Evolution on the Board

[Certain Hope]

Pennyplant,

Wanted to let you know that I did the Enneagram test, finally.
Got 5 "points" on the #5 (Thinker) and 4 points on the #2 (Helper)... and felt like this fits me, who I am now.

I left many questions unanswered... didn't count how many - maybe 6-7?
Will take it again soon, because the rest of the puzzle is in those unanswered questions and I feel the need to note them.
They presented themselves to me as options, choices... and I felt that I could choose to go either way... but those are the points in particular where I am currently in flux, you know?
It's strange... not so much that - okay, this is where I was and this is where I want to be (on those unanswered ones).
More like - I am literally in betwixt... actively headed in this other direction, but not quite there yet.
It wasn't so much unsettling as... confirming. I'm in transit.

While there, I read about type #4 and thought - yes, that's the Pennyplant I've been reading.
And I wondered... do you feel as though you're in transit, too?

In all of the other types, I scored negative or zero. And I wondered how that may change when I "arrive"    lol
What a concept... maybe I'll arrive by 50. 
No, really, I don't think it's about arriving so much as unearthing, unveiling, cleansing... washing away the rubble.
It's loose, scattered around, still capable of causing unpleasant trips and stumbles... but not weighing so heavily.
Do you feel that way, too?

Soon, I want to do the Meyers Briggs test again and take a fresh look at that... on another thread, though.

Thanks for your time and all you've shared on this thread, Penny... it's been such a pleasure! I'll leave it now to complete its course in whatever direction y'all choose to ride it. I'm looking forward to meeting and sharing with you elsewhere on the board, as you like.

Beth, I hope you don't feel bad, upset, imposed upon, or in any way neglected by my participation here.
You initiated quite a flow on this thread and I'm so thankful for that... and so thankful for you!
I hope that your home is feeling like your own now... and that the visit you've had has wrapped up in some semblance of understanding and... peace.

With love,
Hope

[pennyplant]

And then the Thing is faced -

and -

my God. Not only don't they fall apart, but actually, all kinds of garbage falls off, instead. It's a cleansing. A liberation. It may come with tears, but it doesn't usually come with the awful things - the longing to die, the endless replaying of horrible relationships, the need for substances or addictive processes, etc. - that the refusal to face The Thing has been causing all their lives.

And this is what you need a therapist or therapy group for and we have here a support group.  I wonder if my refusal, so far, to go to a therapist will limit what I can accomplish in my healing.  There's a lot of stuff I can learn to admit to myself, but will I be limited if I don't have someone else to admit it to?  We shall see.  Maybe someday I will get over my refusal to hire a therapist.

My father used to say, before he actually quit smoking, that he was afraid to be without any cigarettes at all because he might just freak out and go crazy.  His big fear.  I bet he thought that about a lot of things and I bet I learned that all my life from him.  What a burden it is to have been raised by children in adult bodies.

Stormy, I will watch as you set and practice your own standards.  I need to learn how to do that myself.  I shall be a sponge  .

Pennyplant

[pennyplant]

Hope, I think that is always the way, even for people who haven't gone through what we here all have gone through.  Everybody thinks the way others did it is preferable somehow.  I can't tell you how many people have told me how cute, sweet, wonderful, lucky, whatever, it is that my husband and I each married our first (well, and only).  High school sweethearts, awwww, that's so nice!!!  People really have no idea.  I guess the truth is, nothing is ever easy and nobody really knows what it's like on another's path.

I think your path led the right way for you and my path led the right way for me.  I suppose I will always wonder about some things though.....  But I sometimes think that people look at my path as "cleaner" somehow.  Or neater.  And it wasn't.  It was really messy.  Just a very focused, narrow mess.

I read somewhere about people who survived the Khmer Rouge.  The husband was saying that on the run for their lives, full of terror and acting on instinct, maybe the husband ran ahead first and forgot to try and be a hero and protect his wife.  And his wife has seen this and knows this about him.  And they meet up again a few miles up the road and escape the Khmer Rouge and the wife will always know for as long as they both shall live that he forgot her in his fear for his life.

I'm not saying that my husband and I were ever in danger.  But I'm saying we each know the terrible weaknesses of the other.  We have seen each other at our worst.  And what do you do with that knowledge?  There is no moving on and starting over again with someone else somewhere else.  We have traveled from age 17 to 46.  We've each been pathetic, we've each failed many times, let each other down many times, hated each other a couple of times.  It's not clean and neat.  It's certainly not sweet, awwww.

So anyway.  I guess we've all got a past  .

You know, I think I understand some of the passivity.  You mentioned being the inheritor of all the cast-offs.  We've been in our house 14 years.  We inherited a garage full of stuff and a basement full of stuff.  We bought all the old appliances.  The man who sold us the house really wasn't ready to let go of it.  In fact, he refused to sell it to the other bidders because they were going to gut it and he couldn't stand the thought.  So, I felt this responsibility to work with the house as it was.  It has been very difficult to put our own stamp on the place.  I felt this responsibility NOT to gut the house.  To maintain the gardens.  Etc.  We have improved slightly in that regard.  But each change has been somewhat wrenching to me.  WHAT IS THAT ALL ABOUT?  It seems nuts to me now that I really think about it.  Why have we been afraid, basically, to make this place really ours?  Boundary issues with a house.  Enmeshment issues with a house.    I think it is basically that neither of us really formed a self.  Not a full, strong self.

Though my husband comes with some other baggage that kind of adds into this.  His father systematically destroyed their house when he, husband, was growing up.  His father really had some issues.  So, my husband was very ashamed of his home.  He doesn't care to repeat that with our home.  He gets kind of frozen about working on the house.  Understandable.  So, this week our 80-year-old plumbing bit the dust.  He had to knock out a small wall, part of a ceiling, the bathroom floor.  But we got this great plumber.  And my husband has been hanging out with him and learning and gaining confidence.  It has been very interesting.  This whole thing triggered a big depression for me.  I had to climb my way out of the that.  My husband has been the leader this time, with the assistance of our plumber.  It's turning out kind of cool.

So, different kinds of passivity, different ways through.

I don't think the shadows are going to be as much of a problem now, Miss Hope.

Pennyplant

[Certain Hope]

((((((((Penny))))))))) every single bit of what you wrote, straight to my heart.

From the not-so-sweet-and-awww, to the Khmer Rouge escapees (I think that's one of my formerly greatest fears right there), to the house-enmeshment (that works with vehicles, too.. a twisted form of loyalty), to the frozen handyman issues (hurray for great plumbers!)

Oh my, I get it. I've lived it... in bits and pieces, here and there, but none of it pretty or sweet, except for my children.

Thank you so much, Miss Pennyplant. Your writing has a firm resolve to it which gladdens my heart.
My thought.... all of the knowledge in the world can be translated to wisdom, with proper application.
I love the known... it's the unknown I fear-ed.  Shadows begone

With love,
Hope

[pennyplant]

Authentic,  That was an amazing exchange you had with your therapist.  Intellectually, I can accept that all people are capable of all things.  Starting when I was about 15, I read probably dozens of books by and about Holocaust survivors.  I mostly read the first person accounts.  Which is not really an accurate thing to do because probably 98% of the people did not survive.  Those books were by and about a very tiny, exceptional, minority.  I read those books because I needed to keep understanding what people are really made of.  I kind of already knew that because of my experiences of life.  The kinds of things that have happened to me or to people I know who then went on to take it out on me.  I have lived the life of a professional scapegoat.  So, I really identified with the Holocaust emotionally.  If someone must be abused, it was probably going to be me.  Though I have been spared the worst abuse.

I don't tell people how I have been abusive.  I tell myself.  But I don't entirely accept it.  I hate it about me.

I have a hard time accepting that the people in my life who really bother me and get under my skin--have that effect on me because we have something in common.  I don't want to have anything in common with those people.  I want to differentiate myself from them.  It is a real struggle, stuff like that.  People who don't really care about the truth have a much easier time of it, I'm sure.  I may want to fool myself, but I can't do it for long.

Authentic, I wasn't sure I would be able to respond to you if you posted.  I was always interested in your honesty and the things you posted about.  But I was always aware of what it is in your past that brings you here.  And because of my past history of being seriously hurt by two people who had the same type of abuse you have had, well, it's hard for me to not have some fear dredged up.  Then several months ago when you had to leave the board--I was kind of shocked.  Well, maybe shocked is not the right word.  I guess it was another echo of the past for me.  It brought up that fear again.

This post I'm responding to now--well, I guess it was a good subject in that it is very timely, for me anyway, and important.  Important enough that I was able to get away from myself and respond to you this time whereas, up to now, I haven't been able to.

This is a good first step, I think.

Pennyplant

[pennyplant]

Oh man, I always have to quit for the night before I'm ready!  I actually have to work tomorrow.  You can see why I had to cut back on my board time.  A girl needs to get some sleep.  Balance and all that.

((((((((((Good night))))))))))))

Pennyplant

[axa]

Penny,

I read with interest your post about reading about the holocaust. I had forgotten that I also did this.  I have always read about victims and their capacity to survive.  I alligned myself with the victim and unwittingly set myself up as a victim.  I do not want this role any longer but realise that only I can change the script.  I have had some underlying belief that there was honour in suffering, somehow it made me a better person, more noble etc........ lots of high moral ground and now I see that this was something I held onto because is shielded me from the truth.  It was like a tape going round and round, same story in so many different areas of my life. 

My big learning over the past months is that I need to change the tape otherwise it will continue.  I am in charge of my suffering and my pain and only I can break free of this cycle.  Recently I came across a diary I wrote when I was 19 and the same themes are running through it.  I want this change.  It think my mother cast me in the role of victim and without the necessary skills I took it on and all that came with it. 

I want a life of joy, challenge, freedom and understanding and I think loosing my passivity and establishing boundaries for myself are the way forward.  I have had boundaries but they were based on what I THOUGHT was appropriate rather than what I felt was appropriate, big difference. 

Authentic,

Thank you for posting about your engagement with your T about your Mom.  I think there is great wisdom in that encounter.  I have denied that shadow Mom side of me and now I know it is there.  I wanted to be the all good girl who did not break the rules in the hope of others seeing me like this.  I could not understand why others did not see only this in me........ simple really because there were other sides to me, the angry, frustrated, passive me which I denied existed.  I believe it is only in knowing these shadow sides that we can integrate and become whole.  As long as I play out the "good girl" I will continue to be a victim.  I gotta grow up and be the adult warts and all......... painful as it is I think its how it has to be.

axa

[pennyplant]

So, I really identified with the Holocaust emotionally.  If someone must be abused, it was probably going to be me.  Though I have been spared the worst abuse.

Authentic, what I mean here is that I am usually the scapegoat.  In the unhealthy groups I've been in or seen functioning, there is always someone who has to be dumped on, picked on, who takes up the slack, who waits on others,  someone who can absorb, who can "take it".  Groups scope out their members in order to find the person who can fill this role.  Sometimes for me it has been a matter of me being completely unaware of this feature of unhealthy groups.  being unaware meant that I didn't protect myself from this kind of abuse.  Here I am thinking I'm just being nice, or considerate or hard-working.... and that wasn't how the rest of the group was interpreting my actions at all.  I would say that up until recently I didn't even realize there was such a thing as unhealthy groups.  By groups I mean workplaces, classrooms, families, service organizations, neighborhoods.  Wow, I've even sat in unhealthy audiences!

Anyway, certain groups of people were scapegoated during World War II and sent to the concentration camps to be punished or killed.  They were the scapegoats for an entire society.  Societies look for scapegoats too.  I identify with them because I am usually some form of scapegoat for the groups I'm in that need such things.

I have been spared the worst abuse--I mean that I have never been molested.  I feel that I was merely fortunate in that regard.  However, I was abused by people who were  molested and I believe that the molestation was the motivation for the actions of those abusers.

I don't tell people how I have been abusive. 

Here I meant abusive not abused.  When I was "raising" my oldest, I was one scared and angry little kid.  I controlled his behavior, which I thought was out of control, by using fear.  I would scare him into behaving.  I was a nervous wreck all the time.  It was a terrible time and a terrible way to raise a very, very sensitive little boy.  It took a long time for me to come to my senses and even have an inkling of a better way to do things.  I have always believed that we never bonded properly.  I have always felt at fault for all the problems he has had.  He doesn't see it that way.  And recently I have come to understand that he came into this world with a very strong personality all his own.  While I would give anything to go back in time to do a better job with him--I have to recognize that me doing a "better job" probably would not have made his life that much easier.  But I still think that I should have done a hundred times better by him.  I hope this makes it clearer--it sounded like from your response you thought I meant I don't tell people I have been abused--which I usually don't.  But that is not what I was talking about here.  I'm talking about me as perpetrator.

We're all here, reaching out in pain and looking for solace for the same reasons and only complete honesty and forthrightness can ever lead us to that place.

This is incredibly important and incredibly difficult.  But I am going to keep aiming for it in spite of the difficulty.

Boy, Penny we ARE a lot alike.  I know you may not like hearing that.

These days one of my "things" that I'm working on is accepting all the parts of me that I have previously always criticized in others and excused in myself.  Though I have tended to be hardest on myself, the last few years I have been having a great deal of trouble "getting along"--seems like more of a problem now anyway.  So, when you say we are a lot alike, I have to agree. 

The thing is, my not being able to easily respond to you doesn't have anything to do with whether we could be friends or like each other.  We probably would be friends or at least like each other in real life.  The people who abused me started out as my friends.  Very close friends as a matter of fact.  The kind of friends I miss having because they were very intelligent and interesting people who gave me a run for my money.  I didn't have to dumb myself down for them like I usually have to do with other people.  But all that didn't stop them from turning on me and taking out all their rage on me and terrifying me in the process.  And your story reminds me of that.  You didn't do that to me.  But your story is a reminder to me of what happened and, in my heart, there is still some fear that it could happen to me again.  It is the fear at work here, not anything specific you did to me.  You didn't do anything to me.  They did.  And it is still a big part of me.

Ami says I need some close friends and that is probably true.  But because of what happened to me in the past, I have a hard time trusting friends.  At least at this stage of the game.

Anyway, maybe we will talk again, Authentic.  I bet it will be interesting.

Pennyplant

[pennyplant]

I have had boundaries but they were based on what I THOUGHT was appropriate rather than what I felt was appropriate, big difference.

Well, this is something I hadn't thought of.  I have been having trouble with boundaries and I think it is because I didn't understand this aspect of it.  I tend to think of boundaries as me "standing up for myself."  I have made it into something adversarial.  It is still not internalized.  I still need to do much more work on my feelings and my beliefs and goals for myself.

Pennyplant

[teartracks]

Hi PP,

It hasn't been discussed on this thread, but by design or by default, each one who participates here has a set of standards and or boundaries that govern their participation.

I said this  in an earlier post this thread about boundaries for participating on the board.  (I was only talking about board boundaries in this post), but the same thing applies in 3D.  If we don't consciously draw up a set of standards or boundaries  and enforce them in our interactions with others, then by default, they get to set all the boundaries, including ours.  That's when we feel run down, put upon, angry, used, and abused.   Does this make sense?  I'm not always as articulate as I'd like to be.

tt

[pennyplant]

Yes, TT, it makes perfect sense.  I have had those kinds of feelings all my life.  And especially so where I work now.  Others have been setting my boundaries throughout my six years there.  I didn't even know I needed to do that.  And when someone new was hired two years ago, and she had nearly inviolable boundaries, my life at work got even worse.  She is junior to me and yet I still had to meet all those needs for her, too.  I had thought I was being treated a certain way because I was the newest.  When she was hired I figured out that I was treated a certain way because I was me.  That was the biggest shock!  That one took awhile to see and once I saw it--it was a physical sensation when I realized what I had "allowed".  I was so incredibly angry and felt betrayed all around.  And I believe it repeated what I had experienced throughout my childhood--my younger sister was the one who set the boundaries in our family.  A completely out of whack situation.  I had been away from that for so long and when my work situation repeated that particular history--well, like I said, I was very angry.

Board boundaries.  I think I have some specific boundaries here (whereas I apparently did not have any good ones in real life) and I think it is possible because this place has limits.  It is a controlled community to a certain extent.  If I can figure out specifically what those boundaries are I might be more able to make good ones in real life.  I'm still fuzzy on boundaries.

Pennyplant

[pennyplant]

I think most teenagers figure out the group scapegoat thing and do all the peer conformity in dress etc. so they won't be the group scapegoat, I was naive, I didn't figure that out, I was naively the nice hard working sensitive one - never realizing the group is going to pick a scapegoat and my nature and manner made me the perfect target,  Bradshaw talks about how people try to transfer shame onto others and most people will bounce it off, I never stood up for myself, I felt sorry for the shamer and again I was a perfect target because they realized I wouldn't just bounce it back at them

Besee, I am amazed that kids do know this.  Their parents must have taught them it.  I think I was almost taught not to conform.  I didn't want to follow the pack.  And I think my parents taught me this on some level or maybe it's that they didn't teach me anything that would soften it.  They really had next to no social skills or sophistication.  We were mannerly and all that.  But I'm saying we didn't know that there was a power structure out there in society.  We didn't know how to make things good for us.  We didn't know how not to be targets.  We were "nice, hard-working, sensitive" people.  We were easily hurt too.  And that just draws in a certain element.  Bullies can sniff you out when you're easy to hurt.

Most people bounce off the shame that others try to transfer to them.  That is very interesting.  I have always thought of myself as absorbent.

Thank you for your words about when I knew better I did better.  That is one of my favorite ideas from Maya Angelou.  It is hard to be easy on myself about it.  I was incredibly ignorant of what I should be doing to raise a child in a kind and loving way.  I consciously carried on my parents' values because I thought that was the right idea!  Molding and criticizing and making a child into someone.  I just thought it was my fault that I didn't turn out the way my parents wanted to mold me, that they had to be so picky and critical!   And all of that is the opposite of what a parent should do.  But it took me a long, long time to learn that.  It is fortunate that my son was such a fighter.  He fought me every step of the way!!!  It was rough on all of us.  But I am the parent and I was wrong.  Now I have a chance to get to know him better.  But I will go at his pace.  He is an adult now and I had my chance.  So, it's a day at a time on his timetable.

Pennyplant

[Ami]

I think that when we grow up "abused", we don't learn the "normal" things about life that" non abused' people do.
  I had a time in my life when I had healthy thinking. At that time, I 'knew" that I HAD to own my own power. It was an essential part to being in a group.It was not an option.
   I think that there are very few "safe" groups. Why? I guess that people have ego's and they come to play in a group settings.The board is no exception
   I think that if a person is continually scapegoated, they have not faced the 'realities " of life ---- which is that you have to "prove" yourself in a group(IME). By "prove", I mean to stand up for yourself when(not if) you are baited.
   My son,in the fraternity was telling me about this, too. There are kids who are "persecuted". They get put in that position b/c they don't stand up for themselves when they are provoked(or tested)
I guess that people are like "animals". There is a pecking order, based on "strength".
   I hate to face life in this way. I have been in a fantasy world until recently. In my fantasy world, people were nice , kind and considerate. I would be treated well IF I  treated other's well. My fantasy world had many rules of behavior. HOWEVER, I am finding, now, that none of them worked.
  I am really, really hurting b/c I am facing these "realities" This is where I "am", today         Love     Ami

[Ami]

Thank You ,Authentic
    You really get where I am coming from--- once again .                       Love  Ami