quote:

And somehow, that makes me think that I MADE her this way by exposing it.

Yaku,
This is the classic reaction of the abused child. It WAS just the way it was. When we are children, we have nothing to which to compare our families; they are what they are. All we know is that we must do what we need to in order to survive.

And our ability to survive and our need to feel "safe" is directly tied to how we perceive our parents. Our lives are literally dependent on our parents so we need to see them as "good." So if anything is wrong, we take it on ourselves so that they stay good. So even when you are trying to see that something is wrong with your mother, your feelings are still screaming at you that it's YOUR fault.

You are also making a mistake I often made during healing which is applying the advanced cognition and ability to reason in the abstract to the less developed and less sophisicated brain of a child. I was talking to my T once about feeling so horrible that I had "wanted" the abuse in order to get some of what I needed, or at least some semblance of it and he told me that the will to survive is incredibly strong, especially in a child. To which, I replied "there are things worse than death." And he looked straight at me and said "that is a very advanced cognition and not one available to a four year old."

Your inability to recognize how bad things were was driven by three things: a lack of comparison, a need to accept that things were the way they were because they should be in order to retain some sense of "safety" and a developmental incapacity (read that as normal for a child) to understand how bad it was.

Ain't you, was never you. The guilt are all the feelings learned as a child which allowed you to survive. They're not true anymore, but they are strong and buried deep.

AG

PS My T does occasionally analyze people in my life based on my descriptions (he actually did today curiously enough) but not in a "go tell them what's wrong with them" more in a making sense of their behavior so I can better understand mine. You're not being manipulative or trying to shift blame, again, it just feels like it.

d

My first T was the only one to explicitly label my father with Narcissistic PD, and that was before all of the other stuff came out about CSA with my second (and current) T. My father has always done some illegal stuff with his business dealings. He opened a restaurant and then would take money out of the first one to open a second one (and so on and so forth) and would lie to the investors and landlords about it, I don't think he's ever paid taxes, he stole his own brother's identity, lots of bad stuff. He's had several law suits against him and was even taken to jail (but got bail) for his tax evasion. I've described a little bit of this to T, and I've also mentioned how he doesn't seem to care if he's breaking rules or the law or moral codes - it doesn't matter. I remember when I was describing how he doesn't care about breaking the law and all of the bells started going off in my head that I was describing him as a psychopath and I thought, of course he isn't one. But what scared me most in that moment was that I knew I was also simply relaying facts to her.

My T *might* tell me what she thinks about my father (diagnostically speaking) if I asked her, but if she did tell me, I know she'd put a huge disclaimer in front of it. She's very hesitant to label anything at all, whereas my first T was a little fast and loose with labeling.

That being said, I know my T is analyzing my parents as I tell her about them, and knowing that has been a major barrier for a long time as far as me disclosing information about them. I was hesitant for a long time to be open about how they acted, because I was so afraid that anything I said was simply a projection or fabrication and not how they *actually* were/are.

quote:

Because to me, it still is just "how things are."

That's a major, major thing I'm dealing with right now, because I'm trying to break free of how things always have been. I'm so used to it and used to putting up with it that I'll do almost anything to actually give reasons why things should stay the way they are now, even if they are totally dysfunctional and even harmful. I don't have any answers for you there - it's just something that we'll be able to come to terms with over time, I guess.

T1 will analyze behavior and behavior patterns or interactions but doesn't give a diagnosis. T2 is similar but she's more off the cuff about labels sometimes.

I know my Ts know how deeply troubling it is for me to hear a negative assessment on my parents character/mental health and I'm slowly accepting thoughts on their behavior.

I too get very triggered thinking I only give a negative view on them. In the past I would switch to defending them or talking about only good things to make the equation 'right'. I maintain a ton of positive pull with my parents and recently hold more moments where I don't feel that way. T1 leaves me to make my own assessments with only gentle pressure, T2 will push more but hasn't in a long time.

Ts are there to validate our inner experiences, perceptions and feelings. I think most Ts assume there is always more to a story but their purpose is to validate and contain what we've experienced. One of the greatest trust building thing my T ever did (and this is just in my specific case it worked) was tell me she did not judge my parents, but rather accepted them as imperfect hurting people. My Ts might be protective in some manner or another and obviously could not be Ts for my parents but knowing her general acceptance for them as humans (no matter what they've done to me) helped me feel less ashamed of expressing what I need to.

Anyway, thinking of you and - as my T2 said once - its okay to dislike or be mad at your parents and it's also okay to hate someone. The problem is with any of those emotions it will bring up very deep shame It will get better.

Wow, thanks for all the replies you guys!!! I'm so glad I have somewhere to go with this stuff!


AG - Thanks for reminding me to have compassion about having parts whose feelings are stuck in a place where they are developmentally unable to make the cognitive connections I am. It's good to know that other Ts do similar and yeah, mine never does it from a "tell them what's wrong with them" perspective, but to help me understand that the amount pain I somehow got stuck in and where it comes from, rather than use denial to continue dismissing its validity. You really gave me a lot to mull over in how these thought patterns got stuck in this way. I'm still processing. Thanks. ((hugs))


muff - Yeah, I had a pretty bad reaction to T saying she was narcissistic (which has come up several times for over a year). I would describe (objectively) a behavior, and then T would kind of try to get me to see that's not typical at least, that it was very damaging to me...then I would immediately freak out and start defending her. That's the impulse I have now, even though I know she doesn't need me to defend her. She did that so aggressively herself that the scripts are still in my head, but honestly, it's not like I'm calling the cops and reporting her activities or telling anyone who would do anything. All I am trying to do is share with my T what it was/is like with her. I guess I never thought I had an ideal mom, because there are some things like having dozens of partners and Jerry Springer show-esque behavior in the streets that you can't help know aren't "normal," but I did think she was maybe just a bit eccentric? Literally, that is how I've described my mom for years. The leap from eccentric to sociopath is pretty huge!


kashley - Yeah, my T has always labeled the behavior I'm describing or aspects of her personality that I've presented and never really labeled it like a diagnosis. So, he will say has a lot of aspects that seem narcissistic, rather than saying NPD, or sociopathic, rather than ASPD. Or with my sister, he will say, "Sounds like she splits a lot," but not label beyond that. Ugh, your dad sounds A LOT like my mom, except substitute extreme neglect for the CSA stuff. Fraud, illegal stuff, manipulation. My mom doesn't describe not caring breaking the law, more like just justifies it as the only way she can live, that she is doing it all for everyone else, and seems to feel it really doesn't apply to her, that whatever you can get away with is what you deserve or something seems to be her attitude. Even without him giving labels (which he sometimes does, but not too often), knowing everything I say tends to turn into some sort of "I'm so sorry you had to live in that sort of bind," that implies my parents absolutely sucked and were deeply damaging people at best, makes it SO hard to share anything. I do the same thing about giving reasons why things can't change (like why I can't just tell my mom that seeing her is too hard for me right now, as one friend has suggested, due to the SU that come up from a part every time she is even thought of).

Cat - It's interesting to see the two different styles of your T. My T is also sensitive of how hard it is for me to hear negative things about my parents and that makes things a little easier. He will make sure to preface with the fact that he is not judging them, understands them as selfish, broken individuals like we all are in different ways and to varying degrees. But, he also pushes VERY hard for me to move from protecting them to being fair and compassionate toward myself, to validate for myself that it really was painful and damaging.

quote:

knowing her general acceptance for them as humans (no matter what they've done to me) helped me feel less ashamed of expressing what I need to.

...is exactly how I feel, though I still don't seem to be able to fend off this backlash every time I share anything. Any session where we've talked about either of my parents a lot, even if I spent 1/2 the time defending them, I have a complete shame/self-negation spiral the next day. Thanks for reminding me that this is normal...and will get better.

to you all. It helped so much just to know that other Ts do similar and other people react the same way.

f

Oh yaku, I'm so grateful for your writing this post. It seems as though we have very similar mothers, at least on paper, and your sharing and the responses you've received have been tremendously helpful to me. You have put words to so many of my feelings -- thank you.

And yeah -- I know what you mean by "it is just 'how things are'." I'm 41 and I am just now, after years of life and therapy, realizing that it was actually WORSE than what I've described to my therapists. I always felt like there was something wrong with me for not being able to negotiate the same life and upbringing as everyone else. That I was weak or stupid and had very faulty intuition. Turns out most people didn't grow up the way we did. Yes, many did. But most did not and that's why I've always felt like a bit of an outsider among my peers.

Thank you again.

Nope my T doesn't analyse my family or give opinion because I have never said a single word about them!!! Plan to keep it that way.

Oh yes Yaku, she does! And it is incredibly helpful to me even though it sometimes also really makes me feel bad.
Sometimes they didn't come to 'rescue' me when I screamed my head off as a child when I had a nightmare. They let me in my bed, in complete darkness and I was so terrified. I had pretty bad nightmares as a child. Anyway, when I tell that, I feel like I betray them and then I go on and defend them and say "but they were good parents, too. They went to the playground with us and made sure we had something to eat when we went to school". It goes on and on. It's such a conflict because it's hard to see that our parents may not have been the parents they should have.

P doesn't diagnose either but she helps me see the whole picture. How their family background influence them in their parental behavior and how I can't change certain things because it is not my fault therefore also not in my power to do so.
A few weeks back P said my dad might be narcissistic (she never says "he's this or that", she only throws in certain words but makes sure I know she doesn't get the whole picture) and it helped me so much to see the whole situation differently. My dad always makes sure that he is one step ahead of me, whatever it is. He doesn't understand how hurtful it is to me when I get zero support for whatever because I can never do anything right. It is NEVER a big deal. I could save the planet and he'd say "there are more important things". So to see that it might not actually be about what I'm doing but more about his character helped.

It is 'just how things are', Yaku. It was home. That doesn't mean that things can't be bad. We just don't know how different it could have been if we had different parents or family members. Humans are creatures of habit. You get used to all kinds of things, good and bad and it becomes normal. Don't you think you made anyone or anything the way they were and don't think it makes you a bad person because you lived there, too!

AG has said it all anyway
((((((YAKU))))))

(((muff))) Thanks. I pretty much tell my T on the regular that I'm no better and he says the same. We're all flawed, selfish people and nobody can be perfect, have good motivations all the time, but we can make better choices than those who taught us. That's what I'm aiming for.

(((Jen12))) I'm so glad this post has helped you. I know what you mean about feeling outside, weak, stupid, wrong, etc. I could simultaneously know things at home were weird and yet feel like they were not too far off from normal. It has taken T pausing and taking time with me when I share those experiences for me to understand, "Nope, not an experience most people would have." On some level, he points out, I know it's not normal or OK at all, because when he asks me if I would ever do/say/expose my daughter to similar things, I cry out, "No, of course not!" and the idea of it is very upsetting. It's hard to realize it's worse than I allowed myself to believe, even when I didn't idealize it as perfect.

(((SD))) I hear you. If I didn't talk about this stuff in therapy, though, I'd essentially have nothing to talk about at all, go home, save a lot of money...hrm, that actually sounds like a pretty good plan.

(((pf))) I'm sorry about your dad. He sounds like a bit of a combination between my mom and my dad. I really relate to the always one step ahead thing. With my dad, it feels like no matter what, I will be wrong. I have a whole design inside that seems to have originated with interrogating something I will say for whether or not it might pass his test and be a "valid" statement. Just, yuck, even though he did a lot of other things right. I am always looking for how I did, thought, felt something wrong and am not justified in it. I'm glad your P has been able to validate you, while staying pretty objective. That helps a ton!

(((((YAKU))))

I always have trouble with labels because just by labeling someone you are putting that person into a category as if everyone with that label were all the same and they don't take into account a particular persons humanness.

Your Mom was/is your Mom, a living breathing human being who was/is a very real presence in your life.

My T has used the words narcisstic (not PD) and extreme lack of empathy in regards to my Mom and on the one hand, I do find it validating but on the other, I feel exactly like you do, that I'm making it worse than it is, I'm making her sound worse than she really is. He actually made the comment about empathy this week and later on in the week, my thought was, oh, but I'm leaving out all the nice things she's done. And why can't I "feel" those things. For example, she's always remembers the everyones' birthdays. Oh, I'm so glad I wrote that out because it made me think, "well, what about the other days of the year?" She's basically a ghost on the other days of the year. The birthdays are when she can step into her "good mom/good grandmother" shoes.

As I think about it more, I can see that it is happening on two levels: how I view her, i.e., taking her down off the pedestal I had her on. I held her up as the perfect Mom despite all my negative feelings for her. I had to deny my emotional reality in order to allow for that illusion to live. I'm not sure if I needed to see her that way or she needed to see herself that way. I think it's the way she had to view herself actually. Which leads to the next level.

As I change and allow in my reality and change how I relate to her, it is affecting her. As she loses her control over me, it's like she's losing her will to live. Well, it's not just me, it's her vision of family and her identity that's being challenged here. I'm really struggling with that because it's as if in order to save myself, I have to destroy her in the process.

Your Mom and my Mom are very different so I don't know how your Mom will react to you as you continue to grow and feel better about yourself in relation to the family stuff.

Do you notice any changes in your relationship with her as you change?



Liese

Liese - thanks for sharing. Yeah, my T also talks about facets rather than diagnoses too. That helps a little. My mom has good qualities too. Like, she rescues animals that would die otherwise. She ends up kind of neglecting them in the end, but she is apparently nursing a pigeon back to health in her backyard right now and has adopted several animals about to be put to sleep. She does the same with people, but it ends up being a very manipulative, self-serving thing in the end. But I can get pretty far by assuming she doesn't plan things that way, or not consciously, to help people in order to indebt them to her. It just always turns out that way in the end, by I try to believe she originally intended generosity. I don't know which is true, because she is both highly intelligent and highly intuitive, such that it's necessary to dissociate around her, because she perceives others emotional states (though she also projects at times) and feeling badly about her is as threatening as actually confronting her. Like your mom, it feels like it's about how she needs to see herself. My dad has a similar thing, though in a different way.

That said, she seems to be not as bad as when I was a child. T says distance from her breakdown (I think I was 6-7) and from the demands of very young children has probably helped lessen the demands/pressures. I hope it's that she sees some of this stuff more clearly now.

As far as my relationship with her, what relationship? Our relationship was all about me protecting and taking care of her from so early on (T has helped me see how early and how deeply), once I had the ability to be independent, I avoided ever putting myself in the position to need anything from her again. I keep giving her chances to be a part of our lives, but that is about the person I want to be. I won't go out of my way to initiate contact, although I will reach out on her birthday, Mother's Day, tell her if she came to mind and I'm praying for her. I know she feels threatened about my being in therapy, because when she found out it wasn't marriage stuff, she said, "Oh, for your troubled childhood?" kind of sarcastically/defensively. I have drawn some boundaries with her, but nothing I wasn't doing before therapy. I have just gotten better at communicating them, I think. It's not like when I was a kid and she could kick me out or make my life hell. I don't need her for anything, so I basically have all the power. Sucks that it's how I have to be safe, but I don't see therapy making me inclined to be vulnerable with an unsafe person. Our relationship will stay superficial on the level of I appreciate the good things I got from her (life, a love for music) and will give her a chance to be a good grandma so long as she seems safe in how she relates to Boo. When she needs me, I still help her as much as I can without enabling stuff I don't agree with. I feek ok about that, because I want to be a person who others can count on. I guess I learned from her that you're safe when others owe you, except I also learned I never want to be someone who calls in debts, so I just forget them.

If she were to come over today (she has threatened to Monday), our interaction would look like this...she would unload what is going on at home, with other family members. I would try to be neutral, yet empathetic. She would ask me about church, therapy, etc. (because stupid oldest sister blabs about it even though I disclose very little), I would answer vaguely, so she doesn't feel shut out and I still feel safe. She can't acknowledge it is remotely about my childhood as she has told my grandpa I'm having serious marital counseling. She would try to force money on me to "help" and I would politely refuse, draw a firm boundary if she pushed (hopefully not cause a huge drama like last time). I would ask about her work and neutral topics, but she will mostly want to gossip about others or unload about whatever boyfriend she thinks she's dumping now. Then, she'd rush off to her next job and I'd be thankful I avoided triggering her lashing out at me, if I was neutral enough, redirected enough. It's ok. It's like "work" for me, but I feel safe and I don't hurt her feelings and feel abusive for it. It works...

Ugh, now I feel like...I'm just the same, I'm manipulating her too. I'm letting her believe we have a relationship, tricking her into it really, when I feel almost no connection whatsoever. I'm just as bad, maybe worse, because I'm consciously doing it and I know better. But, it's the only way I can feel safe and not cut ties with her. I'm controlling her. I try not to abuse it. I try to just keep myself safe and not hurt her. Each of those efforts informs the other. Is that wrong?

((((((YAKU)))))

I don't think you are being manipulative. It's not like you are manipulating her into being in a relationship with you. You already are/were in a relationship with her. You just have to draw some emotional boundaries so you can protect yourself. If you are manipulating her, then I'm doing the same with my family. My sister has been living in my basement while she tries to get a job in another state. She keeps talking about us visiting and in my mind, I am thinking that once she's gone, the relationship is over. That I'm done with it. I'm done with my brother, more or less. It's harder with my Mom. But I think the hard part for me would be to draw that line and cut any one of them out of my life permanently. It's much easier to deal with them in the way that I have to now knowing that it will change hopefully soon in the future instead of having some kind of big blowout, which would be damaging to probably everyone involved.

It doesn't sound like you see your Mom that much. But I understand how you feel nothing because I feel that way too. I'm so fried emotionally, I'm not sure I'll ever feel anything again.

xoxoxo

Liese