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« Last post by Hopalong on March 13, 2023, 11:28:29 AM »
I was a little horrified by the whole exchange, ((((Amber)))). I thought I'd fixed me.
Her cycle of abuse/crisis appeal/minimizing followup/strangely happy right afterward. Then my cycle of horror at abuse/way too much "help"/deflation over her denial "cleanup"/drained.
I think we've identified it as clearly and openly as we can. I do not want to spend more years with an unhealthy reflexive response; this is an opportunity for me.
One article on CoD I read said something interesting: while one needs to recognize that over-the-top "help and rescue" can come from a big heart, it also comes from a big urge to control the situation. And that helps neither person. However, it's okay to influence, by being yourself and having the opinions/knowledge you have. It's a question of degree, I think. It's okay to OFFER help/info, but not to take off like a rocket with a crazy amount of it. And, any help offer needs to be clearly accepted before you involve yourself. Influence is not control. Nice distinction.
Your flash is interesting and makes intuitive sense. Her beliefs about herself are so deep that she's integrated them, and the plan to go directly to her D's basement to live if he leaves is based on not thinking even a year alone would be worth doing...is sad to me. But just fatalistic to her, since she views herself as a human who cannot function alone. Same time, she was pushing back against her self-image some yesterday, saying I CAN do it until the house sells.
I think I also echo a lot of her fears within my own life, which increases my tiger tendencies. Huh! Wild thought just hit. I wonder if one reason it's so destabilizing to me (my cycle) is because in an unconscious way, I've been formed by my mother's family and the child sexual abuse that took place in it. Never happened to me (just one incident in the back of a car when I was that age...an older boy directing me to fondle him, which I did because I was sweet and obedient) -- but my mother and her sisters had the incestuous father (dunno how much happened to my mother) and her damage ran all our lives at subtle levels, atop her narcissism. SO complex.
Anyway, I wonder if that kind of fear can be generational. Maybe in Poet's damage from being abused (not violently but coercively) that day in Africa at age 4 ... there's something of my mother's twisted psyche that I just sense. And rail at.
Huh. Well, back to my own bidness. But thanks for that flash thought, Amber.
hugs
Hops