the darkness that I had been in for over two years as well as most of my life, and then WAM....this layer of baby wounds comes up and grabs me back down into the pit of of stabbing darkness.
One of my happy keep going thoughts is that there is just no way that God brought me this far into the layers of healing to drop me off on some street corner with a brown sign that says..."just give me booze."
Lise
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Dear Lise
Alice Miller says to honor your feelings.Her book "Your Body Never Lies" talks about this. You are doing the right thing. I had many,many dark months when another Board member and I would let each other cry on the phone. It seemed like endless sadness and pain for both of us but it was a beautiful outlet that we provided for each other.
He went in another direction but I had so many of the days you describe, endless sadness, endless tears, some so deep I could not cry them out.
I needed another person there b/c the pain was too bad to bear alone.
If you desire ,pray for God to send you a healing partner. You let each other experience his own pain and you just stay next to them so they are not alone. I got the repressed memory of my M molesting me when he was on the phone with me. I felt safe enough to see s/thing that was completely lost to my conscious mind. It helped to explain why I had such revulsion to my M as well as such deep insecurity.
Alice says it is too hard to do alone.
That has been my experience.
XXXXOOOOOOO and a Big Hug, Ami
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I put this on another thread but it relates to this pain I am working through so I want to keep it here. I don't want another thread out there, it gets confusing.
Precious
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French precios, from Latin pretiosus, from pretium price — more at price
Date: 13th century
1 : of great value or high price <precious jewels>
2 : highly esteemed or cherished <a precious friend>
3 : excessively refined : affected <precious manners>
4 : great, thoroughgoing <a precious scoundrel>
— pre·cious·ness noun
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I've been instructed to reflect on the word "precious" and what it means to me. My first reaction was one of disdain for the word as it may apply to me. I never felt precious to my parents, my FOO. As a child, the painful memories of objectification, buried deep in the core of my being speak a story to me of neglect. When we do not value something we neglect it, give it no attention, treat it with disdain, refuse it, ignore it. I was not treated this way but my emotional needs were.
Uses of the word "it" here reminds me of a book I once read called A Child Called "It" where the child, boy, was called "it" by his mother, left to sleep in the garage, beaten and starved by his own N mom (his story of abuse went on for years until he was finally removed from his home in junior high) - true story. His case of child abuse was the 3 or 4 worst case child abuse in the history of California (something like that).
Talk about the ultimate in objectification.
I think that my mother looked at a baby as a self-sufficient sort of machine, a doll that just needed to be fed, diapers changed, dressed. As for the rest, know you, all that love, comfort and cuddly adoring stuff my mom was just not emotionally available.
Over the years my sister has watched my mom interact with her children when they were babies; she noticed that our mom could not bond with them, that she treated them like dolls with 3 needs: feeding, cleaning and changing diapers. When they cried she changed them or fed them. She did not know how to interact with them in any other way -- bottom line, lack of empathy.
Healing the loss of being precious to my mom and the attachments to her lack of precious views that I have internalized. There is a guilt and a fear that goes with this letting go.
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Dear Lise
There are some words which mean so much. Precious is one. Tenderness is another. My M was very harsh. These are Mothering words.
I am feeling mothered now.
It can happen later in life .
I never thought it could happen once you missed it the first time.
The mothering I have gotten is inside me now like a good M's would be.I still need more, of course, but now I know it can happen and that hope is wonderful. I was a hopeless person before.
I feel precious to a few people, now.Precious is a word of value and esteem. We were not precious to our NM's but we ARE precious ,still.
I don't want to talk about me excessively.I hope I am giving hope. If not, just tell me. I know it can get annoying when a person goes on about s/thing as I have been. XXXOOO Ami
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Dear Lise
There are some words which mean so much. Precious is one. Tenderness is another. My M was very harsh.
My M was very harsh too. She used to tell me that I was ugly. Sometimes she would call me fatso, sometimes retarded...I could go on. Know one has ever really gave me compassion for these wounds that I am trying to work out. The pain comes and goes in intensity but it is consistant and there, currently. It feels incapacitating and I feel stuck, I need a good cry but I can't get the tears out because of fear and lack of compassion. I am stuck in another tunnel of toxic waste. Praying to God to give me push.
I was able to get up today, cook something, and sleep and write here, that is about it. I can handle days like this I am just not sure, as you said in another post, that the weak others in my life could handle me in this pain and way of coping or going through.
I want to treat myself as precious. I want to treat myself with gentleness, I want to treat myself in self-repect but I am stuck in something that I am trying to work out, fear or guilt or both...I dunno, I am in grief as well the terror memories of neglect. Ugh....this too shall pass. It is about letting go of the attachment to my mom and the internalization of being harsh to myself in order to survive.
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I read that e mail from your M, Lise. I was aghast. I really , really hated her so much. I am sorry but that is how I felt. I never forgot it!
PS You just FEEL you are so icky you will drive people away. That is a distortion! It is part of the whole body of distortions the NM throws on us .
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WAM....this layer of baby wounds comes up and grabs me back down into the pit of of stabbing darkness.
That word..."Precious"...such a loving endearment loving mothers whisper to their babies. Maybe you could hold her, little Lise, going so deeply into the visualization that you feel her tender weight and warmth in your arms, and you and she can float through darkness cocooned in complete safety, together, you bending over her just giving her this word, straight from the light in your heart, "Precious"...and you will be somewhere new together.
Hops
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Wow, Hops- what a great image you just wrote, it practically transported me there.
Seeing the words precious and tenderness up here on this post gives me another piece of reality and perspective.
I know that my mother was emotionally-comatose, but all of the details of the sweetness that are missing, well I didn't think about that until now. I didn't realize the ways sweetness is acted out, how a mother holds the baby, how a mother does things for the baby with tenderness. That's really important. Duh! (smack my forhead)
Thanks for starting the posting about precious. It was helpful.
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Gabben - too tired to write what I really feel but I want to send you support, concern and encouragement to pour out your hurt and pain here. I identify so clearly with much that you write but I encourage you to write it out here. Keep spilling it out. It does help and one day there comes a shift in perspective and finally you see one small piece of it differently - it is like a foothold on a sheer rock face and that foothold gives you a boost and then you work on getting the next foothold and so on.
This is definitely a place to do that work. Find a way to ignore those who send callous PMs. They are cowards. This is a place to do that work. Keep it up.
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Dear GS
You are right about ignore those who are not on our side. This is life. I am just realizing that it is NOT the outside I have to control but the inside--so simple but you get so distorted with an NM.
XXOO Ami
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(((((Lise)))))
it matters not if the tears come in a torrent, or if your eyes "leak" a little all the time as mine seem too. It's still working the poison out.
for me, there is a connection between my version of what you are experiencing, and that smoking addiction. and yes, it seemed to take on a life of it's own and increase in intensity - even against my will - while going through it. Resistance, I call it... but technically, that might not be right. Struggle is the other word I use interchangeably with it. A struggle in me - to be seen, acknowledged, heard, accepted and my needs met - appropriately - my real needs, not just what someone else thinks they are. A struggle to so contort and adapt myself - and find the "magic words" that will resolve that struggle, get my needs met from someone...
... in the attachment process, a "good enough" mother tends physical needs - and also is able to help "baby" resolve those primal emotional needs: fear, terror, need, discomfort, upset. Just like you've zoomed in on the definition of "precious"... perhaps you can also zoom in on finding just right way to address baby Lise's emotional needs for calm, reconstitution of "okness". She'll give you hints and clues on just the right thing.... clues your mom didn't have enough outward empathy/awareness to notice.
when it wasn't possible to find the "magic words"... when there was no "help" coming from any outside sources to put my feelings back together again (humpty-dumpty) I turned to another addiction - smoking - which, in the beginning really did help me bring coherent, reasonable/rational processes "up front" and gave me the illusion of control over my feelings - that overwhelmed feeling. In kid-logic terms... I'd found a magic process that helped me "survive" without troubling my mother for assistance and helped me manage that torrent of emotion... and it also helped me deny that I had any right at all, to having my needs met... and price to be paid was just fine with me: because it was either accept that addiction or suffer abandonment/death. Kid logic tends to be pretty B&W... dealing in absolutes...
but those inner children do grow and mature - the sunshine & water of our attention to them makes them blossom.
And I find I can meet those needs my self - more and more; I don't have to have someone outside of me "fix" me.
One more... because the attachment issues go so far back: pre-verbal... it seems to the cognitive part of us that these wounds have been with us for so long... they are the canvas of the painting of our identity. Even the mere suggestion of letting those wounds/pain go is threatening in the extreme to our unconscious inner child - it suggests death - because of loss of "me-ness". I found an awful fear of that behind almost everything else I felt. I had to work for some time to convince Twiggy this wouldn't happen, if we let the emotions surrounding the trauma/attachment issues go... and she's still not totally trusting me on this one. I have to "prove" it to her, over & over...
I gotta run - so much going on right now -
but I'll be sending YOU and baby Lise a lot of mommy energy... a warm glow to soothe and protect you. What you're going through is totally exhausting...
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Hi All,
Hops, Helen, GS, Ami and Amber...Thanks I am reading and will respond later.
I'm unclear these days, my thoughts are random, all of me that is most of me (just how it feels) is my heart, it is overtaking my thoughts.
Last night I had pain through the entire night, darkness, just as I wanted to get up, finding a way to run and get out of it, I'd push myself through, sinking into the pain as if it was my best friend. I've done this in the past, when I was overcoming other wounds, especially the wounds abandonment, curled up pushing myself to just take one more minute and then another before I attempt to master it by coping or running.
Then, after pushing myself through the stabbing pain, came the deep insights, the story that "little lise" wants to share.
This morning her story was a story of autonomy and belittlement. She is in rage, her fists are clenched in her desire for a sense of power over what in her being she cannot have power over, her mother - powerless in her struggle to master her pain and powerless in her struggle to be seen, heard and comforted. She feels intense humiliation at the belittlement. She feels anxiety for having rage towards Nmom.
There is a friend of mine who has been in my thoughts, so I asked myself why I keep thinking about her. It finally came to me that this woman friend has belittled me for a very long time, I feel under her in spirituality/ profession/education and if I dare to grow or be someone it threatens her. That sounds exactly like the N mother child dynamic. Although this friend of mine is not an N, just a very strong woman with some deep fears and insecurities, like all of us. Her belittlement has pushed some buttons recently. Instead of seeing her as someone that wants me to be out of my prison of self I think that deep in this woman, in her unconscious, she wants me to stay oppressed, but she is just unaware of her fears, yet. I have always felt anxious around this woman, she frightens me more than I feel a sense of love and warmth. But I do like her too, I like her strengths.
So back to belittlement, I feel oppressed, I feel angry and my chest feels like it is going to burst in rage. So I have to push myself back down into the pain rather than trying to force the oppressive force (Nmom) out of my life with rage. This going to be a dark tunnel, I feel oppressed financially, I feel oppressed in judgement and coldness. I feel unable to live in the freedom of even my own pain , the pain of belittlement stabs, it burns, it feel excruciating, it is a crucifixion of my ego, the death of the aggressive spirit in me that wants, needs and grabs.
Detachment...letting go of something that I could never have.
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Gabben - too tired to write what I really feel but I want to send you support, concern and encouragement to pour out your hurt and pain here. I identify so clearly with much that you write but I encourage you to write it out here. Keep spilling it out. It does help and one day there comes a shift in perspective and finally you see one small piece of it differently - it is like a foothold on a sheer rock face and that foothold gives you a boost and then you work on getting the next foothold and so on.
This is definitely a place to do that work. Find a way to ignore those who send callous PMs. They are cowards. This is a place to do that work. Keep it up.
GS - thank you. I know you know this fight through shame and the tears.
Lise
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One more... because the attachment issues go so far back: pre-verbal... it seems to the cognitive part of us that these wounds have been with us for so long... they are the canvas of the painting of our identity. Even the mere suggestion of letting those wounds/pain go is threatening in the extreme to our unconscious inner child - it suggests death
((Amber)) thanks, really big thanks. Your insights are helpful.
RIGHT to what you wrote above. Last night, as I was LOVING my pain, I kept flashing on the idea of our fear of death; that with each step of allowing my heart and mind to just sink into the pain, fully take it in, I could hear a scream in me saying "NO this pain will kill you!"
The only way that I have ever been able to defeat the fears is to face them to find out that they are just illusions.
I feel better today, despite that I have a deep layer of burning baby rage and hurt under it that needs to be felt and fully experienced out of me. I'm going to go do yoga, forcing myself rather than go to the store to by a pack a ciggs....I play this game with myself, seeing how much pain I can take, fears I can face, before I break down and need to run - it is my own way of giving myself the autonomy that I craved or desired as a child, self-discipline...MY WAY.
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WAM....this layer of baby wounds comes up and grabs me back down into the pit of of stabbing darkness.
That word..."Precious"...such a loving endearment loving mothers whisper to their babies. Maybe you could hold her, little Lise, going so deeply into the visualization that you feel her tender weight and warmth in your arms, and you and she can float through darkness cocooned in complete safety, together, you bending over her just giving her this word, straight from the light in your heart, "Precious"...and you will be somewhere new together.
Hops
Hops -- just reading what you write here is a visualization. Have you ever thought of starting a blog or writing a book with particular visuals for re-parenting the inner child??? You would be great at it, all I have to do is read your words and the vision comes, as if my inner child responds immediately, thank you.
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she'll surprise you!
Amber,
Today, as I am working through the repressed rage, letting it stab and burn, allowing the images of what I want and what I am not getting to come fully into my reality as it allows the old unfinished pain to work itself out of me; I found that suddenly I want to go to the store, but not to buy cigarettes but rather to buy chocolate, one of my most favorite things in life. It was a surprise because it came with ease to finally not walk across the street to the store for a pack when I am in so much pain. Now, If I can withstand not smoking when in this much pain perhaps I can get through a day? I dunno but I do say that the idea of smoking suddenly became disgusting to me, again, as if I am just too precious, even in my rage, to smoke over it.
This is a surprise.
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I am moved you'd suggest that, Lise. Thank you.
In my...well, realer life...I am a poet. So maybe even though I sometimes feel my writing has atrophied (what with working and caretaking and fighting off my brother--no time or energy for it), if I now and then happen to create imagery here that sometimes helps somebody, it's not wasted.
Your openness is what lets kindness enter.
You (and little Lise) deserve nothing less. Ridiculous notion, that you and she would not deserve as much tenderness as any other spark of life in the universe. You do, and as soon as you give it to yourself, then you will have it. Permanent access.
You accessing your own deservedness. You deserve peace and safety and it sounds as though you're giving yourself some.
Very glad it helped...
Hops
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Yes, hops, you really have a gift. Thank you, what a blessing at this very painful and challenging time you have been for me, you and your gift.
Here is one of my favorite quotes.
“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, single power, a single salvation... and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.” Hermann Hesse
Lately, I have been attaching myself more to my suffering rather than my running away from it and my fears around my suffering that throw me into tantrums. For so long, last two years, I had been sinking into the pain, when it comes up, but recently, in the last few months I could just not take anymore as well as more just kept coming, I was on overwhelm trying to process. Then suddenly, yesterday and today, after I screamed and broke one more thing in my house I finally just gave in and caved into the pain, deeply. I finally just started surrendering to the pain and I feel better, cannot describe it, chest burns, ache and suffering still abound, but just having that little bit of strength to hurt in agony without falling for first time in months feels good! It feels like I feel like I am going to make it, even if I never get money or a job, even if I lose all and even if I am forever an outcast, I feel detached in my suffering....finally. This is the real goal that I have wanted all along to be detached from the world and attached to my pain and to be good to myself which is happening in me....slowly but big Lise IS starting to care for little lise.
Thanks, today is a better day.
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This evening I was led into reflection about this board and what brought me here. Over two years ago I was in a NT relationship that was confusing. After many months of pain and confusion, listening to my intuition I started researching NPD and other disorders. I learned about myself but I also learned to stop blaming myself for the dysfunction of the NT relationship, a relationship that was confusing reality because I was buying a lie of their reality. The story is on the board in the story sections. However, I am going to take it down as a sign of my moving on.
My encounter with the NT was my first that I can speak of in really knowing someone with high N tendencies. It triggered the pain of my NM which I was quick to see having already spent many years in therapy as well as 12 step. But what I had not done, from the depths of my heart was forgive my mother or forgive a lot of people of past in life, including God and myself. It became clear to me, after the pain was UP, that God had put that NT person in my life for deeper healing, for me to learn a deeper level of forgiveness, one that at the time I had no idea existed.
For months and months I used the dynamics between the NT and myself to help unravel the wounds of my NM. At time the NT was still acting out her revenge on me, hits would come, triggering more pain. Processing the old pain was giving me insight to understand the T as well as a heart to push through my hatred which was old, stubborn, extremely painful hatred.
What a process it all was, it when on and on and on. I never thought that there would come a day when I would be able to visualize myself in the presence of the NT without feeling hatred. But, then, that day, day of being able to visualize love and acceptance finally came. Today, I am past the NT, just in reflexion, trying to make more sense of it as well as see the progress so that I don't get stuck in a recycle.
There were so many other wounds along the way, when we are maligned by an N, they get others to work for them, doing their dirty work with relational aggression. There were so many slings and arrows, constantly. These days I am reaching for forgiveness of those that failed to see the N and that acted on her lies. One of the other dynamics that has recently triggered the buried frustration of baby rage in me.
There is just much frustration in my heart, it hurts but I am seeing more clearly the truth that I cannot change the past and that I too have wounded many people in my life which always makes it easier to forgive.
I've carried a level of contempt in my heart over the years for people who have not had to suffer much. Those with very little wounding in childhood, who were raised in stable loving homes. I have envy for them, their stability and ability to move through life without so much shame and dysfunction. I'm trying to get under this envy, dissect it and find a resolution for it. I tell myself to be happy for them that they have not had to suffer. But I think the real envy is about that they get good recognition in life (even though I feel I have done more self introspection) where I get the bad recognition for being dysfunctional in depression or social anxiety.
What is really going on above in what I wrote is the baby need for someone to recognize her pain and reward her as well as just that plain and simple need for recognition that we need as children. Here comes another layer of grief.
It helps me to list the things that are in me that I'm clinging to to see what needs to be let go of:
Desires for recognition
Desires for understanding
Desires for praise
Desires for empathy
Desires for comfort and security (not being rejected)
Desires for honor...to be seen as precious and special, to be seen as the glorious little baby that know one ever looked at with spark of love.
What amazes me is that I still have these needs kicking and alive in me. I have taken them to the cross of just letting them die more than I can even count. Much has died and I can know that at times just in my responses to life...less envy....way less sorrow for the success of other, more joy at the good for others, much more sincere joy.
Up until I met the NT I had never, honestly, ever had an envy problem. There was a time in my life, in my early twenties when I felt really insecure and easily threatened by others success or just qualities. But, then, all shifted for me when I started living from my heart and healing. I can look back now and see much joy in my life, many friendships and a full acceptance of just being and average person living an average life.
When the NT came into my world I found envy in my heart...it was confusing because I was normally not envious but rather an admirer of others (that is why the NT liked me so much)...the envy I found in myself took a long time to manifest itself. Today, with hindsight I can see that the envy was a provoked envy, just like the video of N's that N's constantly hang out themselves to be viewed and admired. They bug us with so much bragging and acting. It took a long time, years, for me to start feeling bugged by her because my heart was so good. I started being bugged by the NT when I felt pushed down by her, my gifts and talents, as well as her telling me that I was not ready to receive recognition for my talents because of my pride. That was true but it was I who pointed that out to her. It was always so confusing. I was trying to slay my ego with an NT and she was making me feel wrong for it. Anyway...recycles there. Just tying to get clarity because the NT's in their envy push envy onto you, by taking it ALL. I'm just still trying to wipe the mud off my face.
The good that comes out of it is learning to slay the envy that gets evoked in us. Wow...that has been where I am, learning to trust in the inner strength of my own goodness and just have faith in the goodness of life.
Progress....not perfection.
For the last few months I have been in a state of trauma and still am on some levels. But now I am going back to my suffering to ease the negative ways that I have been coping.
I am afraid, I feel right back where I started two years ago; I know that I have made progress but I am still in self, in ways that I feel hopeless about, at times. I feel that unless I am perfect I will not be acceptable or wanted. Old tapes. My goal all along has been to just accept myself and want myself.
Just rambling here no need to respond unless moved. I just needed to write tonight.
Lise
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Desires for recognition
Desires for understanding
Desires for praise
Desires for empathy
Desires for comfort and security (not being rejected)
Desires for honor...to be seen as precious and special, to be seen as the glorious little baby that know one ever looked at with spark of love.
Gently reading, soaking up the love, pain, and faith in the future. Hope tonight surrounds you with peace and rest. seasons
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Thank you sweet ((seasons))
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I'm still stuck buried in FOO wounds. Last night I could not take anymore pain. I feel pressured to be perfect and perfect fast.
I'm beating myself up for being self-absorbed. But, then, this AM, I realized that I was never allowed to be a self-absorbed baby, soaking in all around me in unconditional acceptance or love. Instead I had to soak in all around me in order to be my mothers mother. I soaked in her rage, I soaked in her needs, denying my own, I soaked in her shame, I soaked in her fears. I was my mom's mom.
The word soaking reminds me of smoking--soaking-- when we smoke we are soaking in death, we are soaking in toxic air, just like when I was a baby, I was soaking in the atmosphere of the death of my NM's soul. Her lack of love, or what little she had.
Yesterday, I went to mass, it was soothing, I allowed myself to just soak in the peace of the atmosphere. But, then, towards the end of the mass I started to feel the overpowering urge to smoke. It was so painful. As I write this I can see what was going on...
Fear...I am still in the fear of familiarity. Love, peace and security were not my upbringing. When I go to church I sit in a place that intuitively feels infinitely safe - unlike my childhood. Over the years I have learned to soak in the mass and soak in the experience of peace and comfort that I find in scripture and prayer. But yesterday it was illuminated for me to see today that I am still not trusting enough from the bottom of my soul. That I am still hanging on and clinging to old fears, buried FOO fears.
This means back to the cross. It is there that I will find my death of self-absorbtion. However, I hear a voice of love and compassion within telling myself to stop beating myself up for being so self-absorbed. I hear the voices of those around me, sitting in judgement, soaking me in, shaking their heads at my disgrace of dysfunction. It is painful, it is a constant battle for me to be good to myself - to allow myself to just sink deeply into being self-absorbed or the loss of unconditional acceptance for being self-absorbed so that I can be free of this wound.
The place of the wound is the place of healing - I am healing.
I'm normally not a selfish person in the sense that I fall so deeply into self as I have recently. I'm hanging onto that reality, the reality that I love others and love to get into their lives more than be in mine; for just right now I need and deserve to be in self in order to get out of self -- I am trying to turn off the voice that beats me constantly and give myself over to unconditional acceptance from within to accept myself messy, selffish, out of touch with reality, soaking, even smoking.
But I also know that one way, action, that combats the fears beyond my own self as self cannot overcome self, is just going to chapel, mass, turning my heart to prayer and being in a place that is safe and filled with the love of God, soaking it in. It will help take the stoney fleshy part of my heart out of my heart.
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Dear (((Lise))))
I was talking to Ray about just what you are saying. We, as wounded people with abusive, non loving, cold harsh NM's have to soak in love for ourselves, first, however we can.
We can, simultaneoulsy, give love to others but NOT as a good/bad "have to".
It is NOT selfish to love ourselves first. We must. If not we will get too blown away on our relationships. We will be too ruled by other's shame as I was by my Aunt last night.
My loving myself first is the only way to walk in the world and give love to others with equanimity.
Self love is not selfish but a neccessity for the walk that you want, a selfless one.
It is a paradox like other paradoxes. It is hard to see but once you do it makes the most sense. XXOO Ami
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Hi Ami --
Thanks, I am just writing out a lot of stuff rather than keeping it inside. It helps. Not seeking responses or anything from others but to give to myself the grief that I was not allowed to have, the shame that I was not allowed to own and the anger that I was not allowed to fully experience at the injustices I lived through.
Currently, there is no T in my life. I love my old spiritual director, the non-N. But I have not been able to afford him. I know that God has a purpose in that that will help me overcome and grow in ways beyond my current comprehension. We are not, according to the rules, supposed to use this board as a substitute for therapy, the board is meant to be a discussion on NPD. However, I have found that my discussing the N's in my life, the dynamics of N, breeds contempt in my soul as well as despair; I am trying to discuss my own Nishness in order to breed love.
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I hope this doesn't sound preachy, but if you are allowed benefits and you wish to do any retraining you have to grab that opportunity fast, the gov. has a very short deadline for that, and they are serious about deadlines. I wish someone had told me that!