After Narcissistic Abuse Link

[InsaneCdn]

What I meant to post on in response to your comment IC is this question: How does hating the sisters have to do with control issues? Is it that they just wish us gone altogether?

We are a wild-card in their lives. If they cannot control us, then they are not "in control" and therefore their world is falling apart. Which makes sense to me. Therefore, they either have to control, or shun - shut out, so we can't generate damage. Or else we have to shun, to control damage.

When FOO gets messy, there are no good answers. It's taken me 50 years to figure that out.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

One more thing.

I was wondering why I titled this thread "Narcissistic" abuse. It is because I always knew I had been physically abused. That is where we started, in fact. But the real hurt done an abused child has to do with that concept named narcissism. Or, some would name it reclamation of personal power. Or, as I have myself, internal versus external locus of control.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

I added the chart for us after your question about a continuum. That was a good question.

Thank you Cedar the chart is awesome.

The reason I asked about degrees of narcissism is because I see a lot of these traits in sis, but she also has a goodness about her, a lovableness.

I don't think I am covering things up or denying the bullying that I suffered as a child. It was awful.

The worst part of it is that it made me question myself, have self doubts, I think I was probably on high alert, most of the time. When I let my guard down and trusted my sibs, thats when the rug would be pulled again.

I don't know why the focus was on me, to stop reacting as I did (crying). Or I was constantly told to "just ignore it." I think part of the answer is that only recently there are articles about sibling bullying and the affects on the victim. Well, duhhhhhh, of course the targeted child is affected, there is NO place to run to when one is repeatedly mistreated by their sibling.

I will be thinking of this.........the clock is ticking and I have to get ready for work.

One thing that I have thought of often, is the times we were raised in. How much that plays into all of this. I think the 50's and 60's were strange times....

Have you ever watched the show "Madmen" ? Hubs watched it a lot. I think he was stuck in that fantasy of when men really had the upper hand....lol. Try again hubs......times have really changed. Thank the good Lord for that.

Watching "Madmen" a bit and seeing all of the props and costumes really took me down memory lane.

I don't know about you guys, but it seems that everything just had to be perfect. Perfectly coiffed wives,
husbands in suits and ties,
perfectly kept homes
and yards.

Women got dressed up to go everywhere.........

Could this emphasis on perfectionism and having to be happy all of the time fueled the fire, for what we experienced growing up?

It is food for thought for me today, especially in light of the fact that one of the things that disturbed my dad intensely in his last days, was that he was not perfect.

How much of what our parents portrayed in their daily lives was role, and not real?

How much work and effort that must have been, to keep to societies standards of that day?

Am I off on another tangent?

Okay, got to go.

Have a great day

leafy

 

[Copabanana]

Or my sister, clack and clatter, whose version doesn't matter.

Funny Cedar.

What does destroying us have to do with controlling their own lives when we are all adults

They seem to have segmented off guilt, shame and anxiety, and need a way to manage it. They do so by extreme control and by projecting these noxious emotions to other people, among them, us.

We become the receptacles of their shame, guilt and anxiety, both in the way they define us to themselves and to others, but also functionally--we our their garbage cans, or in some cases chess pieces--they need to feel as if they control the board.

if they know they have lied to create certain interpretations of us, then how is it possible for them to take pleasure in having their interpretations of us validated by people who don't know us? Husbands. Extended family. Anyone.

I believe the explanation is in their personality structure.

Remember my sister writing to the attorney of my mother's trust to say: I was constantly in my mother's home with her, caring for her before I moved across country.

And the reality was she shunned my mother. Not always but in the last 3 years of her life, perhaps 80 to 90 percent of that time.

I think they are broken up in terms of their relationships with themselves, and only secondarily with other people. Their personalities are cracked up into pieces, not integrated, they can see and know the lies, but the responsibility for them, the moral responsible--primarily the guilt, shame, and the anxiety that they will be discovered, they do not feel. Because after all, those noxious feelings they project into us, and surrogates for us they have designated in their lives. (Like the black lady my sister targeted in her work--who later sued her and the place she worked.) They can see the machinations they do, but they see them as a source of pride and control. And most importantly, their power.

Because think about two things: First, we were there first. We were always there in their worlds. They always see their own power as something that they seized from us. By discrediting us. Tattling, telling lies, constructing another version of reality, in relation to us.

Their identities are constructed in part from what they copied about us, and another part copied about how they defined themselves in relation to us, and did not copy, but disparaged, tried to beat out, or force out or away.

do what they do to disparage us and destroy our reputations even to ourselves (remember the lady driver you guys, and the eye rolling) because who we are really makes what they have constructed of us a pretty obvious lie.

Except these are people who are damaged. The primary audience they play to is themselves.

That is why it does not matter what the truth is to them. They are truly emperors with no clothes. The peanut gallery of their lives is themselves.

it must be that the question of who the liar is here is the primary question.

See, at some point the investment was in protecting them, because in this way we protected ourselves. We were protected and not cast out.

We are truly torn. It requires seeing that our best welfare is now trusting ourselves and our people now are those near is now. This is why this is so devastating with our children. And why we keep trying, even, at our own peril. And we (I) keep feeling happy over and over again when I believe I can save my son (myself) by doing something, intervening to create the reality for him that I want so badly.

Our own welfare and view of ourselves and the world is tied up with their welfare. As it was with the sisters. Theirs with ours, not at all.

"But I think it might be true that I wished, always, to get away from them."

Of course you did. But then, at the beginning, you knew you would die.

We are a wild-card in their lives. If they cannot control us, then they are not "in control"

Yes. And it all has to do with guilt, shame and anxiety and who bears it.

With our kids this is the same battle.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

I was wondering why I titled this thread "Narcissistic" abuse. It is because I always knew I had been physically abused

I think it is because we are clear, we have always been clear that having been hit or otherwise physically humiliated and controlled was wrong. And we were mad about it.

As children we were mad, too. We knew. We knew when we were hurt it was wrong, and if our siblings were hurt, we knew too, that it was a wrong and bad thing. (Except our sisters may have been confused about this, if it was us that was beat. I do not remember my sister ever having been even spanked, let alone beat.)

So our physical abuse at their hands was kind of ho hum. Because it was clear cut.

But our having been molded into little servants, and molding ourselves into mainly compliant slaves, was insidious. These were the only people we knew how to be. Even if there was rebellion, we rebelled against the authority imposed by them, not by the abuse of authority in our relationships with ourselves.

I believe it has to do with the maps we were talking about, the fact that we can now objectify all of this. What a good thing. We can depict a schema or map of our mother and of our sister...and in the margins we see ourselves. We can show up in the negative space.

And just like Hillary Clinton's erased emails on the home brew server, we can recover ourselves.

The category or concept of narcissism is really only a description of patterns, as is a map. It is not necessarily a thing: It is a diagram. An illustrative diagram. By drawing the outlines of our mothers' and our sisters' psyches and behaviors we can therefore see our own, in what is left, what is revealed, that had been concealed.

First by the actions of the mother, than those of the sister, and of ourselves too. How we molded and constrained ourselves to respond to highly damaging environments and highly damaging acts towards us, in order to survive.

Now it is time to thrive, by redrawing our internal maps, so as to not be so constricted, still defined by choices of others, so long, long ago.

I for one am having a hard time because my son is back in my town, and I am trying to draw a different map in response to him. So far I have addressed the physical part of things: where to live, etc. Kind of like the physical abuse. It is all the other stuff is the hard part.

I am realizing how deathly afraid of him and his power over me, I am. Of my son.

Almost, I feel like going back to bed.

I recognize that my relationship with my son may have been drawn in much of its character, from that which I had with my parents and sister. After all that was the only prototype I had from which to relate.

I am very, very afraid.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Still I see it in each of us, that perverse desire to forfeit ourselves to save the sister, the illusion of the sister, the illusion of real family, the illusion of love. The siren song.

I have written often about my Dolly, a boxer dog.

Dolly I met when she was about 10 months old. At the animal shelter. I wanted another boxer. Our last one, Jack, had died in 1999. It was a long time without.

Dolly had been beaten and treated horribly in ways we could not guess. Somehow she had escaped. She was 32 pounds (now over 50), emaciated, covered with mange. She had been hit by a car, apparently, and her back hip, deformed. Most of all she was afraid. She could not bark. She did not know how to kiss. (I taught her the former, Rex, the German Shepherd of the family of M's sister, taught her to kiss.) Over the years we bumped into more and more things that frightened her, even as she grew more and more confident.

Like enclosures. For the life of her, she would not go inside of a crate. Apparently she had been confined.

So what did we do? We took off the door. Put inside her bed. We shut the door of the room so she was alone.

Just herself, her bed now inside the door-less crate, and concrete floors. (Romy was already in his locked crate.) We let her solve it. She did. She slept on her bed inside the crate, door off, and has done so ever since.

M now wants to acclimate her to the crate with the door closed because he thinks there will come a time when we need to confine her. He is right.

So what does all this have to do with this thread?

Dolly only has to overcome her experience in life, to now thrive. Master her past traumas. And she has. She is completely a self-confident dog, now. There is not one behavior that harkens back to the old Dolly, her old life. Not one that I can think of that she has not overcome.

She was afraid, but she never did turn against herself. No neurotic behaviors or self-destructive ones, because her enemy was always external to her. Never inside of herself. She feared real dangers, real threats, but not from herself, not at her own paws (hands.)

This is entirely different from us. The worst threats for us, are those that we learned to do to ourselves. They may even seem like the best things about us.

Docility, hope, loving natures, nurturing, acceptance, compliance, imagination, humor, fantasy. Even a certain femininity, that looks like vulnerability, slight confusion, self-deprecation, deference, the oh so attractive humor of making fun of ourselves, of putting ourselves down. Oh how attractive that has been. YUCK.

We may have been prototypical females, so as to not threaten everybody. And completely defanged and confined ourselves and our power.

Oh how we may muzzle our angry voices. Strident and oh so unattractive. Out. Damn SPOT.

I think we arrived into adulthood eunuchs. Completely castrated females. By ourselves.

Really, I do not like Hillary Clinton. I believe it is because she represents the me, that dangerous me, that I cut off. As does my sister. Except that is far more confusing and conflicted. Because I hate her and she hates me. Or is it ourselves we hate?

My baby Dolly, luckily does not have this problem. She loves herself and she loves her life. She loves her power and she loves her energy.

Who we love and do not love and the whys and how comes are oh so much more complicated. And just as sad.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But our having been molded into little servants, and molding ourselves into mainly compliant slaves, was insidious. These were the only people we knew how to be. Even if there was rebellion, we rebelled against the authority imposed by them, not by the abuse of authority in our relationships with ourselves.

This is stellar, Copa.

Thank you.

"...not by the abuse of authority in our relationships with ourselves."

The category or concept of narcissism is really only a description of patterns, as is a map. It is not necessarily a thing: It is a diagram. An illustrative diagram. By drawing the outlines of our mothers' and our sisters' psyches and behaviors we can therefore see our own, in what is left, what is revealed, that had been concealed.

.

Yes. I am researching self-sabotage. There are many names for it. It has to do with protecting the self by destroying the self first; a way of taking control ~ and even, rebellion ~ by meeting the Mother's directive out of fear of the abandonment the mother represents. In this way, it could be that we learned to save ourselves from a more public humiliation. That was surely one of the dynamics at work in that birthday party when I was eight.

I am stuck in italics.

Roar.

First by the actions of the mother, than those of the sister, and of ourselves too. How we molded and constrained ourselves to respond to highly damaging environments and highly damaging acts towards us, in order to survive.

Now it is time to thrive, by redrawing our internal maps, so as to not be so constricted, still defined by choices of others, so long, long ago.

Yes.

Yoga is of benefit in working out the physical places where we hold memory of injury in the form of energy blocks.

I think through yoga we may loosen and free that trapped energy even without having to name and do battle with it ~ which is what we do when engaged in a literal-thought battle with our mother's valances.

With our memories of their power.

And our fear or self disgust or shame.

And once we see it, then we access our anger for ourselves, no longer ashamed of its cleansing energies.

Which will be an extraordinary thing, given what we have accomplished in our lives while laboring beneath the burdens our mothers and sisters have been piling on, stone by stone by stone, hoping to see us break.

I am in a little bit of a snit today, with everything I have been reading about what was accomplished in my upbringing, and how it was done, and why. The win, as it turns out, is not big deal. Like everything ~ like every single thing, always turns out to be, when we are messing around with people we should never have had anything to do with.

Abusers abuse because they are abusers.

It such a paltry little true thing that in trying to ferret out the complexities, we miss it. There is no mystery here. There is no value to the sacrifice of our positive self regard and there is no magical cure for the strangely ill internalized mother, directing our self sabotage to this day.

This is my lightbulb moment for today: Those bad feelings of sadness or powerlessness or shame may be payment we are making ~ may be sacrifice to the internalized mother within.

That is what I am looking at. And I think I am on to something big.

I feel like Ed Sullivan.

:O)

Too bad I am stuck in italics.

Drat.

***

Self-abnegation simply means they will not see us at all. Let go of it. Sit with the feelings and go on with your day. Those things they taught us were wrong.

Self-sabotage is how we protected ourselves from our mothers. If we hurt ourselves first we can control the amount of damage and deflect the energy of the blast from the living heart of us.

That is over now. Time to reclaim ourselves.

Think about it. Where does this intensity of feeling, this never-ending worry, worry, worry come from. It may be that we were pretty fully recovered when we were young and strong and creating our own lives. Whether the issue is an illness or an addiction, when our children fell into troubled times, we went back to the bottom lines of our childhoods: Self sacrifice, self sabotage, self-abnegation.

We broke, and we broke on purpose.

Stop it.

There is a better way.

If we have determined that we were raised by a narcissist shading into malignancy, it is as Copa suggests: We find ourselves in the margins of the template that describes them. We will have internalized the positives to their negatives (or vice versa).

I am monitoring my feeling states about everything from waking up to tasting coffee to going to work to everything, ferreting out my mother and kicking my sister in the ***. It is one thing to be subservient to a freaked up mother and father and another thing altogether to enable a sister. Especially in honor of some creepy pact designed to keep me hooked in.

Yuck.

Cedar

A great post, Copa. I have been able to go deeper into my own business here through it.

:O)

Sorry about the italics.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I recognize that my relationship with my son may have been drawn in much of its character, from that which I had with my parents and sister. After all that was the only prototype I had from which to relate.

I am very, very afraid.

Now you know. Is it a simple matter for us to choose a different feeling state, once we understand the underpinnings of the feeling states demanded, in response to every crisis of our lives, by the internalized abuser?

That is the damage inflicted today, Copa.

Those feelings.

Is it possible to choose another feeling.

Is it possible to examine the feeling state for validity or value.

Is it possible to see that the intensity of contempt in these feeling states is a measure of our strength.

That is how strong the condemnation dealt out be the abusive parent had to be, to stop us, Copa. To break us. And they did it and we remember it and we do it to ourselves first because we are protecting our children from the internal mother, who is so angry at what the kids (or the child, in your case) have done and are doing.

What would happen if you journaled about returning to bed.

Whose voice, Copa.

And why.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

Whoa, trying to keep up with your posts Copa and Cedar is challenging. I have read and reread and see key points and want to quote almost....well everything.

I will start with Cedars response..

Who we believe ourselves to be matters more than anything, I think this is true. Leafy: Who are you without referencing your sister?

Who am I without referencing my sister?
That's a good question. I am not sure, which came first, the chicken or the egg.

I mean, my childhood was spent fending off this constant onslaught of teasing. So, did I develop hyper sensitivity as a result of that, or was I wired this way?
I am not sure. I will think about this on my walk this morning.

What I can tell you, is that I am learning to accept my sensitivity as a blessing more than a curse. The book I am reading "The Highly Sensitive Person" (not people) is pretty fascinating. There is a "test" with 27 personality traits that I have checked off, about 25 pertain to me. So, am I highly sensitive, not just because the book says I am, I will have to say honestly, yes. Am I this way intrinsically, or because of what I endured growing up with a domineering sister? (Sorry, referencing her again, but I think it is a valid question.)
Highly sensitive. I need alone time. I need activity and movement. I am an artist, who hasn't tapped the depth of my art,(working on that one, that has to do with delving into deep feelings, trusting myself.....) I am a people person, I love the differences in people and am intrigued by what makes people tick. I am also a people pleaser. (Not good) UGH. I am a hard worker. I have a pollyannish outlook that has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion with community boards. Which means I have stayed involved with toxic people/situations way longer than I should have. I am a fixer, which probably explains the over involvement when I should have run for the hills.
I am an extrovert with introverted tendencies. (Does that even make sense?) I can stand up and speak before a crowd, but then wonder if I said, did, dressed the right way.......When I make mistakes, I can ruminate over them until the cows come home and I don't have any cows, so that essentially means forever.
I can be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), where things have to be just so, but at this point in time, my house is a mess, which bothers me to no end, but I have had to let it go a bit in order to do everything else I have to do. I have a tendency to become over focused on one thing, zeroing in on it, to the detriment of other stuff I have to do. I am a procrastinator. If I do not stay on top of myself, I can be stuck, a sort of paralysis. I feel deep and long. I have periods of intense activity and hyper modes, then I have moments of down time (am I manic depressive to a degree? Maybe. Yes, there are definitely extreme highs and lows....)
I love children. I am a dreamer. There is more, but I think that will suffice, for now......Oh, wait, a big one, I have a tendency, which I am trying to overcome, to think people are making fun of me. For instance, if I walk into a crowded room, and people are laughing, I feel like the joke is on me. I definitely think this is from my childhood, so maybe that is referencing my sis to some degree? Okay that is it, I have self esteem problems. So, I also have a tendency to be a bit of a ham. Which doesn't make sense at first, but I think that gives me a feeling of a measure of control?
Stammered Leafy, blushing and embarrassed for revealing too much, and writing of myself.....it's okay right?
I am answering the question.......(stomach churns).

"Oh, that's just my mom. Oh, that's just my sister." Had I not known already who they were Leafy with crystalline clarity, I would not have taken such care to hide it from myself.

Yes, I see this. I don't know Cedar, I think it has to do with what I was taught "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Then there is also this morbid fear and the reality that what I am writing could potentially be viewed by my FOO. THAT frightens me to no end. Why? IS that a part of what was drilled into me? See, I am thankful for what my parents provided for me. Truly I am. Mom, I think was just doing the best she could. For Gods sake, she used to iron my dad's boxer shorts.....dad, busy working. Child of the 50's,we were left to our own devices, a lot. No electronics, it was always "go play outside."
I was the younger, probably annoying child that had to tag along with my bro and sis. I was literally the third wheel. Bro and sis were pretty tight, besties, I was in the way. I can only imagine what sis must have told mom. "I didn't do anything to her, it is her....." She was not only mean she was F-ing mean.

I believed in that Family Dinner I always used to post about because the reality of my family of origin was, as I am finally, finally beginning to understand, so ugly and hurtful a reality.
I have a little sense of that when you describe yourself, Leafy.

Mom has the concept of the family dinner. She wants us to be close, when truthfully, we were not raised that way.....Am I compromising myself by wanting to give that to her before she meets her maker? I do not know Cedar, I have to examine this a bit more. Do I become the liar, then? I know by now, that my FOO will not EVER validate my feelings of my childhood. That is up to ME.
I see, in my fall trip and interactions with sis, that she expects me to fit into this role, that I am outgrowing. I am no longer willing to be who she wants me to be.
But then, I am, sort of aren't I? If I know that I cannot honestly address things, I have to hold back my feelings, in order to "get along" I am playing the same role. (Talking to myself here) If I have to change who I basically am, in order to keep the peace, what does that say?

Then, I am thinking that people have different relationships with other people, where they do not reveal their whole selves, for instance, acquaintances, bosses.....Also, cultures have an entire different language for casual and business.....Am I even making sense here?

I am excusing, I am making excuses. This is my sibling I am talking about, and I can't really be myself. I am acquiescing. If she cannot accept me for who I am, as I am, what the heck does that say?

More that I need to think on.

The fear of exposure we feel in telling these truths is only fearsome until we come clear and step away from the victim mentality we were hurt into when we were little girls or little boys.

Yes, true. Also, I do not want to hurt anyone. Truthfully.

And that kind of hurt? That kind of shame and embarrassment poured all over those beautiful little kids who were us?

That is the wrongness, Leafy.

Not what we need to do to recover from it.

I see your point Cedar, thank you. It is true that I have much work to do.

Docility, hope, loving natures, nurturing, acceptance, compliance, imagination, humor, fantasy. Even a certain femininity, that looks like vulnerability, slight confusion, self-deprecation, deference, the oh so attractive humor of making fun of ourselves, of putting ourselves down. Oh how attractive that has been. YUCK.

This is the nail on the head, Copa. I loved this post. You have done wonders with Dolly. I hope she is well Copa.

Whether the issue is an illness or an addiction, when our children fell into troubled times, we went back to the bottom lines of our childhoods: Self sacrifice, self sabotage, self-abnegation.

This is sooo true. You know what? I wondered this morning of that. It wasn't just the horror of what the kids were doing, the how's and why's of it. The destructive nature and whatever our imaginations could dwell on.....it was also the fact, at least for my two, that this addiction had turned them into......narcissists. Wait, maybe that is wrong, the drug is the narcissistic THING, and they were enslaved to it and thought only of the high, while destroying everything around them including themselves. The selfishness associated with addiction.......the trampling on others, blaming, conniving, the manipulation......yes these are all indicators of narcissism. It was familiar, Copa and Cedar. It wasn't just the sheer abhorrence at what was happening to the kids, and my reaction, the intense, deep, raw feelings awoke the childhood memories, their personality changes and willingness to mistreat and walk all over me felt familiar.
The antithesis of being awakened by the sleeping beauty kiss of my children.....oh I am stuck now, on what that could be named.
It was a slap that sent me reeling back to yesteryear and the old feelings came flooding in.

See? Leafy said to herself, there is so much work to do. I have to figure out how I am going to face these issues.

I have not really spoken with my sibs. Lets say we were not really raised to be close. It is true. Bro is busy with work, sis with her horse thing and lil sis with her job. It is not so much shunning, as it is.......ignoring? Hmmmmmm. Nice family. Whatever. We will all be thrown together again when mom's illness rears its ugly head.
She has been okay so far.
She calls me every weekend and we chat.
It is what it is.

Guys, I have also thought on this.......why isn't there a forum here for self help? Would that be the next step, or a parallel step alongside FOO work? I guess it comes up for me, because I can review my past and family dynamics, but the only person I can change is me.....so I have been working on a thread about guess what........high sensitivity. I guess I will take another leap and just post it in FOO, after all, in a sense, we are our own FOO.
I was just thinking it would be good to have a self help forum on its own....what do you think?

Thank you again for your work and sharing, awesome thought provoking processing ladies.

Mahalo nui Cedar, for your questions, Insane for your comments and Copa for your posts. It is true what you say Cedar, you are all too fascinating.
I am interested too, in your story Pigless, if you are following along, as well as your step sis, very involved auntie with your children......I think the ability to delve back and review our childhoods as well as our FOO relationships is essential to being able to blossom into our true selves.

Off for my walk............and many thoughts. Have a wonderful Saturday gang.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[InsaneCdn]

Am I this way intrinsically, or because of what I endured growing up with a domineering sister?

I think it requires the combination. If you had been different intrinsically, then you would have had a different reaction to your domineering sister - the dynamics would not have been the same. BUT. If you had not had your sister, your intrinsic tendencies might not be so well developed.

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, if you would be so kind, would you give us references for the one or two readings in the past few days, those most elucidating and helpful to you to understand the residual effects in yourself, of having been parented by a narcissist?

That is what I am looking at. And I think I am on to something big.

I feel like Ed Sullivan.

Funny Cedar.

Self-sabotage is how we protected ourselves from our mothers. If we hurt ourselves first we can control the amount of damage and deflect the energy of the blast from the living heart of us.

I want to understand you here. We feel we control the blast, by detonating a secondary and greater blast within our own hearts so as to believe we have control in a situation in which we are entirely helpless, with nowhere to go, and nobody to go to. By self-destruction we maintain the fantasy that we have family. The illusion that we have protection. The illusion that we have personal power. A power that we have only to use to destroy parts of ourselves.

So there is the lifelong tendency towards self-sabotage. Our second or third maybe defense against an intractable problem is to self-detonate. Blowing up an arm, a leg, a heart, a brain--so as to one, believe we are not absolutely road kill. But at the same time, we engage in child sacrifice.

Think about it. When certain tribal societies faced an intractable problem, what did they do. The sacrificed beautiful children at the altar. To placate the Gods. We do it to ourselves. We are placating the gods by our own self-sacrifice. Please G-d, see, I have destroyed myself. Here I offer here to you myself. Please G-d. Let me stay in this home where I have at least the illusion of love.

Whether the issue is an illness or an addiction, when our children fell into troubled times, we went back to the bottom lines of our childhoods: Self sacrifice, self sabotage, self-abnegation.

We broke, and we broke on purpose.

Yes.

And they did it and we remember it and we do it to ourselves first because we are protecting our children from the internal mother

Yes.

Now this I need to better understand. Are you saying, Cedar, that in the face crisis to our children, we commence to detonate blasts inside our own psyches, to:

1. Disarm ourselves, the bad internal mother introject, that we attempted to destroy as children. Because remember, we had massive quantities of anger towards our mothers that could not be acted upon. Which when we turned inwards against ourselves, detonated those internal mother-introjects. So is the default when we see a crisis to our children, that cannot be solved, to belief that it was caused the bad mother within us? Who is us.

Thus we always fear, that we are the bad mothers, because we internalized the badness in our own mothers, turning it against ourselves, both because we could say it was our fault, as did they. It was our badness, always, that was cited as the cause of the mother's rage and response to us. Which is to say, everything was always our fault. And still is.

2. Or that as our families disintegrate, as our beloveds crash and burn, as we turn into wild women, crazy with grief, is the self-blast a way to seek control, to regain control, as is the eating disordered or self-cutting adolescent seeks to feel some control through the similar self-destructive mechanism?

So to we destroy/punish the bad mother/self so that she can do no more harm? Do we seek to control and understand the utterly horrible situation in which we found ourselves as children, by means of self-sabotage, and re-establish order by pointing to cause and consequence within ourselves, through child-sacrifice, just as did and still may do tribal societies, whether symbolically or not?

What would happen if you journaled about returning to bed.

Whose voice, Copa.

And why.

Cedar, at Costco on Thursday they had moleskin journals on special. I bought the package. I have never before journaled. Posting here is the closest I have come. I tried before many years ago but was unable to do it.

Cedar, is there a book that you recommend that pointed you to journaling and helped you in getting started? Is it the Julia Cameron books?

Thank you.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

I think it requires the combination. If you had been different intrinsically, then you would have had a different reaction to your domineering sister - the dynamics would not have been the same. BUT. If you had not had your sister, your intrinsic tendencies might not be so well developed.

Just one more, then walking.......I think you are absolutely correct Insane. Thank you. This answer, reminds me of SWOTS post, Embrace the Mat. Thinking thusly, though our childhoods were difficult, they did also mold and shape who we are today.
I suppose it is a matter of keeping the positive result, and eliminating the negative.
Thank you Insane.
Now I am really, really out the door. It is a cool cloudy drizzly day, but for heavens sake, I will not melt. One, two, three, I am off....

determined but late.....
leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have been at work and will work again tomorrow, and cannot respond as I wish. Yes, Copa. Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way at Work) was incredibly helpful to me. That is where I learned the concept of Morning Pages. In trying to get those three pages, we get to the core. This is not elegant or precise. The idea is to gut out the three pages. On the other issue: If we have been raised by sadists, our feeling state that tells us we are thinking correctly will be a masochistic feeling state. This feeling state will tell us that if we are punishing ourselves, we are correct. This thinking is wrong. That is what I am looking at recently. It has been explosively eye opening.

They were wrong.

We cannot win if we do not believe in ourselves. We were brought up to believe never, ever, to risk channeling our own energies into ourselves. And just think: We have still accomplished education, good, good parenting, kindness, beautiful lives. But we have been taught, from a time before we knew words, that it was wrong to believe in ourselves. That is what I am looking at now. Guilt, as a go to response. Self abnegation, as a go to response. The assumption, not only that the other guy is smarter or better prepared, but that to question the authority figure is a death defying action. These are the mindsets hurt into us, if we have been raised by maliciously narcissistic parents.

Once we can see that you guys? We are free. Monitor emotional responses to the simplest things. Getting up in the morning. What is our self talk? How would it compare to the self talk of someone raised in a loving supportive environment. The difference will be the difference between Heaven and Hell.

That is where we need to be, to address and heal what was done to us.

Right there.

Bree Brown's "Sit with the feelings. Do nothing. Note them and do nothing." works here. (Not a direct quote.) You will be amazed and appalled at the internal messages we have been hurt into.

Yes, Leafy. Finding a way to be healthy would be valuable. But if we have been raised to assume destruction of self is appropriate, we will self-sabotage. If we can identify those places where we have been raised to sabotage ourselves, we can end it. Think of my mother: "Just don't think, Cedar." "Don't you dare."

How could we ever have succeeded with those internal messages.

Yet, we did. To an incredible degree, we did. We loved. We committed. These things should have been impossible for us but we did those things.

We are doing the impossible.

We can do this too.

But D H is wanting me downstairs for dinner. I work tomorrow, and will be back Monday.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If you look at it this way: Our parents' lack of effective use of guilt, shame and anxiety about their parenting...which was blocked by their narcissism is what led to their unwillingness, or inability to check themselves when they parented poorly.

Because they projected all guilt and shame into us. And that is what has impaired our own sisters' self-development, too. The same thing. They too project their own guilt and shame, into us. Or try to. They are victims, of themselves. Because they are frozen in time.

That is why they try so hard to get us back under control. Because they need us defined as the guilty, shameful and mistaken one, in order to control their own anxiety. It is very, very sad for the sisters.

Yes.

Their paths may be more frightening than our own. In the sense that they are driven by something we don't understand. And somehow, no matter what they do, we won't stay destroyed. Or even acknowledge that we've been destroyed. So whatever it is that drives them can never be put to rest. How many times have we asked: What is the win for them ~ what did they gain through the hurtfulness and disrespect that is betrayal of the sibling bond.

That is a very big betrayal.

I had never seen it that way. That I have been deeply betrayed by my own people.

Well. No wonder I am running around wondering how all this ugliness happened.

***

Grandiosity ~ the circle that makes grandiosity, which is comprised of shame and guilt and ascension generated through relieving both tormenting emotions ~ is in there, too. Having been brought up in it, those were questions I confronted, though I did not know then what it was I'd confronted, early on. I have posted about those incidents somewhere. The need to compare themselves to us (because we have had the misfortune to have been connected to them in any way ~ if it hadn't been us, it would have been someone else) and come out on top seems to be what fuels the sisters. Not love.

How sad for us, that this is so.

We have each posted some version of that one, too. "But...I thought you loved me."

I have read this is often how victims of narcissistic relationship feel as they come to the end of it. They (we) realize they never did love us, after all.

It's unbelievable.

***

Though we are not functioning from the same mindset and do not interpret reality through the same set of perceptions, it could be that to the sisters, we function as a kind of marker ~ as depersonalized things to be superceeded and destroyed. It could be that they have been forever comparing themselves to us. Because we are there, because we lived where they lived, we came to represent for them all they feel they are not. And all we are doing is trying to live a life when our upbringings were so woefully inadequate.

But how fortunate for all of us to have finally come to understand the meaning behind that term: woefully inadequate.

Once we do, we can provide those things for ourselves. Mostly, that would come down to internal, versus external, locus of control. Which, I am coming to realize, involves sitting with the feelings. Just accepting the feelings and watching how much of our lives we have spent fearing those we believed loved us.

I am thinking this morning of Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run With the Wolves. Remember the story about the old woman who gathered the bones and sang them back to fully formed, shiny-coated life.

We are Singing the Bones.

***

And somehow, we came out of that mess that was our childhood feeling we were supposed to protect the other sibs. Instead of demanding from them (or from anyone else in our lives either, really) decency and responsible, ethical behaviors. Pseudo mom cannot instruct the sibs in moral behavior. Pseudo mom is like the housekeeper in that way.

Again, how sad, for us.

This may have been the line crossed that justifies scapegoating. Because what the real mother is doing is undeniably wrong and she knows it. I always believed she did not know. That it was a matter of hot temper or it never would have happened. That my parent did the best she knew. But that isn't true.

I see that, now.

She did know.

That is why I can hold her responsible for what she did, and for what she does, and for who she is.

For my sister, the same.

I cannot seem to remember how hurt and puzzled we were, at the beginning of this decision to heal. These people have done what they have done. How is it we questioned ourselves.

Huh.

In any case, everybody knows it, eventually. That what the mother is doing (or the sister, we are including her now in my story of healing) is wrong. Disrespectful, hurtful, nasty people. Now, why would they do those things.

What is the win.

And they know that we know.

And maybe that is why they are forever forming alliances against us. To give weight to the lie.

And once again, the sisters are tin echoes.

***

Again: We are after our own healing, here. This is not about calling names or relating sad stories. (Though I have said bad things about my sister, twice. And loved doing it.) I do feel like she is a tin echo. And whatever that other bad thing was that I said, about her being clack and clatter. I do see her that way.

Bad Cedar.

So Copa you were right. I protected my sister as much from myself as I ever protected her from my mother. But here is the thing, you guys. It's all coming unraveled, now.

Like always, once we unravel it, we find ~ how did we describe it? The banality of evil.

I mean, think about it. If I had really loved my sister (or my mom) I would have demanded more of them. Which would have required the courage to stand upright while they destroy me or not. Which they did anyway, though I was very nice to them about everything except the exclusion of my brother and his grands.

Which was pretty much a core issue for them.

So...maybe there is no way to have relationship with people like my mom and my sister. And in this light, the shunning takes on a whole other meaning: protection, for them. Not necessarily from me, but from risking that the lies they insist we all live as though they were valid things might be shown up as the twisted things they are.

The banality of evil.

***

This is about learning what really happened to us and setting ourselves on stronger ground. I know it isn't right to post bad things about my sister.

But I am doing it anyway.

Here again, just as we learned to do with our abusive mothers, contrasting the relationships we do have with our sibs with the relationships we should have had will teach us what we need to know. And will show us either where we need to heal or where we need to forgive. Or, need to ask for forgiveness. I know we need to forgive ourselves for believing what we have believed about them, and about ourselves. This is an important part of our healing, and is a signpost for us when we reach it. We cannot really hold ourselves with compassion until are able to stop believing we are who they told us we were. That is the essence of "fraud".

That we are not who they told us we were and we know it but accept their truths for our realities anyway. Probably because they were so certain. They lie and willfully believe their own lies that they know are lies.

Isn't that something.

***

That is where the loss is most keenly felt. In comparing what we have lived with to the template of healthy relationship.

Still, I shouldn't have called my sister clack and clatter.

Or tin echo either, I suppose.

But seeing from this perspective, I should never have called her sister, either.

***

Once they have achieved whatever it was about us that left them feeling less than, then they slide us to the opposite pole of the circle of awe / patronization. There is no longer a feeling of abject awe (shame, externalized as a spectator sport), but instead, one of contemptuous patronization (grandiosity).

How that connects with their having destroyed us ~ our reputations, our achievements, I don't know. But that does seem to be what happens. I read this about jealousy, once: For someone who is healthy, jealousy tells them where they are going next ~ tells them what they want for themselves, too. For people who are not healthy, jealousy becomes like a twisted, sick thing at the heart of them, and the person is hated.

Maybe, it is something like that.

And they hate us for having shamed them when really, all we were doing was trying to figure out how to live our lives, given the deficits in the crazy families we grew up in.

This is the genesis of the feeling of Whore.

We are role to them, and not real.

They are where we learned we were not real. That is the ultimate thing I was feeling shopping with my mother in WalMart that day. The feeling of spending time with someone who is looking for the place you sell yourself out and can be made a private fool of.

Whore.

How strange.

So, that means (maybe) that this is where my mother found a place of vulnerability in me when I was a young girl. Adolescence is a time when we all are so uncertain about self image and self respect and about self, altogether. That must have been an irresistible mix, for a differently wired mother.

***

We may as well not even be there. They do not see a sister. They do not see a daughter. They see someone, not only to superceed, as though life were a contest, but someone to see destroyed by their ascension. So they can stop being tormented by our existences. Some time back, I posted a thread in which I discussed coming into possession of my life as beautiful, as something precious to me.

That fits in here.

Those feelings are a phase, a signpost of our healing.

Until we pass through them, we are tormented by our existences too because we were taught that was appropriate.

***

They cannot help the way their brains are wired. No one would do what they do if they could do something else. Anyway, once they see themselves as having achieved what we already have, we cease to be a threat to them. We become nothing at all.

How strange.

When we come again onto their radar, the whole thing will begin again because that is who they are. We would not be on their radar, otherwise. That is why they attack our reputations even with extended family. It has nothing in the world to do with us. They want us not only gone, but utterly discredited.

I read that this is typical of narcissistic relationship, too. They will destroy everything they can access.

Once we are destroyed, discredited, fired from our jobs and detested by our families (or at least shunned) then we become the nothing they require us to be. We become someone they are better than. (And for heaven's sake we thought they loved us. All these years. Roar. Ho hum. Whatever.) It's like we have been in a contest all of our lives, or in a game we would never consent to play so they went ahead and played without us. Which made it way easier for them to cheat.

So they win by default and we lose. And we get it that we've lost...something. But we don't exactly get what it is.

My sister even said something like that to me once. She said she knew what she was doing, but that she couldn't help it.

Huh.

***

Which is all well and good, until they hurt our children. And here is another little twist about that piece: If we were real to them, they would love us. And they would never hurt our children.

What they wanted, all along, was to feel superior. It never was about creating relationship or healing.

Even when it comes to our kids. Because here is a piece I just thought of, about the way my sister is forever parading her children or now, her grand: My children were there at those dinners too, of course. My grand was at my mother's that day we had to hear mys sister's grand recite and then, name the President's from cards and then, watch my sister whoop and run and play with her to the point that she tossed the grand onto the husband, who was actually having a conversation with us. (I was visiting with Baklava Grand, who was like, nineteen then.)

***

So it is true that what we lost, we never had to begin with. We had something worse. It's like in the movie Armaggedon. When the actor asks what kind of environment to expect on the asteroid. And says: "Okay. Worst environment imaginable."

That's where we grew up.

Imagine that, you guys.

***

Like Cinderella or Hansel and Gretal or Snow White. Like the pretty red-tailed Fox, tricked by the Scorpion into carrying her across the River. And once she is safely across, the Scorpion stings the Fox. "But why?" the dying Fox gasps.

"You knew what I was when you agreed to carry me across the River." the Scorpion hissed, stinging the Fox again.

That is what the mothers and the sisters say, too: "I told you who I was." But, superimposing that Hallmark card Family Dinner imagery over everything we know, we allow vulnerability.

And because we are dying anyway, they sting us, again. Just for the hell of it.

***

The mothers and, for some of us, the sisters too, are differently wired people. The question really is why we believed their words when their actions were so obviously not matching up with their words.

And we are back to the question: Who is the Liar, here.

That is an important question, as it turns out.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

My quote machine is not working. I am frustrated that I cannot quote. I will see if I can log off and if it is restored.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I mean, my childhood was spent fending off this constant onslaught of teasing. So, did I develop hyper sensitivity as a result of that, or was I wired this way?

Do you know whose voice it is telling you that the way you are is wrong, Leafy?

Do you know why you believe them?

What does the term "hypersensitive" mean, for you? To be sensitive or hypersensitive, or even, not very sensitive at all is not a bad thing. However we are, we are. A musician is hypersensitive to sound, an artist to color and form and light. Those who are blind develop hypersensitivity to touch and scent and tone and humidity and all kinds of things, to compensate for the loss of vision. Dancers develop hypersensitivity to their own bodies, to their own muscles, and to the emotional tones in sound.

Think of Barishnikov, of the strength and magic in him when he is in motion.

Yet you seem to believe your own sensitivity is something to wish were different. It's as though you were a pink flower taught to condemn herself because she isn't blue.

What if you were to welcome and cherish and celebrate the color of flower you are. That would be internal locus of control. Feeling badly for the way we intrinsically are has to do with an external locus of control. It is a slow process to regain internal locus of control, but it begins (I think it begins) with realizing there are places in us, ways we think automatically, that are leftover thought patterns. Even if they are good thought patterns, it may be time to rethink them. If they are bad thought patterns having to do with self-condemnation, it is our responsibility to rethink them.

I am thinking your belief that you are too sensitive is like that, Leafy.

You simply are as you are. For each of us, it is an honor to be just as we are. If we have dishonored ourselves or been dishonored (and we all have ~ we've been mistaken, we've had a bad day, we've been a real jerk ~ whatever it is) then we need to remind ourselves, like Maya Angelou did, too, that when we know better, we do better.

Toxic guilt, like toxic shame, freezes us into rigidity. We thaw little by little by little, until we are fully alive in our own present moment.

And everything looks so different, and so clear. Even the ugly things are just what they are.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Their paths may be more frightening than our own. In the sense that they are driven by something we don't understand. And somehow, no matter what they do, we won't stay destroyed.

What may make their paths more difficult is how little control they have. Their control seems to reside in controlling things outside of themselves over which by definition they have only the illusion of control.

If their control depends upon defining us, *i.e. destroying us, our reputations or somehow controlling our stories, it is futile. They must increase in grandiosity or in sociopathy in order to have any chance of a win, in their own heads or even their lives. That is why narcissists become worse as they age, in their psychopathology.

They fall farther and farther behind. Because any legitimate means of succeeding becomes more difficult, for a variety of reasons both internal and external. (Think Richard Nixon here.)

Actually, if my sister were not so mean, I would feel sorry for her.

I have trouble feeling sorry for an almost elderly woman looking up and down at a male's body, in a laughable attempt to make him sweat, feel inferior and accept her dominance and the superiority of her position relative to him and I.

M says it all directed at me, not him. I am horrified that a person who is even remotely related to me in life, would conduct herself in this way.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The interesting thing is that initially, we felt as they intended for us to feel about the things they intentionally did, those dirty rats.

We never even saw it, Copa. We never saw the patterns, the triggers for contempt or love or shame.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

What does the term "hypersensitive" mean, for you? To be sensitive or hypersensitive, or even, not very sensitive at all is not a bad thing. However we are, we are. A musician is hypersensitive to sound, an artist to color and form and light. Those who are blind develop hypersensitivity to touch and scent and tone and humidity and all kinds of things, to compensate for the loss of vision. Dancers develop hypersensitivity to their own bodies, to their own muscles, and to the emotional tones in sound.

I am learning this Cedar, understanding that it is a part of me. For whatever reason, it was not acceptable when I grew up to have intense feelings. I think it was looked upon as a weakness. I think my parents had no clue about the dynamic between sis and I. She was domineering and mean, I reacted as only I could. I cried.
Even non-hyper sensitives would have cried. I was bullied.
My home was not safe for me.
It was wrong in the worst way Cedar, there was no champion for me. I was a little girl, how was I to stand up to what was happening?
It became a "norm".
Now, I must be my own champion. I think that is what is happening here for me in reviewing my FOO. There is no way for me to go back and change things, but I can learn from it. There will be no validation from my FOO. They are blind to this. It has been set in stone for them, that I was the "weak" one, that what happened to me was a "normal" part of childhood. Siblings fight. It is true, they do, but for some reason, my hyper sensitivity just fueled the bullying. That is what I am looking at now. Not that my trait is weak, or bad. Understanding that the more I cried and reacted, the harder my sis pushed.
They didn't see the bullying, only the crying.
I think my parents only saw my reaction. That I was a crier. To them, I needed to be "tough". They wanted me to learn to stand up for myself and fight back.
It was impossible Cedar, not even mom could stand up to my sis.
She still cannot.

I don't for one second, anymore think that I invited this upon me.
I am going for my walk
leafy

Okay back now, that was good, the air brisk for the islands, 59. Stars shining and heart pumping, mind thinking.

I have to thank all of you guys for walking me through this.

So, I have decided that I have looked at my family dynamics and understand enough of it so far, to turn my sites inwards, because after all, the only thing I have control of is me. Knowing that, I have a lot of work to do. I have to build myself back up because I am facing still this ongoing battle with my two, as well as dealing with my moms illness.

On my walk I was thinking about the "button". There is a button inside of me that is pressed by stress, or events out of my control. Pressing this button sends me back through time, to the feeling states when I was a child. I see that. I feel it.

Hitting this rawness, this place of no where to turn, no where to hide, is hard. It invokes a sort of paralysis. I hit it through the holidays. I could barely move, get out of bed, care for myself. I felt physically ill. I numbed myself to be able to have a sense of joy, but it didn't work, it wasn't real. I played a role for my sons sake. All the while I was grieving for my grands, my two, and I was punishing myself. Eating too many sweets, not enough movement. Looking for anything that could soothe me. I was desperate. Bereft.

While walking, I was thinking of this and thinking that when I hit this point, that is when I am my own worst enemy.
Why?
Why do we punish ourselves so? Is it because although we have come to realize that what happened to that little girl was wrong, the suffering is somehow ingrained in us and......familiar? A negative comfort zone? It is what we have learned and know?
I have to find other ways to come through this. Stop self imploding, self deprecation. Fix it Leafy, fix it. That is my quest Cedar. The holy grail.
Figure out a way to champion that sad little girl with no where to turn.

What if you were to welcome and cherish and celebrate the color of flower you are. That would be internal locus of control.

Yes, Cedar, thank you. I am reading "The Highly Sensitive Person" and discovering many things. I posted a thread on exploring sensitivity.
That is my quest while looking back and understanding my family dynamics. I feel that if I learn how to embrace that part of me that was looked upon as a fault, I can grow stronger.

Stop going into the swirly whirly.

Time to get ready for work.......

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Dolly had been beaten and treated horribly in ways we could not guess. Somehow she had escaped. She was 32 pounds (now over 50), emaciated, covered with mange. She had been hit by a car, apparently, and her back hip, deformed. Most of all she was afraid. She could not bark. She did not know how to kiss. (I taught her the former, Rex, the German Shepherd of the family of M's sister, taught her to kiss.) Over the years we bumped into more and more things that frightened her, even as she grew more and more confident.

Like us, Copa.

"Over the years, we bumped into more and more things that frightened her, even as she grew more confident."

Do you think Copa, that had you and M not come in to Dolly's life, she would have grown vicious as the years passed, and more fearful, instead of more loving?

Somehow, this connects with the sisters. Something about that inability in them (maybe this is true) to acknowledge the fearsome things, growing more confident ~ confident enough to address other, more fearsome, things. We cannot grow more legitimately confident unless we acknowledge the things that shame or frighten us ~ the places where we were not able to be brave ~ asking for and receiving confirmation that things are, or are not, as we believed them to be.

Just think for a minute how hard it was for me to explore those issues here, with you and Serenity and IC as my witnesses.

It was really hard to do that.

But the other choice is to justify. To justify why we are as we are, seeking validation, always seeking validation, that the way we are is the right way. Like my sister, eventually giving up and screeching that she walks with the Lord. That He may heal our relationship but that she is done.

That is such a lonely choice.

To know there is something not right, but to justify it, rather than to address it.

Why else require allies. Up to and including, apparently, supernatural ones who know everything. And Who, interestingly enough, spends alot of His time walking around with my sister.

***

Why else disparage your choice of companion Copa, but to eradicate M's value in the sister's own eyes. She did not want you strong, Copa. So she lied to herself about whether you were.

And she lost.

So.

That explains the intensity of feeling the sisters seem to display.

I feel badly for myself, and for us.

The sisters? Need nothing from us. They feel totally vindicated.

As they were raised to believe too, Copa.

If we are bad, they are perfect. If we should one day become such rebels that they cannot handle us on their own and Mother is not immediately available...there is always a Higher Power.

Who probably feels alot like Mother.

Just as we feel it is right to self destruct to protect them. Here is a thought. The sisters may have been groomed to be the grandiosity addicted abuser's primary Source of Supply. Think of the triangle that makes, Copa.

That is where we learned how to navigate our courses through the challenges of life.

And that could explain why, with our children in such trouble, we self destruct. Only, as of course would be the case, that didn't work.

***

This ties in too with the choice your sister made to disparage you and everything to do with your life by treating M with the disdain of a Princess. The pattern seems to be that the Sister places herself in the ranks of the dismissive nobility. Happily replete; sated, for the moment.

How she must have raged Copa, as her constructs fell.

None of which matters to us, really. The sisters will choose as they do. The question for us is why we believe them.

What in the world.

The answer there is all wrapped up in believing that to be treated this way is love. That is all we know of love, having been raised as we were. (Like in the kd lang version of Halleluiah.) But now we understand that love strengthens and blasts through the dark things. As you posted to us about The Sleeping Beauty Kiss, love is this fiery thing, this power.

All Dolly needed really, was someone to trust; someone who believed she was good, and to teach her she could cherish herself and learn to relish curiosity and uncertainty and facing into the Wind.

Like us.

So what does all this have to do with this thread?

Everything.

Dolly only has to overcome her experience in life, to now thrive. Master her past traumas. And she has. She is completely a self-confident dog, now. There is not one behavior that harkens back to the old Dolly, her old life. Not one that I can think of that she has not overcome.

She was afraid, but she never did turn against herself. No neurotic behaviors or self-destructive ones, because her enemy was always external to her. Never inside of herself. She feared real dangers, real threats, but not from herself, not at her own paws (hands.)

But who would Dolly have become Copa, if there were no Copa?

Would she have become fearful, forgetting the initiating incidents altogether, the fear spreading into viciousness and Dolly, the real Dolly, the Dolly who now exists, forever unrecoverable?

Cesar the Dog Whisperer says there are no unrecoverable dogs.

So...human mothers. Dolly was well-mothered, Copa. All the puppies, fighting for nourishment and warmth and falling asleep in a huddle, exhausted and happy and with full bellies. I have used that analogy in describing D H family, with his loving, demanding, generous, hot-tempered mother.

That isn't how it was, for us.

The way we think about ourselves, the way we know which feeling state to respond from when we are facing challenge ~ that is where we need to observe and question ourselves, now. It seems never to have been a matter or courage or bravery or commitment, after all. It has always been a matter of self-sacrifice, for us. It feels right to us to bargain with our health or our happiness; with our integrity, even. It feels right to betray ourselves because that is what is required, to believe in them. So we name ourselves all kinds of bad names, and believe our so strange FOO were lovely things Copa, when really...they were toxic.

"Just don't think, Cedar."

"Don't you dare."

But it isn't about them now, Copa. It is about relearning appropriate feeling states ~ not just to win in the challenging times, but to cherish everything about our good being alive, all the time. Even when we are sick or hurt or things are going so badly for us. We were brought up to lose, Copa. To give, to become brittle and starved, and to break. But once we got away from them? We made our good lives anyway. We need a stronger template than the one we survived growing up, to help our own children, now.

Breaking isn't going to help them. Self sacrifice isn't going to help our children. A strong mother, someone who can model and teach strength and strength of character. That is what will help our children now, Copa.

So, we are doing it.

I think we are doing well.

Of course.

Cedar