Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Anastasia on November 25, 2009, 11:20:28 PM
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For years, like everyone else on this board, I wondered if my Nmother realized how cruelly I was treated by her and my step-father with all the belittling and put-downs--not to mention the physical abuse where he broke my nose and gashed me in the face with a flashlight. And then there was the sexual abuse with him peeking in my windows all the time. I was always so freaked out that I had a mother who allowed this to happen that I could never figure out if she really was aware how painful this was for me.
I used to wonder if she cared at all? Did she not see what was happening I wondered as she never made any comments of empathy to me. Did she not understand how harsh they were to me? Did she not realize what lousy parents they were?
Now that I have been near her for 5 years--and she has aged to the point that she has lost that ability to think in such a pattern that she can cover her tracks, which is why old people become blunt and direct--I have finally realized that, yes, she did know how abusive and cruel she and he were to me. Why do I say this? Because when a conversation happens concerning some cruelty either she did or he did to me (say, when he broke my nose or some of the belittling comments she made to me on a daily basis are repeated to her) she hides her face and gets very quiet. She just withdraws into herself. She is aware for sure.
So, now I have the answer: she knew how cruel they were. So, she participated in abusive behavior and also condoned it from her husband towards me.
This is very interesting to me because for years I would mention different instances where I was treated unfairly, and she would tell me how wonderful they were to me (huh?) and how wonderful my stepfather was and what a good mother she was. I knew this was untrue, but wasn't sure why she was saying that as she surely knew what the reality was.
The only conclusion for me to come to is that she realized how cruel they were to me, and she was plain and simply lying to get herself off the hook and trying to convince me that my lying eyes weren't telling me the truth.
And the other conclusion I have come to is that she didn't care about me, which is the exact thing my mother's mother (my Grandmother) and my uncle, her brother, told me when I was about 12. How right they were.
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We will never know, because N's won't admit their true intentions. It's all about presenting themselves well on the outside. I believed my Narcissistic mom when she would preach to others about her kids are everything. When I paid attention to her actions though...she had "Be my slave, or I will kill you" written all over her.
I'm sorry you had to endure all of that, and it sucks not knowing if our parents were conscious of what they did or if it was unconscious.
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"It's all about presenting themselves well on the outside" is a total understatement. :lol:
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Dear Anastasia
I think that I have been in actual shock since 14 and prior to that going in to shock. I am just seeing how eveil my M is. I can't even eat it feels so gross and disgusting to face.
My M wanted to destroy me. She wanted to hurt me.
I really can't fathom it all but am seeing a little. As I see it, I see myself as more real.
It is really, really hard. My heart and love goes out to you ! xxxoo Ami
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Yeah, I get you totally. I realize that Nmom was insanely jealous due to her insecurity over every woman--and I got to be the special victim.
I'm old now and have really examined this dysfunctional parent thing for a long time. I've made peace with it and have lost, frankly, my anger and fight. It's odd, but I have come to a place where I feel: I know it happened. I know why it happened. I know it was unfair. But I have accepted what happened and no longer worry about it or mull it over. It happened. It's done. I have moved on to better and more interesting subjects. And I'm NOW in a good place about it as I just stopped thinking about it awhile ago. Finally free...................................
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I want to be where you are!!!!!! xxoo Ami
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I want to be where you are!!!!!! xxoo Ami
Me too!! :o This is my goal.
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If I trust my gut, I think I do know that my mom purposely wanted to hurt me. A part of her hates her kids, even though she won't admit it.
I have no proof, b/c she will sugar coat things. All of this material says N's are unconscious of what they do..maybe that's true for SOME of the things they do, but not all of it. They have to know what tortures us, so they can control us.
Sick people. The day my NM dies is the day how people felt when mary antoinette got beheaded. Sorry.
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I think my Nmom wanted to primitively stamp me out.
But I think she couldn't help it.
And after looooooooooong years, I forgive her.
And I can love her memory.
I can see her trying. I know she tried. I know she had damage and genes and horrors that made her do this animal thing.
I know she wasn't capable of loving me like Mother Mary. She was just a confused little girl with a really sick father, raised in dire poverty, grasping for dignity and control and a better life. She got one.
She didn't OVERALL mean to hurt me. At some times, she did...
But I also heard her saying her prayers, when she was an old woman...I'd hear her as I went down the hall, I'd realize she was still just a very confused child.
She was accountable, but I don't blame her any more. I think they're different.
It's a release to let her go. Poor woman lived 98 years, and her last 14 months were more than enough punishment. I don't want to punish her, or her memory, any more.
She baked bread. She made clothes. She strove and tried and was brittle.
More to the point, she was of a generation and background that never, ever, would have considered therapy or counseling or dishonoring thy father permissible.
I am the lucky one. I grew up in a time when the world of the inner self opened up, and we were given tools to heal our hurts, and understand our pain...
She wasn't a sadist. She just turned out an N. Poor thing.
(I can also forgive her because she was nowhere nearly as bad as some of the cruel and sadistic Nmothers there are...so I'm not suggesting it for anyone else.)
love,
Hops
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If the computer had been around 40 years ago, I would have been able to get this done faster. To think that I'm 65 and finally understand it all.
Of course, if I had stayed close by--I lived far away from them all those 40 years--I would have gotten to the bottom of this faster, but I didn't so it too my coming here and talking alot.
You younger generation are so lucky to be in an age where computers and help is so much more available to you. Take advantage of all your resources.
Please understand that I was so far away for so long it enabled me to repress my experiences. In fact, I had to repress them in order to get on with my life. Repression was a good coping skill during those years for me. Fortunately, coming here brought back so many bad memories and, of course, she got right back into the belittling and putting me down and insults again; so, issues came to the forefront and alot of memories came back quickly which I started working thru right away. I've had plenty of time these past 5 years to work on them. I did and I feel I'm done.
Once my duties are done here, I will plan to never revisit all the horrible memories from my life again as there is really no reason to. I've done the work. And I've gotten the answers I needed.
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I love the strength and conviction coming from you Anastasia. Does mine realise the harm? No, never will do (harm to me or anyone else). For that to happen, she'd have to realise that other people are separate entities who do not react and feel as she does. Impossible. If she felt that, she'd lose her mind. Could she lose her mind and survive? I very much doubt that.
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Portia, my computer crashed and it's taken almost 3 days to fix it with Dell customer service. Not their fault as the weekend when it crashed was super busy and you couldn't even get thru. Sorry for the slow response, but that was it.
Regardless, there is hope for ACN children. I hate to say that if I--with a classic Nmother--could figure this out and come out of the hole we all can. But I put alot of work into it the past 5-6 years I have been here trying to dig to the bottom of all these questions. It helps tremendously that my Nmother has grown old and has lost the ability to lie more or less, too. She dropped clues without realizing it, and I just slowly put it together.
***It isn't that my Nmother didn't realize the harm she did, she didn't care about the harm she did because it was all about her, her, her and her needs. I came into the equation only when it was something I did that would reflect poorly or positively on her. Otherwise, I was an unimportant entity.
Sadly or humorously enough (depending on how you look at it), my biological father I wasn't raised with was also a total Narcissist. How the heck do two Narcissists get together anyway? Or as I put it, "They were so in love: him with him, her with her."
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I think if any of us ACN children are waiting for the Nparent to fall on their knees and apologize for their behavior or to stop and say, "say, I realize how much I have hurt you and I'm sorry," well, it might be a cold day in hell before that happens. Again, to paraphrase Portia, they just are too self-involved and narcissistic to realize anyone else has needs but them. And it is so all about the "show" to the outside world (who thinks my Nmother is so "sweet").
Eventually when you see thru their "game," you will find some of their actions actually amusing. Trust me...you will.
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I think the empathy thing makes it hard to judge them. A better question than do they understand cruelty might be what does cruelty feel like to them and how long do they feel its effects?
Empathy is what makes us feel bad for the things we do. We don't insult someone because we have been hurt by insults and don't want to pass that bad feeling along. We sometimes set out to hurt people who have hurt us but this requires empathy as well. So I would say that the ability to intentionally inflict damage on someone has to be based on a knowledge of what that feels like. So I would ask, "What do they feel?"
What always amazes me about N's is their ability to let go of a feeling the minute it is in their best interest to do so. I always use the example of my mother being able to pick up an incoming call from someone she likes during a heated argument and completely change her mood and voice. While I would stew for weeks over what was said, her "suffering" ends with the phone call and if it is an invitation she is likely to hang up and talk about what she was going to do as if that was more important than anything that was being said prior to the call.
This suggests to me that N's don't really have persistent emotions like we do. If she only feels the pain of our argument until something new comes into her life to distract her, then she probably doesn't understand why I can't do the same and therefore can't fully know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of her behavior.
S
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What always amazes me about N's is their ability to let go of a feeling the minute it is in their best interest to do so. I always use the example of my mother being able to pick up an incoming call from someone she likes during a heated argument and completely change her mood and voice. While I would stew for weeks over what was said, her "suffering" ends with the phone call and if it is an invitation she is likely to hang up and talk about what she was going to do as if that was more important than anything that was being said prior to the call.
This suggests to me that N's don't really have persistent emotions like we do. If she only feels the pain of our argument until something new comes into her life to distract her, then she probably doesn't understand why I can't do the same and therefore can't fully know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of her behavior.
S
Their only persistent emotion seems to be their hatred for us.
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Lucky,
I've given that a good deal of thought. I think most of people who "Bust" them on their N behaviors simply get ditched. Since they may see themselves as judged by society in terms of their maternal skills, we can't just be ignored. We have to be "explained". So if we go no contact, then something wrong has to be identified in us and spread to anyone who might be tempted to agree with our viewpoint. If we don't avoid them and won't conform we present problem number two...What to do with criticism that won't go away. Since the only way to get along with an N is to say yes constantly, the relationship can become actively adversarial.
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i want to respond to alot of your comments but before that here is a conversation w/ my NM on Friday, the day after TGiving. This is the second year that my NM spent alone (so did I, because at 41, I am single) because my brother (who is almost 40, going through a hard time, i.e possibly on his second divorce) and I no longer wish to visit her because its too difficult and unpleasant. As it also turns out, my brother and I had an argument about this situation and we are not on great terms either right now.
Here is the conversation:
NM: Brother tells me you are not speaking.
A: Yes, we had an argument.
NM: About what?
A: We are adults and its between us.
Nm: Was it about me?
A: Well, the content no longer matters because it became about his attitude toward me - he was being verbally abusive to me, so I stopped talking with him.
Nm: Oh, you are not talking with anyone because everyone is verbally abusive to you.
A: No, not true. I dont allow that anymore - people are not used to it, so I dont talk with people who expect me to respond like I used to.
Nm: So, it was about me.
A: Like I said, content is irrelevant. When he asked you to join him and his wife in Therapy, why did you decline?
Nm: because his marriage is between him and his wife.
A: Okay, well thats your choice, but dont you think you have any contribution to what he is going through? (brother tells me NM constantly berates and demeans his wife, even when she has done nothing wrong) Why wouldn't you go when asked to participate?
NM: No thats between them.
A: Okay, but no one in your family is talking, yet you have no idea why.
NM: No, I have no idea.
A: Well, maybe you need to have your hearing checked (okay, this is an insult, not a nice thing to do/say here). Its been the same problem we've been arguing about for over 10 years yet you still dont know what the problem is? Okay.........
Okay, I'm not perfect, I insulted her to make my point, I know thats dirty pool - funny though that she does not believe there is such a thing as covert verbal abuse so she wouldn't even recognize it.
Now that there are consequences, (i.e no visits on holidays, no phone calls, no conversations) she wants answers, but she still is unwilling to listen. Ughh.... Not necessarily a display of Nism, but I realized I had more power to resolve this by walking away silently. Probably by New Years my brother and I will be completely NC w/ her.
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Sealynx:
This suggests to me that N's don't really have persistent emotions like we do.
I read this earlier and have been thinking about it. I agree completely. I guess the neural connections are shorter,or connect to different places, or don't touch their frontal bits, or the emotion fizzes out with distraction? Dont know why, but I think it's true. Lots of observation backs it up.
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Yes Portia and it makes allowing them to make us angry that much harder to deal with because they take up inordinate amounts of our emotional energy while we are just a dot on the ocean of their fluctuating perceptions.
Ales,
Your conversation reminds me so much of some I've watched my sister have with mom. I see her share some feeling about someone or reveal information and I want to cover my ears because I know what is coming.
I have a suggestion. Learn to lie really well and accept that when Brother reveals personal information to mother about you (like the fact that you aren't talking)you have the right to use all of your deceptive skills to evade and exit the conversation. Either your brother is trying to make you the topic of conversation to get sympathy or himself off the hook or he is just clueless about the price N's force you to pay for personal disclosures. There is no winning.
I probably would have told her, "I wasn't aware that we aren't talking. I'll have to call and see what happened." Now change the topic and/or walk to the front door and ring the bell. Tell her your friend has come over and you need to go.
Good Luck!!
S
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Sealynx
we are just a dot on the ocean of their fluctuating perceptions
poetry. :)
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Dear Ales
I have had the SAME conversation with my NM(different players and subjects) but the same contentious NM tone and the same "gotcha" always waiting in the wings. xxoo Ami
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Again, an Nparent can go from raging at you or belittling you--then answer the phone in a normal, friendly voice--because, as has been brought up many times, it's all about the "show" to the outside world. Makes perfect sense.
I think what most of us need to do is just get the hell away from these Nparents in order to be who they really are and get away from the "crazy." Just my thought.
Today, I'd be a whole different person probably if I'd stayed around all that dysfunction...and a person not for the better either.
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Ooops..I meant to get away from the Nparent in order to be who WE really are and not who THEY really are. Big difference.
Sealynx hit it on the head: If you "bust" the Nparent of their behavior and move away and don't have contact for a good length of time, the Nparent has to have an explanation of why you aren't coming around or think they do (because they are the center of the world and everyone will expect an explanation they think). Anyway, this is so true.
My Nmother must have told everyone that I was no good, a bad daughter, screwed up, selfish or something--and I don't even want to hear what she said as what's the point of hearing the lies she told now--because, when I came here, people came over to meet me. I thought it was really odd until I realized that they wanted to see for themselves if I was this horrid person they had been told about.
I figured that was what was going on when they came over--I mean even the CPA, the stock broker and the attorney (people that surely have more to do than come over to the house to meet me)--and didn't take me long to imagine what crazy Nmom must have said to cover her tracks and, of course, make herself look like a saint. Some things never change.
Of course, they know me now and all is well. However, I would just love to know what they think of HER.
I don't know about anyone else's Nparent, but mine will easily make me the "bad" guy to relieve herself of any guilt over anything. It has always been this way and will be until she dies. If I eat one cookie too many at someone's house THAT will be her object of ridicule in front of others, and, yes, it is THAT extreme. Now you get why I stayed away I'm sure.
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((((((((((((((((((Anastasia))))))))))))))))
To an N we are just possessions. They don't see us as human. I don't think they even know what human means. If we can garner them attention in some way, then we are useful. I am so sorry you were used like that. And I believe they rewrite all the past into a little fairy tale to keep in their minds. My NM remembers our childhood completely differently from how it occurred. It is ridiculous.
I don't know if your NM could feel shame. I am not sure why she would be quiet about it.
You have survivied and blossomed. You are a whole person at last!!!!!!
Love, Beth
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Interesting...you say your mother doesn't remember your childhood as you do? Well, if this helps you: when I was single and living in Chicago and my Nmother would visit, I remember telling her some of the things that happened to me that my stepfather did that were horrible. She flat out denied it ever happened. I thought to myself, "one of us is crazy." How could she NOT remember him breaking my nose or any of the other horrible acts he did. :?
Now I realize she was flat-out lying for him. :shock: She was just trying to make him look good and YOU look like the crazy liar. She cried how she "stood up for him" and took care of him to me--remember I'm one of the victims here--and how he didn't care about her.
Now she has lost that ability to lie and says, "well..you think you're in love..." blah, blah... In other words: YOU are the victim. YOU are the one Nmother/parent SOLD OUT for the benefit of another. YOU and YOUR happiness were sacrificed for the one she felt was WORTH more--note I did not say love as an N really can't love--to her.
What can I say? You understand it, you accept it...and you move on. :)
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When something very traumatic happens often people don't remember and it's legit. In my case, it wasn't.
This subject came up when I came here 6 years ago--40 (forty) years later. I mentioned about my stepfather punching me in the face and breaking my nose and the response was a casual and flippant, "oh, yes...that was bad." That was the ONLY comment I ever got from either my Nmother or my stepfather (now dead) EVER from my 17th year until today--and I'm 65 now.
"Oh, yes..that was bad?" I wish she didn't remember as I could make excuses for her, but no....not in this instance.
However, I understand what you are saying there.
I'm just happy I've worked thru the trauma of all this and come to where I am now...now matter how old. At least I won't die all confused and questioning still....but with a 91 y.o. mother still alive and a father (who did everything wrong more-or-less healthwise) who made it to 90, I'm hoping I have a good 25 years to go.
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Anastasia
No excuses. That was the tricky thing with dealing with the N's that I have dealt with. We may have talked about this here, but every N I have had in my family has an incredibly bad memory (of course, they think I have an incredibly GOOD memory! Have you ever had that thrown at you? "why do you remember every bad thing that ever happens?")
For so long, it seems reasonable to make concessions for them because they dont remember. But after awhile (a long while, perhaps) you start thinking: wait a second. This is convenient for them. Abuse, and then immediately put it out of your mind. Then look blankly at the victim and say you dont remember. How can you be held accountable if you dont remember? Whether it is a conscious tactic or a mind like a black hole, you still cant continue to have a relationship like that.
So, I dont consider lack of memory an excuse for abuse. But it does show the depth of subterfuge in an N. It makes any kind of confrontation pointless, when they have so retreated from the truth that they cant even find it anymore.
CB
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After I left that house at 19, for the next, say, 8 years or so I'd get from Nmom things like: "Can't you forget the past?" and "You can't run away from your problems." and being gifted with books like, "How to be your Own Best Friend" as if "I" was the problem and crazy. Just total non-acknowledgement of their cruelty and abuse, and inferences that "I" had problems and they just "didn't know what to do with me." It was all games and none of it was real (that I was aware of) as it was just Nmother's way of trying to manipulate me into thinking I imagined all the abuse and was, frankly, crazy for thinking they were anything other than the wonderful parents she wanted outsiders to think they were. Again, it's ALL ABOUT THE SHOW to the outside world!!!!!!
And, as we all should know if you read this board, the show to the outside world is more important than anything else.....cause it certainly isn't the children's mental health that's important.
These Nparents are truly crazy makers of kids...truly!!!
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Those stories of memory holes ARE chilling. Eek, CB.
I imagined as I read these that what might be happneing is that the huge massive soul-engulfing SHAME which is actually the deep core reality of the N psyche rears up when they're confronted with actual facts of their past trauma OR past misbehavior.
And the shame is so massive it literally paralyses their minds. They can't think, can't remember, can't be present.
Or accountable.
It really is a horrible thing.
Hops
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You have a kinder take on all this than I do, Hopalong. My take has always been that Nparent just doesn't give a crap about my feelings much. :lol: Two different outlooks I guess.