Working through the detrius

[Gaining Strength]

I am in a prickly state and it is painful like a dull, omnipresent electrical needling.
I receive it as an invitation to do ever deeper work on ever smaller but significant pain.


The struggle this past week was huge and the getting through without reacting and without damaging that friendship is a complete reversal.  I am thankful for it.  I continue to find things that once I would be able to pass over quickly are presently sticking and causing sustained pain.  I am, without question, more capable of being with it and processing it rather than supressing it.  I am glad for that.

Two things I wanted to write about quickly this morning.  One is about how I function on this site.  I was at my mother's house this morning, taking some things to her.  He are having wretched, thunderstorms and downpours - over an inch in a couple of hours this morning, no electricity, etc.  I went by her house to take a warm shower and take some things.  While I was there i was thinking about this place and about some things I wanted to post and I came to an understanding.  For some time, it really, REALLY weighed on me that I was writing, writing, writing and reading but mostly posting about myself and very little to others.  That bothered me but this morning I finally had an insight.  For so many years in my growing up I was expected and required to be aware of and care for others feelings and needs while my own went unacknowledged and unmet.  Very quietly, unconsciously and/or subconsciously that same demand and tug was happening here - not overtly and not from anyone else but from within me, a repetition of the old pattern.  This morning, I realized that I have more and more stuff that I need to pour out.  At times there are things that I have to add or to offer but often the poignant postings strike me in such a deep way that I am bereft of words.  The sense of obligation that comes from the deepest core of childhood sends me into a quiet, still spiral, unable to say what I feel and to feel of value and so at some point I found it necessary to retreat, unaware of what was at work.

Now that I know, I feel marginally freer to come and post even if my offereings in return are not much.  This is definitely part of the process I find myself needing at this point - the ability and permission to pour out more and more without giving on par.  The giving will come a little later when this next round of healing has come.

While I was at my mother's house, I stood in her doorway until there was nothing left that she seemed to have to say.  I turned and she called after me.  It is a L-O-N-G established pattern by her.  It is a controll tactic - unconscious to be sure but strong and clear and MADDENING.  When I finished what I was doing, I went back into her room and told her that, "I waited until you were finished talking and then I left and only when I was in another room did you call out.  You have a deeply entrenched pattern of this and I am telling you to stop it."  She said she would.  She likely won't but that is neither here nor there.  It was helpful and momentarily empowering for me to be able to recognize and state what was deeply, beyond the present action, irritating me.

There is another thing going on between me and a person in charge of an event that I am a part of.  It has taken me 3 or 4 weeks to figure out why it is such a charged issue for me.  I know, because of what I went through this past week that I can get through this without displaying anger and that is an incredible salve for me and hope for me.  It is about communication, being left out of the conversation but left with responsibilty as a result of the conversation with ZERO input and the EXTREMELY anger inducing expression by the person with the power of "I don't know WHY you are bothered by this because (absurd, irrational explanation of why her actions are reasonably and my reaction is not)

More of the same.  But I am most thankful that at long, long last I am able to see how my lifelong pattern of reacting has been a devestating downfall that has carried me lower and lower and lower and rendered me not only disfunctional and depressed and isolated and bewildered but also hopeless and lost.  How extraordinary that a very normal reaction to such power trouncing and foot on the head heal grounding has been the very key that was available to me but to which I have been  completely blinded to, unable to see or discern and therefore unable to grab hold of and use.  Being able to see this brings me one step closer.

Now I will use the techniques that I began developing a couple of years ago, the EFT and though changing.  I know that this will not be nearly as difficult as any of the other changes and yet it will be far more freeing than any of the others.  Each had to come in order.  The process is so dadburn slow but I am so incredibly thankful that I have found my way to it.  I see so many aroundme who never even looked and so many others who looked and are looking but have not found.  I count my lucky stars as I work through this change and I look forward to the other changes to come.

Thanks for this place of healing - this strange, strange cyberplace of friendship and understanding and encouragement.

[Gaining Strength]

this work is as difficult as any and all that I have done before.  It is not as debilitating but it is as difficult.  It stirs up such profound anger and pricks the membrane that cuts me off from the powerlessness and rage, allowing the toxic treacle to ooze through.  Of course I want to keep that membrane in tact, even knowing that the wounds will never heal.  The re-experience of that poison is wretched.  I want healing and so I will endure.  It feels like too much.  That must be the memory, the past evoked yet again.  It will not be too much but it feels as if it will. 

The physical reaction, the physical feeling inside of my abdomen is horrible.  It causes me to want to flee, to run as fast as I can to get away from it as a dog tries to outrun his fleas. But I know running will not generate an distance only being present with the pain, naming it, nurturing the wound, pouring salve over it - that is all that will heal it.  Why do I long to flee?  I think of my child who cries out in pain but refuses the medicine and I know that it is human, perhaps even humane to long to flee from it.

[Hopalong]

I'm really glad you give yourself permission to receive.

That is a great perspective. It's the precursor to healing.

One day you'll be holding someone else up from your own serenity and strength.

I am certain of it.

love to you,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Sweet Strength...

I am so happy to read your unique, warm, electrically intense and deeply thoughtful insights again! I'm glad that you're reclaiming this because you do have much to offer... and maybe it's even the source of your deep strength.

Can I offer an observation? It's about the membrane and the angry yuck inside...

That yuck has to "get out"; if you keep trying to hold it all in you will explode... it backfires on to you. It's like an infection, you know? At the same time - paradoxically - you also have to claim the anger as your right, emotionally - and in the claiming of it, the power of it over you, gradually diminishes. Instead, you are able to wield it effectively and responsibly... without the negative side effects. I'm talking about the old, all-consuming anger of the wounds to the "self" that come from abusive or neglectful parenting...

Of course, this is easier said than done. I've often wondered if there is ever an end to this kind of anger... but I do think now, that there is. Claiming that anger, isn't at all comfortable. Lord knows, lousy parents have punished the children who dared to feel and show anger a million different ways. Figuring out the ways I was denied this emotion - and then reliving those memories and allowing that anger to be expressed - helped. The colors started to get brighter in the world, and I was able to laugh and make jokes every now & then.

Some of that anger processing happened here; most of it happened in my journals and just sitting with myself. I couldn't allow myself to be angry in 3-D... because I was always shamed for it; punished for it; blamed for it. And I'm still overly conscious and concerned about making other people uncomfortable in the vicinity of the "angry me" - especially when something has triggered "old" anger. So I learned a lot of different ways to try to pretend I wasn't angry (I think I failed miserably at this)... and I'm still about halfway sure that I internalized the parental punishment for my anger... into self-limiting, self-defeating and self-destructive reflexes designed to a.) express the anger and get it "out" of me and b.) find some way to "hide" it so I wouldn't be punished by my mom and c.) punish myself for being angry in the first place --- all because no one allowed me, no one taught me, that there is a difference between good - bad anger. Anger was always bad, was the mistaken belief in a FOO where I wasn't allowed my own boundaries. This just didn't work, but I didn't have a clue what else to do.

The processing of it - allowing myself to first feel it - was how I was able to claim it as "good anger" and drain out the toxic yuck that polluting me. After feeling - looking at it from all angles - thinking about it; observing anger in life... in other people; in myself. And then, finally seeing that hey! I wasn't so angry anymore. No, I don't really know how that happened - but it did. And no, I wasn't ever taught how to process feelings, either! LOL! I was taught instead, that one is supposedly helpless to do anything about feelings - that they were like a cosmic force, say gravity - and I never thought at the time, to apply logic to that and ask - if that's true, then how is it right that I be punished for my feelings? How can I be "bad" because I'm angry that I have no parents who take care of me or love me??

This kind of work is, as you've noted, extremely freeing. There are as many ways to do this, I guess, as there are people. It removes a heavy, heavy weight from one's shoulders - and moves one closer to an easy connection with the rest of the world and the fabulous, interesting and kind people in it. I look forward to reading what you're willing to share of your work on this because I know you're going to be able to find some wonderful, profound truths for yourself. I've really missed you!

[Gaining Strength]

Suddenly my father has started calling.  Months and months and months go by and all of  a sudden I have received 4 phone calls this week.  I guess the timeing is right as it gives me for information and fuel for healing.

In today's conversation he was talking, or ranting, or lecturing or whatever a psychiatrist or psychologist might call it about "his" family, his uncles and aunts and grandparents.  He asked me if I knew the stuff that he was telling me and did I want to know.  I answered yes to the first and he replied, "You already know it all so that means you aren't interested."  Subject closed.

He asked if I knew a particular person.  (A person my mother's age who died 2 years ago who I knew my entire life.  When I was a child she and her family lived next door to my maternal grandparents.)  I said I did. He went on to say that her daughter (she had 4) was "shamefully large."  The daugher he referred to is my friend and she is quite obese but she is much more than her size.  She is a remarkable mother (single at that and to children who were sexually abused by their father) and business person and friend and church person and volunteer and communicator and on and on and on.  She is such a fine person.  To hear his flippant, dismissive, and disgusting remark turned my stomach.

A few comments later he refers to someone whose sister is a "friend" of my fathers and he says, "She is a fine person, her brother is not.  He is not a nice person at all."  He is not a nice person because he has political views that differ from my father.  He actually is quite a remarkable person.  He started and runs a large environmental law firm that is flourishing now but for many, many years struggled because it was such an new field and usually was a small department of environmental law within a larger lawfirm.  But this person is a "bad" person because he has different views from my father.

He went on to say, "I had some portraits hung in your home which you made very difficult because you wouldn't make yourself available when I and my man could hang them.  I suppose they are gone now.  Do you have any idea where they are now?" "Yes."  "Where?"  "Where they were hung in 2008."  "How do you know?"  [no answer - couldn't figure out how]

On Monday or Tuesday he called me and said that my 18 year old (dysfunctional and appearing to be moving into the ne'er do well catagory of life) was in town but had not called him as he said he would.  Did I know anything about it?  "No." I said but offered to look into it.  So I called my nephew who seldom answers my calls and he said he didn't call because he didn't have his phone number.  [not be most reasonable explaination] So I agreed to text him the numbers.  A couple of hours later I got a call from my father who said that he had talked with his grandson and agreed to get together for dinner at 5;30 but that my nephew didn't show and when my father called him he said that he had made other plans. 

I took what my father said at face value and told him I was sorry to hear that.  It sounded like my nephew and I thought little more about it until I spoke to my nephew's other grandfather and was relaying this story and I found myself saying, "Most likely my father was 30 or more minutes late.  Maybe X got tired of waiting."   Then I realized there was more to the story than my father had told.  In fact my former sister-in-law told me that my nephew had been on time (only minutes after he and my father made plans to meet) but that he had waited and waited and waited and finally gave up. 

I felt guilty for heaping all responsibility for the missed dinner on my, usually, irresponsible nephew.  But the ENTIRE point of this long missive is that my father, N that he is, tells the story, completely overlooking his utter contempt for anyone else, his utter lack of concern for keeping someone else waiting without word, his astonishing ability to transfer ALL responsibility away from himself and on to another and THEN telling the story to smear around the bad actions of the other person.

Now that was a HUGE experience - to see how he does it and how [size 20pt]I[/size] who should know better, even I buy into his projection and condemnation of another.  EVEN [size=2I0pt][/size] who have been victimized over and over and over via the same method, bought the projected condemnation for several days.  No wonder it works.

In one conversation he said to me, "You don't remember but when you were 18 you thought ...."
I don't even know what you call that.  Arrogance comes to mind but even if arrogance is involved it is such a minor portion of the violation as to leave me wordless here.  It has the outcome of rendering me a form of voiceless but that is the word for me and not the word characterizing his action. 

Anyone have a word for that????? 
It could be an interesting contest - to most accurately describe that N action in a single word  - or even many.
That is what is so dismaying about the changes in the diagnostic manual.  It takes away language that is sorely, sorely needed to describe what is going on.

[SilverLining]

In one conversation he said to me, "You don't remember but when you were 18 you thought ...."
I don't even know what you call that.  Arrogance comes to mind but even if arrogance is involved it is such a minor portion of the violation as to leave me wordless here.  It has the outcome of rendering me a form of voiceless but that is the word for me and not the word characterizing his action.  

Anyone have a word for that?????  

Hey GS.  I don't know what the one word would be, but I sure recognize the pattern.  It's sort of a complete dismissal of the other person as an intelligent functioning mind.   It's one of my father's tricks as well, and it comes through in a lot of subtle and not so subtle ways.  When he disagrees with a comment from someone else,  he often says something like: "you don't believe that".  He rarely ever qualifies a statement with "my opinion is" or "I think such and such".  What he believes is TRUTH.  What everybody else believes is flawed and unconsidered opinion.  So he has no problem outright dismissing the other persons mental process.  He turns a disagreement into an insult.  

In my fathers case, I've thought it connected with the noted inability of people with Asperger's syndrome to create a "theory of mind" when dealing with other people.   It definitely seems arrogant and very disrespectful of the other person in a conversation.  

[Gaining Strength]

Oh Silverlining, this point of yours is very interesting.  There is much packed into this sentence.  Would you be willing to write more about this?  Does your father have Asperger's?  How does that inability manifest itself?  .........

In my fathers case, I've thought it connected with the noted inability of people with Asperger's syndrome to create a "theory of mind" when dealing with other people.

[Hopalong]

I sure recognize the pattern.  It's sort of a complete dismissal of the other person as an intelligent functioning mind.

Me too, Silver, GS...the exact pattern.

My mother, my brother, my Nboss.

(And disagreement being taken as insulting rather than just...a different way of thinking about something.)

They are so isolated in their limitations.
I don't envy them.

Sorry I have to recover from them, but better a healing person with strength in the scarred places, than being so walled off myself.

Hops

[sKePTiKal]

GS - not only has my mom tried to tell me what I thought/felt in the past, she went right on ahead and tried this in a present moment, too. My dad was very ill; and ill-tempered about it and my brother was asking me to come visit my dad, as it might be "the last time" (i.e, relieve him of responsibility for my dad's care).

So, my mom tells me "I know what you're thinking; I know you feel like you have to come up here". I was still in the awkward, gawky Twiggy-anger-acceptance stage of recovering... so I screamed at her that there was no possible way she could know what I was thinking and she sure as hell didn't know what I was feeling. Not very pretty or appropriate; not one of my better moments - but actually doing & saying this, felt great!!   

What I call this, because there just isn't a single word for it - is boundary intrusion. What I mean, is that my mom simply walks right across the fact (reality of a "self" boundary) that I am a separate, unique human being from her and she's not a psychic, definitely not an empath, so there is no way she can determine what I think/feel - unless I tell her. What usually happens when I tell her, is that she immediately denies it and tries to "make it go away" with something like "you don't mean that", or she just changes the subject.

This is one of her characteristics that makes me think she's more BPD than N. Maybe it is a central feature of N... these days I'm less sure of the definition, than ever. What makes this so crazy-making for me, is that she doesn't just trepass into my "self" - she always leaves some nasty litter behind, in the form of a feeling I have, of being invaded by force and the consequent emotional reactions to that, that I have to "clean up" after. And I have absolutely no recall of any time that she ever waltzed across that boundary with acceptance of who I am, comfort, or caring. If I fell and skinned a knee... it was my own fault for being stupid & klutzy... and why was I crying about it???

[ann3]

I agree it's a boundary violation.  I'd call it verbal bullying, with a big dose of projection:  They tell you what you think.

[SilverLining]

Oh Silverlining, this point of yours is very interesting.  There is much packed into this sentence.  Would you be willing to write more about this?  Does your father have Asperger's?  How does that inability manifest itself?  .........

Hi GS. 

My father has never been officially diagnosed with Asperger's (as far as I know).  But AS is one of the main ideas I have used in coming up with my own understanding of his mind and behavior.   AS seems to fit pretty well, but there are still  complications, such as his tendency toward constant oppositionality.  His ability to come up with and express the opposite of any opinion or statement is absolutely amazing.   My brother has described him as a "social and emotional idiot" which may be as good a diagnosis as any.

 He did get some counseling many years ago, during a period of extreme depression.  I don't have any real knowledge of what he learned, but it may have involved the "N" word since he abruptly quit the counseling, claiming he could figure out his situation better on his own. 

The major symptom of his personality problem is the trail of social/emotional wreckage he has left everywhere he has been.  As far as I know, he has only had a couple of non-problematic social relationships in his life.  He doesn't have any friends or any real connection to a community.  He has no religion or much interest in any kind of social activity.  His major activity is reading, and he loves to regale others with the "knowledge" he has memorized.  He seems to almost purposely ruin every relationship he has.  If things are going good with anybody, he'll find a way wreck it.

He treats others as sort of one dimensional  and inferior, without intelligence or emotional depth.   I'm 49 years old with 2 college degrees and he still talks at (not with) me,  as if I'm an 8 year old.   I'm come to realize he only has a few tools in his social/emotional  repertoire; explaining, debating, and lecturing, which he applies in every situation.  He is almost completely incapable of listening, mirroring, validating, or any other reciprocal process.  His attention span for anything outside himself is only a couple of seconds, after which he'll say something to flip the conversation back to himself and his interests. 

I do believe (or have chosen to believe) that he tries his best with the cards he was dealt.  But because he is simply unable to perceive others as equally intelligent people with valid thought processes of their own, he comes across as arrogant, insulting, disrespectful.  It's still a near constant challenge, but I think I have gotten better at dealing with his behaviors. 

Like your father, mine seems to have his more "relational" phases, when he is calling all the time.  For me the last was Spring of 2009, when all of a sudden I was getting calls every week with explanations of my problems and what I needed to do to solve them.  It was really irritating, since I have never mentioned any of these supposed problems to him.  He makes up a problem and comes up with his own simplistic diagnosis, then thinks he is doing me a favor by dumping it on me.  I have no "voice" whatsoever in the process.  When he doesn't get the results he wants, he simply withdraws and I may not hear from him for months. 

Then when my father withdraws, my mother gets even more self absorbed than usual, and starts calling me with her stuff.  The FOO is a constant trial..

   



   

[Gaining Strength]

I'm 49 years old with 2 college degrees and he still talks at (not with) me,  as if I'm an 8 year old.   I'm come to realize he only has a few tools in his social/emotional  repertoire; explaining, debating, and lecturing, which he applies in every situation.  He is almost completely incapable of listening, mirroring, validating, or any other reciprocal process.

Could have written this myself.  These very characteristics continue to make my skin crawl even though I am very, very seldom in contact with him.

[SilverLining]

Could have written this myself.  These very characteristics continue to make my skin crawl even though I am very, very seldom in contact with him.

Yeah it can be really hard to deal with.  I've had better reciprocal relationships with people I met on a bus for a few hours than I've ever had with my father.  After the official formal handshake when I received my Masters degree, he went right back to "business as usual".  There's never the slightest acknowledgement of any knowledge or expertise I might have gained in school.  Or in more general terms, there is no acknowledgement of "me" as an independent mind.  I'm just a foil for his internal process of propping up his own ego. 



 

[sKePTiKal]

I've had better reciprocal relationships with people I met on a bus for a few hours than I've ever had with my father. 

LOL!!!!! And I thought I was really weird, because it was always easier for me to "be myself" with people I absolutely didn't know... this is one of those (could be sad) ironically funny truths about our relationships with parents like this, huh?

And those people who are our parents: they only know the illusion that they've mangled up in their brains about who we are (like a form of alzheimers)... and it doesn't even occur to them that we might grow, change, or be any different than that image. Because of course, "they" haven't changed at all since their brain was set in that pattern.

Once upon a time, I believed that my mom's "version" of me was the real one. And sure 'nuff - I did find a buried version of me that would support and validate that - and uh..... I mothered that me back into health and integration with the me that I am now - which is a lot different than my mom will ever know.

Her loss, I think. Nothing I can do about her delusions - except not reinforce them! 

[towrite]

GS - I agree with PR about letting "the yuck" out. I was replying to Lup about the hole I always felt in my gut which was only banished after I got in touch with all the pain that made up the hole. Doing that (with a good terapist in safety) was the turning point to making me feel more complete. I am glad you are giving yourself permission to focus on yourself here.

towrite