Victimhood / Martyrdom vs Boundaries

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I would never say I was as brave as somebody who puts his or her life on the line in the military. For one thing, I (none of us) chose this fight and most of us will survive it and not kick off at age 50 because of the stress.

But it is still our own trauma; our own little war with ourselves

we doubt ourselves because our own children are being so abusive to us.

It's a way to try to intimidate me and to shock and hurt me and, yes, even to gaslight me into thinking I was a horrible mother so that I will feel guilty and do whatever it is he wants me to do.

he is who he is.

I don't expect him to change.

I have no hope that he will ever change.

Rhino skin.

I don't really worry about what most peoeple think of me anymore.

I never did have that belief so that didn't factor into any guilt I had with my kids.


College does not equal success.

It depends on the major and how hard the adult is willing to compete in a very difficult world.


Gaze at the stars and dream good things.

Your son has his own life and it probably is unpleasant and it is his own doing.

It is like a war, isn't it.

Ugly like a war, too.

Gaslighting. I remember when we were all reading about sociopathy.

Great post, MWM. You've been so honest about what has happened to you that I can think about all of this differently. Your comment about guilt over education clarified many things about my perception of failure where difficult child son is concerned.

It is the key to my responses to him, and to the guilt that I feel at everything he doesn't have.

Guilt would lead to timidity. I mean, I get it that someone calling me names should be on them, not me. But what it looks like this morning is that what guilt led to was construction of a reality where hope and faith are more real than what is.

And what else it looks like this morning is that the older difficult child son got, the more real the constructed worlds of hope and faith and belief that he was just about to change became.

And it was that realization, bursting through on some wordless level of consciousness, that was traumatic.

Because in reality, I protect myself from the way all this feels, from the ugliness.

In process, maybe?

I can't see a time when I would ever be okay with what happened to my family.

Actually, there is so much rage beneath that thin patina of guilt and the timidity it calls.

Guarding myself from acknowledging
how I really feel about difficult child son's betrayal, weakness, poverty.

Well, that isn't all of it, but it's in here.

Cedar
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
Hey, you're stronger than me. I'm not even talking to my kids and I don't care if I never do again. Protecting myself from them? Oh, heck yeah! We neither of us are talking about little kids, we're talking about full grown adults who are or nearly are as old as we were when our kids were out of the house. They need to grow up or I want nothing to do with them. Believe you me, if either of them show up at my door there will be a full and thorough examination of them before I stick my neck out for their abuse again. That kind of goes for grandkids, too. They're going to have to be sentient beings before I want anything to do with them, and they'll get a (milder) grilling from me, too, just to get a cautious "Hello, it's nice to meet you" from me.

Do I sound awful? I suppose so. I was so horrified by the last bit of abuse I got from them all last summer - did I mention that my father died after a long illness we all knew about and not one of them contacted me about it but they gave out my address to strangers so that strangers could send me sympathy cards? (I was so embarrassed and afraid that one of them would find my thoughts here, I don't know if I even wrote about it here.) Why did they - including my son M - do that? Because "Grandpa said he didn't want you to know", even though they all knew I was aware of the illness and that he was not expected to live long. They chose their sides when there are really no sides to choose. Let them be happy there without me. I didn't move 3,000 miles away to try to reconcile with them.
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
the older difficult child son got, the more real the constructed worlds of hope and faith and belief that he was just about to change became.
And it was that realization, bursting through on some wordless level of consciousness, that was traumatic.
Because in reality, I protect myself from the way all this feels, from the ugliness.
In process, maybe?
I can't see a time when I would ever be okay with what happened to my family.
Actually, there is so much rage beneath that thin patina of guilt and the timidity it calls.
Guarding myself from acknowledging
how I really feel about difficult child son's betrayal, weakness, poverty.

That is an absolutely brilliant self awareness Cedar.

We banter around the concept of denial in life and yet denial is a defense mechanism which keeps us from the shock of reality which in some cases is just more then our psyche can take in. In the beginning it is a good thing. Over time it is not a good thing, it keeps us stuck in a reality that isn't true. Reality has just pushed you out of your denial and it is overwhelmingly difficult to look that in the face without it taking us out.

This is your son.

When my daughter was behaving in inappropriate ways towards me I was used to simply allowing it, I had for years. But when my husband came on the scene, he was appalled by her behavior and he told me and he kept telling me. It was that continuing opening of reality that made the difference for me. He kept gently and not so gently pulling my eyelids back so I could move out of my own denial, my own "constructed worlds of hope and faith and belief" so that I could finally see the truth. And when I did, it knocked me down. And, it knocked me down a couple of times before I was willing to really face it. Our denial is a powerful thing. Especially where our kids are concerned.

I had a therapist tell me once that we humans will go to our deaths fighting reality for all we're worth, defending our right to keep denial in place because reality is simply just too much for us to face. That's how powerful it is. I did not want to do that. Coming out of a crazy, dysfunctional family of secrets and insanity made me want to face it no matter what the cost was, I just didn't want to live in that darkness anymore. And, bringing the light in was a painful process, oh Lordy was it painful, but I am here to tell you Cedar, that right now, it was worth it.

Perhaps there really is never a time where you will be okay with what happened to your family. But there is a time where it becomes a part of you, placed in some sacred place within, that does not actively harm you anymore, where life continues on............where the hurt is there but the bigness of life takes over and that sacred place recedes. And life moves ahead, unburdened by the past.

I believe we humans do a lot to protect ourselves from the rage within you are talking about. I also believe that along with that rage is a monumental sorrow which in my humble opinion needs to be expressed as well. My experience is that underneath all that rage is that monumental sorrow. We as humans do much to protect ourselves from those feelings and I believe we do that with consequences. Those consequences keep us stuck but more importantly, they keep us out of reality, they keep us not fully present, not fully alive, not fully here.

You've just been given a bit of a shock. But you've also been given an opportunity to let reality in........to look at it squarely, without hope and faith and beliefs, to look at what is, right in front of you........and to allow those feelings of rage and sorrow..........which always feel so huge that if we allow them they will overpower us and perhaps even kill us. But they don't. They come out as we are ready to allow them to, and well, they hurt...........but when they are expressed, acknowledged and released, they free you from that denial and allow the light to shine in that dark place within where fear has lived...........

Yes, I believe you are in the process of allowing reality in, of acknowledging the truth, or relinquishing your long held guilt and shame, of offering that guilt and shame on the alter of self discovery and giving your son back his responsibility for his life. And in doing so, you free both yourself and him.

It seems to me Cedar, that you are in a difficult but very positive place of self awareness, which initially does not feel very good, but ultimately will free you to be YOU, without that baggage of abuse you've sustained for a lifetime from your family of origin and then from your own children. You don't deserve that, you deserve to be free of that and it looks to me as if you are doing that right now.........

In my world, life is about lessons. When we don't learn the lesson, the lesson gets louder and often a whole lot uglier..........but it's the ugliness and the bigness that get our attention and force us into change. It hurts to change, but you had that intention remember, for this year? To be kind to yourself? Well kindness for yourself is all about compassion and self love not blaming yourself for the actions and choices of another.

It's time to let that go Cedar, all the abusers have now stood up to be counted. The truth is out there.

With all my heart I wish you peace. With all my heart I wish you love. With all my heart I wish you freedom.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
After all, you were a mess a few years ago and he isn't as old as you were when you started your journey to recovery.

SoC, sweety, we have PTSD.

Having become functioning happy people who don't have panic attacks on a regular basis doesn't mean that we don't have PTSD.

Some days are going to be like that. I think that for me the bleak times seem so bleak because they are so sudden, and there's a fear that "in spite of all the strides I had made I'm still that person I was then."

I am going along being 'like every other person in the world' and then suddenly someone (usually the same people who have always been the someone) says or does something atrocious and I thought I wouldn't care and I did.

}

Ha! Witz, you are right.

I was definitely more of a mess a few years ago!

:0)

***

I agree about PTSD, Witz

Your description is right on.

I wish none of us had ever had to feel this way.

Cedar
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Hey, you're stronger than me. I'm not even talking to my kids and I don't care if I never do again. Protecting myself from them? Oh, heck yeah! We neither of us are talking about little kids, we're talking about full grown adults who are or nearly are as old as we were when our kids were out of the house. They need to grow up or I want nothing to do with them. Believe you me, if either of them show up at my door there will be a full and thorough examination of them before I stick my neck out for their abuse again. That kind of goes for grandkids, too. They're going to have to be sentient beings before I want anything to do with them, and they'll get a (milder) grilling from me, too, just to get a cautious "Hello, it's nice to meet you" from me.

Do I sound awful? I suppose so. I was so horrified by the last bit of abuse I got from them all last summer - did I mention that my father died after a long illness we all knew about and not one of them contacted me about it but they gave out my address to strangers so that strangers could send me sympathy cards? (I was so embarrassed and afraid that one of them would find my thoughts here, I don't know if I even wrote about it here.) Why did they - including my son M - do that? Because "Grandpa said he didn't want you to know", even though they all knew I was aware of the illness and that he was not expected to live long. They chose their sides when there are really no sides to choose. Let them be happy there without me. I didn't move 3,000 miles away to try to reconcile with them.
Pardon me for jumping in here like this, but are all sick families THAT much the same? They pick one member to designate as the "blacksheep" and, in my opinion, they blame EVERTHING wrong with them on us and like to show us how much we don't matter.

When my mother had a brain tumor, she made everyone, including my dad, who was her ex, not to tell me she was sick. She didn't want me to show up. She was more interested in that than almost her own health. I wasn't to know. I never did know. Even my father, the one person who did not reject me or blame me for the family's issues, didn't tell me. I found out years later. I'm quite sure my siblings thought it was cool to exclude me from this knowledge, although I'm not sure what I would have done about it. I hadn't been close to Mom for years. This was just one more kiss off from Mom telling me I didn't matter, just like she did from the grave. (And all that time I'd been sending nice letters to her, telling her how much I loved her and that it was me in the wrong...I feel foolish that I tried that hard to make my mommy love me. It didn't work...lol). I don't try to get people to love me anymore. I can't control them, even my own kids.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
It is rather shocking that our dysfunctional families are so very similar in their dysfunction. I am the blacksheep. The one with the 20+ year marriage, the husband who works and is faithful, who worked until I had to stay home to take care of an unstable child and then my health failed. I am the one who pulled things together when my mom fell apart, but who was blamed for EVERYTHING and is STILL told how much of a mess-up I am. One of my failings is supposedly the failure to forgive, when really I cannot forget. why can I not forget things? Because every time I get upset about some new thing, someone brings up something I did that was wrong from as far back as when I was four. yes, I get a misdeed done at age four thrown in my face if I have the audacity to object to something my brother or mother does now. Gee, how is that logical or right? Is it any wonder I don't forget and don't trust or believe when they tell me that the family is always there for me and I must be there for them? esp when my family is NOT there for me? My parents often will come through, but the other relatives that I am supposed to do things for? Nope, not a one is there for me if I need it, and even when I lived a two minute WALK away they would not loan me a cup of sugar if I needed one. But I was in the wrong for not taking off work to help with whatever crisis they had, or whatever nonsense my idiot gfgbro who cannot even manage to pay his own rent needs me for.

It is all koi, and if they truly were family, they would let it go. I actually don't bring up the past around my relatives, not about ANYTHING EVER if it can be avoided. I have learned to listen, smile and spout trivia about topics that you would find in a board game rather than to discuss anything in my past, even as recently as my yesterday with my family. I discuss it here with you, because you all have EARNED that trust. But family? I keep that relationship superficial for a reason.

I recommend that course of action. Mostly because you really don't deserve their koi or need their drama. Life is too short so spend your emotions on things that have value to you NOT on idiots who use name calling and manipulation to try to steal your possessions.

PLEASE make sure that your son does not benefit in your will, and that he is aware that he will NOT get a windfall from your death. There is simply no telling what he might do. If you would speak to your mother the way he did simply because she doesn't want to give you her home, you would do ANYTHING and should NOT be trusted. Give your belongings to NAMI or a charity you believe in or the local cat hoarder. ANYONE but him, because he sure isn't making me think he wouldn't kill you in your sleep if he believed he could get away with it.
 
Just to put it out there. Will our difficult children feel like the blacksheeps that everyone blames? Will it not be hard to put things of there wrong doing behind them? I know there wrongs were likely very different from ours. Is this a vicious circle? What do you think?
 

Albatross

Well-Known Member
Cedar, I haven't been posting in awhile but just saw this thread. I am joining the others in a howl of protest and defense about the way your difficult child son talked to you and treated you. None of us deserve the things our difficult children do and say to us, but you in particular are a voice of hard-earned wisdom and compassion around here (and anywhere else, I would imagine). Don't listen to it. Don't let him get under your skin. He knows which buttons to push. They always know.

difficult child is rabid about that $3000 student loan he was then required to repay.
Which he didn't repay.
And neither did we.
And I do feel a vulnerability around that issue.
What does anyone think about that?
difficult child contention is that we ruined things for him because when he was finally ready to try school again, he couldn't go until that old loan, now much more than the $ he actually got to use, still needed to be paid back and we wouldn't help.

My first thought is, you would help and you did help. He chose not to use that help to pay back that loan. That's his choice.

My thoughts are that this is one of your buttons to push, the education thing. The education thing is one of my buttons too. My difficult child knows that. We set aside money (not much, but some) for easy child and difficult child to go to college and made it clear to both of them that the money was for college; it would not be given to them as a gift or spent on anything but tuition and books.

easy child used hers, and between that and working part-time she got her bachelor's degree.

difficult child used his in the course of flunking out twice because he didn't show up for class and can't get back in without paying some fees.

Every now and then, when it is a hot day and working outside doing heavy labor really sucks, he will bitterly complain about having to work so hard for such little money. He did the other day.

When I pointed out YET AGAIN that we would pay the fees and help with tuition so he could get some training to do something else, he looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "I don't WANT to go back to school. I just want the money you would have spent on tuition." He doesn't see the connection. He only sees that he wants more money and I have it.

From my read, you tried several different ways to steer him toward college or other training. He rejected it. Now he's looking at his life and looking for anyone but himself to blame for the way it turned out. And he knows if he can somehow sink a hook, you will be pulled back in by your old dreams of him furthering his education. He doesn't regret not going to school. If he did, he would have gone. difficult children do whatever they want to do. His going to college was YOUR dream, not his. He is just using that against you.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
So this morning, I am thinking about judgment and self concept.

I am thinking about Echo's "Just tell him to shut up!" and I am laughing because there is something horrifyingly thrilling and somehow illegitimate about not taking abuse seriously.

We were brought up to take the craziness of being seen as objects of abuse, of the self identity that would force on us, very seriously indeed.

Some of us know this internal truth not from abuse, but simply from being female, in this or any other culture.

We are responsible for the emotional tone of the lives happening around us.

Recovering and I were discussing the definition of freedom once. We concluded, in different words than I will use here, that freedom would be to have confronted fear often enough that we would never again be stopped by it.

Not that there would be no fear, but that we would know ourselves as people who would seek it out and face it, again and again, intentionally.

And then, fear or shame or whatever it is, is nothing that matters.

It no longer defines us.


That fits in here somewhere. As I have grown and changed, those for whom my only value -- and that is key -- my only value...those people have said some of the most shocking and ultimately, disgustingly stupid things, I have ever heard anyone speak.

Like, really weird stuff.

"Dumbass."

?

What I wish I'd said is, " And your point is?"

Ha!

But I couldn't think, when it happened.

Or when my sister told me, as our lives were falling apart, that she and her uber religious cohorts had prayed a ring of thorns around my family when the kids were little to "bring me to the Lord."

Know what I said?

Nothing.

I never even got it that not only was she celebrating what had happened to us, but that she actually believed she had caused this.

And had the gall to tell me so!

Oh, for Heaven's sake!

But once again, I digress.

I am seeing things I never let myself see before, about the suckness -- oops! I meant sickness, the pointlessness of that reward system, just blows me away.

***


For so many of us, the core selves we then went on to create and rely on and believe In revolved, by necessity, around believing that what was over and done mattered less than what we, by standing up, by behaving decently ourselves whatever had been done to us, could create of the future.

I think we were not wrong in that.

But what I do see, both in my own situation and in the determined responses of all of our dysfunctional family of origin responses to us, is that the challenge for us now is to re-examine the genesis of those core belief systems that, though they did make us strong enough to believe loving and accepting and mentoring were more appropriate and fruitful responses than hatred and blaming and victimizing, also left us cut off from our damaged core selves and functioning solely through intellectual concepts of choice.

How many times have each of us done the right thing, the thought out and chosen right thing in situations most people would have reacted to with anger?

But we've never known, we had no way to know, that the response of a truly healthy person would be to consider the source of whatever the weirdness was as something outside of ourselves altogether.

This is what Recovering is telling us, I think, when she describes her growing ability to observe without judging.

Or what our sweet, funny, courageous Echo really means when she says, "Just tell him to shut up!"

:0)

I still get such a chuckle out of that one!

***

It, this thing I am thinking this morning, will change everything about my perception of purpose and self.


It has to do with Recovering's willing suspension of that need to judge a thing as a process we can watch happen. It has to do with the ego boost, with the sense of right and wrongness Witz' family so vehemently and cruelly pursues to this day.

I hate them for doing that to her.

So I see the underpinnings, the nasty machinations, in my own family of origin and feel that same giggling, Illegitimate little thrill having to do with naming abuse for what it is AND WITH REALLY GETTING IT THAT NONE OF IT, NOT THE PROCESS AND NOT THE
PAIN AND NOT THE FIXING had anything to do with me.

And it has nothing to do with me, now.

It's just that same old role they always put me in. Shock me enough, make it bad enough, and I will rephrase it for you.


What that means for those of us raised as I was, or treated as Witz or MWM have been (and as, had I ever once been able to see clearly enough that I simply turned away from, Instead of trying to fix, my family of origin) Is less that we want those whose love should never have been a commodity, a condition, a threat or a promise...it isn't so much that we want them to love us as it is that those of us raised with conditional "love" have learned, over our lifetimes, to require an ethical standard of response from ourselves. We do not intentionally betray. Having experienced so much pain ourselves, we Intentionally set out to heal things, to believe In the better future, whatever the present looks like.

We do, intentionally, and with no malice, set our hearts on forgiveness.

But this morning?

I am thinking that "Just tell him to shut up" (Ha! :0) Illegitimate giggle, here!)
is exactly the right response.

We need to be pretty healthy to actually get there, though.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Just to put it out there. Will our difficult children feel like the blacksheeps that everyone blames? Will it not be hard to put things of there wrong doing behind them? I know there wrongs were likely very different from ours. Is this a vicious circle? What do you think?

difficult child daughter says that, while the consequences of her actions, especially where her kids are concerned, leave her feeling defensive, and while she wishes none of these bad things had happened. ..she sees purpose and generational healing, a new kind of honesty and clarity for our family that needed to happen.

She relishes being the black sheep, willingly acknowledges that she doesn't think right sometimes...and says that her life journey is one she would willingly take again.

And there was a time when she had all those things that make for a settled life and found them worthless.

And I will say that while my connection to family of origin was an intellectually mandated "I can fix this" that could have gone on my whole life...my feelings for my kids were and are sincere and real and deep enough that I am coming awake and aware.

And not to sound like a dork or anything...but who is to say what is really happening here, to all of us, on a spiritual level?

I remember back when I posted about having lost my faith. No matter what happened, something worse would happen next.

I never did reach any conclusions about that.

But there is a writer, Annie Lamont, who says there are really only three prayers.

Help

Thanks!

Wow.

That has stayed with me.

Maya Angelou. She stays, too.

And all of you, all of us, here on the site.

"And a blessing lives, where hatred might have grown."

Know who wrote that?

I did, a long time ago.

Cedar
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
to require an ethical standard of response from ourselves

Just tell him to shut up" (Ha! :0) Illegitimate giggle, here!)
is exactly the right response.

I believe those two responses are one.

It reminds me of something that happened to me years ago. I had a falling out with a friend. Her response to it was to be nasty. My response, natural to me at the time, was to be "nice" to see myself as in a way, better then her because I was not nasty. I was busy being righteous and judgmental of her response and hanging out in my superior stance, very familiar to me since that is how I usually responded. I had dinner with a therapist friend of mine whom I shared the whole story with. Rather then agree with me, she shocked me by saying, "why would you be "nice" when someone is treating you so badly? Why not respond in a way that is not only more appropriate but REAL?" It was a new concept to me. I had to ask her how to do that. The friend was writing me nasty letters and I was ignoring them. She was insisting I return a book I borrowed. She in fact had a box of books she had borrowed from me which in my 'niceness' I was going to just let go of. My therapist friend said, "tell her to bring the box of books to your home and you will leave the one book on the deck for her, and then respond to her with how you really feel." I remember actually thinking, I can do that? I was so cemented into my 'nice' persona, I didn't know how to be real.

Well, I did what she told me to do. I asked my former friend to bring me my box of books and gave her the one book I had. I wrote a note, not nasty, simply truthful. I can still recall the feeling I had when I went to the Post Office and mailed the letter to her. I felt GLEE. I felt something I had never felt before. I was elated. I felt really good. I was being appropriate. I was being real. I was responding in an authentic way to external stimulus rather then be inauthentically and automatically 'nice' which I had been conditioned in my family of origin to be. That actually turned out to be the beginning of a long journey of me being 'real' with my family, with my friends, with everyone. Many sacrifices of relationships along the way, lots of emoting, lots of endings............but I am now, at least I believe I am now, free of all of those inauthentic connections where I could not be myself, I was stuck in being who I thought I SHOULD be. My perceptions of what a Mother is, being the hardest to let go of.

Illegitimate little thrill having to do with naming abuse for what it is AND WITH REALLY GETTING IT THAT NONE OF IT, NOT THE PROCESS AND NOT THE
PAIN AND NOT THE FIXING had anything to do with me.

It isn't illegitimate, it is completely legitimate and absolutely real. That giggling and that thrill are what I called GLEE. It was a superb feeling.

And a blessing lives, where hatred might have grown."

That's lovely Cedar. Made me think that in our being real, in our saying the truth to the abusers, we free ourselves certainly, but we free the abuser as well, from the tyranny they believe to be their right to impose on others. In not taking it on, we leave it with the source, let them figure it out, it isn't about us, it's about them. It's a blessing to know the truth. As Gloria Steinem said, "the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."
 

2much2recover

Well-Known Member
Rather then agree with me, she shocked me by saying, "why would you be "nice" when someone is treating you so badly? Why not respond in a way that is not only more appropriate but REAL?" It was a new concept to me. I had to ask her how to do that. The friend was writing me nasty letters and I was ignoring them. She was insisting I return a book I borrowed. She in fact had a box of books she had borrowed from me which in my 'niceness' I was going to just let go of. My therapist friend said, "tell her to bring the box of books to your home and you will leave the one book on the deck for her, and then respond to her with how you really feel." I remember actually thinking, I can do that? I was so cemented into my 'nice' persona, I didn't know how to be real.
I really need to learn how to do this as I am way to passive in letting others get away with their behaviors by turning the other way, walking away (usually P-OFF) and ignoring things that really bother me. I do this because mostly - having dealt for so long with the anger and rage coming from my difficult child - I feel I am not up for fighting people over what, in comparison are minor issues. Still, I let people get by with so much BS because I refuse to engage them. I am trying to find a way to find the courage to claim my own emotions in a way that doesn't leave them feeling they can walk all over me - when I really think that I am just walking away.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I believe those two responses are one.


My perceptions of what a Mother is, being the hardest to let go of.


As Gloria Steinem said, "the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."


Thank you, Recovering.

As always, your comments send me deeper into the thing I am working through.

I think the thing we fight so hard against as adults is identifying with, and becoming, the abusers ourselves.

Scared of our own shadows, forever waiting for someone stronger or smarter to come along and set things right so we can lay claim to being that perfect mother, the martyred victim of ungrateful children....

What a crummy thing though, to enable an off balance relationship mimicking the feeling state of an abusive childhood...and casting your own child as the abuser.

That victim/martyr piece is hard to look at. Yet, that is the role I chose to justify my own position. Seeing how and why we interpret the things that routinely happen to us is the beginning.

It is a good, good place to be.

Thanks again, everyone.

Opening our eyes just doesn't get any easier.

But it is so worth it.

As to whether those two responses are one. I thought about that one alot.

You are right.

I had to dance the Dance of the Thousand Veils of Denial to get that.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
So the other piece of this is that, had I been honest with my son the second his conversations with us began to shift back into old patterns, the situation that now exists would never have happened.

There is comfort in those old enabling patterns, a slightly elevated sense of self, as I form responses that feel right, based on the feeling state of the relationship I want -- which ties in to Recovering's observation about the kind of mother I want to believe myself to be.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
So...looks like I am still beating myself up, here. That part of me judges accurately but very, very harshly.

In that sense, in the shaming that goes with the accuracy of the assessment (which is necessary to healing the vulnerability) I taste the feeling state of my abuser.

And I remember my spoken intention for this year to be kinder to myself.

Progress.

Real progress, in opening and healing and kindness to myself.

There is such deep sorrow, along with a wakening compassion for all I have been through, for my courage in looking it square in the eye, and really, my bravery in trusting myself enough to come through it at all.

Thanks, everyone.

Cedar
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
we fight so hard against as adults is identifying with, and becoming, the abusers ourselves.

Yes, I believe that to be true.

What helped me Cedar was to identify myself in the drama triangle, the victim/persecutor/rescuer relationship game. A therapist pointed this out to me years ago saying that in order to remove myself from the triangle, I had to see myself in all three roles. Of course, my own dance of denial was immense and although I could certainly see myself as the rescuer, my favored position, and sort of the victim, I could not, would not see myself as the persecutor. The abuser, the role I was trying so hard to avoid.

Well, I still recall this episode so clearly in my mind because I saw the therapist on a Friday and she pointed out a few things like control, blame, judgment and taking away the lessons others needed to learn with my 'superior' knowledge of what was best for them, as examples of persecution. I remember leaving her office feeling angry and righteous in my denial of her points. By Friday night something inside of me began collapsing, I started to let in a tiny little piece of what she had said..........it was awful, really. Little by little over that weekend, I began to let myself see the truth of my actions..........it was pretty hard to see Cedar, it felt as if my eyelids were being ripped off. Once I let in the realization that I had actually harmed others in my pursuit of their well being on my terms, I was devastated and cried and cried and cried. It was never my intent to harm.........and yet I could see that I had and it was a hugely bitter pill to swallow.

After I got through that though, a lot of my issues with being authentic, seeing the truth, being able to respond to others in a truthful and dynamic way, got a whole lot easier. Just being able to be real, to say what I really meant, to take the risk of not only disagreeing with another, but to say, with no charge or drama or need to be right or nice or anything, just what I needed and wanted, the simple truth of my own response. It didn't happen overnight, there were many opportunities for me to learn, to grow, to respond. But, I didn't often fall back into that triangle. Once you know you're in it, you can start to feel it and it makes it pretty hard not to let yourself know the truth.

Cedar, these realizations are hard. Plain and simple. It is wise and right to be very kind and gentle with yourself as you are maneuvering through this level of self awareness. You are removing many of your own well designed methods of survival from an early age and it doesn't feel very good to do that. With each realization comes a flood of 'stuff' before we gain our footing back. For those of us from dysfunctional backgrounds and abuse, in order to survive we constructed whole personas designed to keep us safe and dismantling them is difficult, takes courage and commitment and strength.......so be very kind to yourself my friend, it can be a treacherous landscape.

You and I didn't have a healthy mother role model so we made one up based on childhood fantasies about what the perfect mother would look like. We have to have compassion for that child within us who tried so hard to do the right thing. We have to forgive ourselves for how we worked that out, we didn't know any better. We have to forgive ourselves for all of our wrongdoings, real or imagined. And we have to let our kids go so they can learn how to be the adults they were meant to be, on their own, without us saving them from themselves, whatever that ends up looking like

Here are a couple of articles about that triangle.

https://holisticworld.co.uk/your_say.php?article_id=77

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fixing-families/201106/the-relationship-triangle
 

2much2recover

Well-Known Member
So...looks like I am still beating myself up, here. That part of me judges accurately but very, very harshly.
I think as parents of difficult children we all go through this. Between the gas-lighting, the lying, well just everything that goes with having a difficult child, and seeing no results is frustrating...............so as the parent we keep punishing ourselves as if it is we, that have caused all this................in fact professionals don't know why difficult children behave the way they do. Somehow we think we are going to find that magical key that fixes everything and when we don't we see the only option left as: it's my fault." And yet we see the cruel behavior and know in our hearts it is not our fault and the things we taught our children are not how they behave. It's really a grief, a loss. We have lost that great child we invested so much energy in to and we KNOW the loving child was/is in them, we just keep trying to kill off the demon that has wrestled and won their soul. That "good child" (if it ever even existed, even in moments) is illusory. They are gone and they are never coming back. It is maddening and heartbreaking at the same time that we love them so much, while mostly they don't have it in it to care anything about us, let alone love us.

God do I understand your point as I am forever doubting myself - emotionally riding on that crazy see-saw - am I wrong about her, is it me - what about the sociopath things she does?

The most basic thing it comes down too is: we don't deprive them of love and caring, they use our love and caring as a weapon against us!
 

recoveringenabler

Well-Known Member
Staff member
.looks like I am still beating myself up, here. That part of me judges accurately but very, very harshly.

Oh, I hope you stop that soon, it makes me sad. You don't deserve it. It occurs to me that you are abusing yourself now. You are punishing yourself for real and imagined wrong doings with your kids. Hey, cut it out!! Stop those thoughts! Stop that runaway train of persecuting yourself.

There is such deep sorrow, along with a wakening compassion for all I have been through, for my courage in looking it square in the eye, and really, my bravery in trusting myself enough to come through it at all.

You have been through so much Cedar. So much. And you have massive amounts of courage and bravery. I believe that the deep sorrow is the final post, when we move through the sorrow, when we grieve all the losses, when we acknowledge it, express it and allow it, it releases us into our own authenticity.............then like that story of the Velveteen Rabbit, we become real.

Sending you lots of love Cedar.........be very, very kind to yourself.
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
Just to put it out there. Will our difficult children feel like the blacksheeps that everyone blames? Will it not be hard to put things of there wrong doing behind them? I know there wrongs were likely very different from ours. Is this a vicious circle? What do you think?

If my kids - in particular M because L is too much of a Narcissist to care - end up feeling like the black-sheep that everyone blames it is because they're hanging out with my family. That's their role there. I abandoned my post and they chose to take it up. Yet another lesson I can't learn for them.
 
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