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Healing from Narcissistic Relationship: Very good article
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 675123" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I think the fog does not lift. We learn to navigate without stars.</p><p></p><p>That is trust.</p><p></p><p>Not knowing how we are getting exactly where we are going, but a sense of already being there, and motion.</p><p></p><p>We are not reaching for ourselves anymore. We are here.</p><p></p><p>This, for me, this has to do with that concept of internal, versus external, locus of control.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We began this process, began what would later become FOO Chronicles, to become stronger people; to become stronger, more centered mothers. (Or fathers, though we have yet to welcome our first male.)</p><p></p><p>It is working. In the process, we seem to be saving ourselves.</p><p></p><p>It's like a circle.</p><p></p><p>If we are ethical, if our intentions are good, then healing and wholeness incorporate with woundedness. Just like if we fall and skin our knees, we don't need to monitor or think about which cells are healing and whether we will ever grow skin again. Of course that is what will happen. </p><p></p><p>It makes sense that emotional woundings will heal the same way.</p><p></p><p>Beautifully.</p><p></p><p>We just have to set our intention (and this is where the moral questions come in, I think, and the ethical ones) and believe ~ which is why ethical choice matters. This is what all myths are about, really.</p><p></p><p>If we are not ethical, then healing and wholeness take longer. But we are meant to be whole; we are meant to experience ourselves as whole beings, capable of great joy in the simplest things. I think this is true. I am not finding so much joy in constructed or complex social interaction kinds of things lately.</p><p></p><p>Everything is too jangly.</p><p></p><p>But I am loving that Christmas music I have been playing.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I did not know that, Leafy. The red slippers represent menarche ~ the young girl becoming a woman. Our rite of passage. My choice of avatar has something to do with that. With self reclamation: "<em>This lady was all like 'Gimme yo shoes" and I was like "Witch, please."</em></p><p></p><p>In the beginning, one of the imageries I worked with had to do with which aspects of self had been "given" or allowed, by my mother and which were intrinsic, not only to me, but to being alive ~ to being a living human female, with all the power that implies.</p><p></p><p>And there is a great deal of power in being a human female ~ or a female of any species.</p><p></p><p>And a great deal of vulnerability.</p><p></p><p>I work so often with images of whore.</p><p></p><p>Not very pretty, is it.</p><p></p><p>True, though.</p><p></p><p>Little pieces of integrity sold off, sold away, disbelieved, at the behest of my abuser.</p><p></p><p>I was a child. I do not understand now, as an adult, how to understand the nature of the wounded places.</p><p></p><p>But we are doing fine. The answer is: Learn to hold that little girl that was you with honor. That is compassion.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>There is power too, for the abusive, unethical, narcissistic mother, in her daughter's coming to power. It changes the victim/oppressor dynamic the abusive parent will have set up. Narcissistic mothers will try to get those shoes with all their might. But they are aging, and the daughter is birthing children of her own.</p><p></p><p>So this avatar has to do with legitimacy of self and purpose, then, in the way that imagery of the whore bathing in the sun had such intense meaning for me, too.</p><p></p><p>The "lady" being discussed in my avatar is my mother. "Gimme yo shoes"</p><p></p><p>"Witch, please."</p><p></p><p>So, my avatar is about self-reclamation.</p><p></p><p>When I change it, it will be to the strong, well-muscled foot of the ballerina, on pointe.</p><p></p><p>Then, we will know I am healed; that I am whole and my own, again.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Why the back windshield, Leafy? </p><p></p><p>Who is driving the car?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That is good. It was happening all along, but you were not able to trust yourself enough to know. </p><p></p><p>Trim your nails, journal, respect yourself and everyone in your household. Practice humility. The defenses will have been built around pride and humility and judging and forgiving. Around loving and rejection and rejecting.</p><p></p><p>You can do this, Leafy.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>If you decide you wish to change, you will change. That is the risk we all take, Leafy. That is the discomfort, the reason we go into denial: We believe the abuser. If we can be tricked into believing they protect us from some horrible something that is true about ourselves, they will have created the opening through which they stride to claim what is rightfully ours for themselves. </p><p></p><p>For the stupidity and emptiness of grandiosity.</p><p></p><p>That is what I mean when I post that we need to see ourselves through our own eyes, and never through theirs, <em>on any level</em>, again. It turns out to be more complex than we knew, but we are doing well. We are coming through beautifully, and you will, too.</p><p></p><p>For us, the levels now have to do with resolving questions of integrity.</p><p></p><p>The first question, the one we return to again and again, on every level, is: "Who is the liar, here. Me, or my abuser?"</p><p></p><p>Because the abuser believed it to be you, and because we were only little girls (or little boys) when these terrible things happened to us, we believe the abuser was correct. These belief systems were sealed beneath layer after layer of mortal fear <em>or we would not find ourselves in the predicament of having deserted ourselves for most of our lives. </em>We are like soldiers, taken captive and brainwashed into believing lies.</p><p></p><p>Only the soldiers knew if they survived, they would be going home.</p><p></p><p>We were home.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>That is why we may need a Maya or the black lady from Matrix or Lisa Vanderpump to witness for us.</p><p></p><p>Or maybe, we need God to witness for us.</p><p></p><p><em>A blind and savaged Child recall</em></p><p><em>its first and bloodied tears</em></p><p><em>Metallic</em></p><p><em>copper colored fears</em></p><p></p><p>As we heal, we realize our complicity in believing the abuser was telling the truth about us. Once that happens, it becomes only a matter of courage. We have been very brave, all of our lives. The word we were given for our bravery by our abusers was: Coward. Or, Fraud. </p><p></p><p>Once we get that part though? And we realize it is only going to be scary and dangerous? </p><p></p><p>We saddle up and in we go. We have been afraid all of our lives...but of the wrong things. That is why nothing makes sense. Our abusers were wrong about every smallest thing. And certainly, they were wrong in how they met their responsibilities to their own children.</p><p></p><p>Given the choice of loving of victimization, they chose to victimize.</p><p></p><p>We only need to see that.</p><p></p><p>Then, we can begin self-rescuing, which involves the way we see and think. </p><p></p><p>If you haven't read Joseph Campbell and his writing on the Hero's Quest Leafy, this will be a good time for you to do that. Just do an internet search. Charles Williams is the writer I most respect in all the world. Read: Descent Into Hell, if you can. That is my favorite book, and I read a great deal. Read Patricia Evans on Verbally Abusive relationship. Eckhart Tolle has interesting things to say about how we interpret reality. Frank Herbert, Bill Ransom, Stephen King, Anne Rice. all of them, interesting takes on how to see. Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnack will bring the sincerity of gratitude.</p><p></p><p>And once that happens, we begin to heal with a bullet.</p><p></p><p>It isn't about them, New Leaf.</p><p></p><p>This is for you.</p><p></p><p>The key thing I think is to learn where we are seeing ourselves through their eyes. Call in witness; if you are wrong, change it. If there has been cruelty and torture, choose love.</p><p></p><p>Forgive.</p><p></p><p>All those are really simple words but impossible things to accomplish.</p><p></p><p>None of this is easy.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No one fits anywhere else, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>You need to be your own center.</p><p></p><p>That is what we are doing, here on FOO Chronicles. </p><p></p><p>Reclaiming the center of self. The abusers were wrong from the beginning. They never were right. We are there, waiting for ourselves. All we need to do is show up determined to love the child that we were.</p><p></p><p>That's it.</p><p></p><p>The hard part is confronting the feelings our abusers convinced us were true.</p><p></p><p>The liar is my Mother, Leafy. I love her. The question becomes do I love her more than I love me? So, my job is to love me.</p><p></p><p>That is all we are doing, here on FOO Chronicles.</p><p></p><p>Learning to cherish ourselves.</p><p></p><p>Easy cheesy.</p><p></p><p>In retrospect.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know any answers, Leafy. I only know that when I make accusations, I am on a wrong path. I am other directed when I do that. We need to be self directed before we can heal. It isn't about the sister. It is about loving the little girl that you were, whoever the abuser was.</p><p></p><p>It is not about accusing anyone else. It is not about blaming or finding a villain or a village to pillage. It is about loving you.</p><p></p><p>This will be harder than you think.</p><p></p><p>If you are able Leafy, and you set an intention of health and wholeness and of compassion <em>for yourself now and for the little girl you were then</em>, I think you will come through beautifully.</p><p></p><p>This is not about the sister, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>You are angry at yourself.</p><p></p><p>You are seeing yourself through the eyes of your abuser. This is retraumatizing you. You have been hurt too many times already. This has not helped you or anyone else.</p><p></p><p>Stop doing that, New Leaf. </p><p></p><p>Love that little girl that you were.</p><p></p><p>There is no other answer.</p><p></p><p>Nothing to do with the sister.</p><p></p><p>Everything to do with you, and with how you decided to see yourself.</p><p></p><p>Very hard to get there.</p><p></p><p>You can do it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You are asking the wrong questions, New Leaf.</p><p></p><p>"How do I go about saving (which has to do with seeing her with compassion instead of repulsion), holding strong for, believing in, that little girl who was me."</p><p></p><p>That is the question.</p><p></p><p>There is no other question.</p><p></p><p>Think of IZ. </p><p></p><p>How did he do that.</p><p></p><p>How did he feel comfortable and appreciative and entirely present as the woman cared for him, groomed and braided his hair.</p><p></p><p>How did he do that.</p><p></p><p>That is where we are going.</p><p></p><p>That place.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 675123, member: 17461"] I think the fog does not lift. We learn to navigate without stars. That is trust. Not knowing how we are getting exactly where we are going, but a sense of already being there, and motion. We are not reaching for ourselves anymore. We are here. This, for me, this has to do with that concept of internal, versus external, locus of control. We began this process, began what would later become FOO Chronicles, to become stronger people; to become stronger, more centered mothers. (Or fathers, though we have yet to welcome our first male.) It is working. In the process, we seem to be saving ourselves. It's like a circle. If we are ethical, if our intentions are good, then healing and wholeness incorporate with woundedness. Just like if we fall and skin our knees, we don't need to monitor or think about which cells are healing and whether we will ever grow skin again. Of course that is what will happen. It makes sense that emotional woundings will heal the same way. Beautifully. We just have to set our intention (and this is where the moral questions come in, I think, and the ethical ones) and believe ~ which is why ethical choice matters. This is what all myths are about, really. If we are not ethical, then healing and wholeness take longer. But we are meant to be whole; we are meant to experience ourselves as whole beings, capable of great joy in the simplest things. I think this is true. I am not finding so much joy in constructed or complex social interaction kinds of things lately. Everything is too jangly. But I am loving that Christmas music I have been playing. :O) I did not know that, Leafy. The red slippers represent menarche ~ the young girl becoming a woman. Our rite of passage. My choice of avatar has something to do with that. With self reclamation: "[I]This lady was all like 'Gimme yo shoes" and I was like "Witch, please."[/I] In the beginning, one of the imageries I worked with had to do with which aspects of self had been "given" or allowed, by my mother and which were intrinsic, not only to me, but to being alive ~ to being a living human female, with all the power that implies. And there is a great deal of power in being a human female ~ or a female of any species. And a great deal of vulnerability. I work so often with images of whore. Not very pretty, is it. True, though. Little pieces of integrity sold off, sold away, disbelieved, at the behest of my abuser. I was a child. I do not understand now, as an adult, how to understand the nature of the wounded places. But we are doing fine. The answer is: Learn to hold that little girl that was you with honor. That is compassion. *** There is power too, for the abusive, unethical, narcissistic mother, in her daughter's coming to power. It changes the victim/oppressor dynamic the abusive parent will have set up. Narcissistic mothers will try to get those shoes with all their might. But they are aging, and the daughter is birthing children of her own. So this avatar has to do with legitimacy of self and purpose, then, in the way that imagery of the whore bathing in the sun had such intense meaning for me, too. The "lady" being discussed in my avatar is my mother. "Gimme yo shoes" "Witch, please." So, my avatar is about self-reclamation. When I change it, it will be to the strong, well-muscled foot of the ballerina, on pointe. Then, we will know I am healed; that I am whole and my own, again. Why the back windshield, Leafy? Who is driving the car? That is good. It was happening all along, but you were not able to trust yourself enough to know. Trim your nails, journal, respect yourself and everyone in your household. Practice humility. The defenses will have been built around pride and humility and judging and forgiving. Around loving and rejection and rejecting. You can do this, Leafy. If you decide you wish to change, you will change. That is the risk we all take, Leafy. That is the discomfort, the reason we go into denial: We believe the abuser. If we can be tricked into believing they protect us from some horrible something that is true about ourselves, they will have created the opening through which they stride to claim what is rightfully ours for themselves. For the stupidity and emptiness of grandiosity. That is what I mean when I post that we need to see ourselves through our own eyes, and never through theirs, [I]on any level[/I], again. It turns out to be more complex than we knew, but we are doing well. We are coming through beautifully, and you will, too. For us, the levels now have to do with resolving questions of integrity. The first question, the one we return to again and again, on every level, is: "Who is the liar, here. Me, or my abuser?" Because the abuser believed it to be you, and because we were only little girls (or little boys) when these terrible things happened to us, we believe the abuser was correct. These belief systems were sealed beneath layer after layer of mortal fear [I]or we would not find ourselves in the predicament of having deserted ourselves for most of our lives. [/I]We are like soldiers, taken captive and brainwashed into believing lies. Only the soldiers knew if they survived, they would be going home. We were home. *** That is why we may need a Maya or the black lady from Matrix or Lisa Vanderpump to witness for us. Or maybe, we need God to witness for us. [I]A blind and savaged Child recall its first and bloodied tears Metallic copper colored fears[/I] As we heal, we realize our complicity in believing the abuser was telling the truth about us. Once that happens, it becomes only a matter of courage. We have been very brave, all of our lives. The word we were given for our bravery by our abusers was: Coward. Or, Fraud. Once we get that part though? And we realize it is only going to be scary and dangerous? We saddle up and in we go. We have been afraid all of our lives...but of the wrong things. That is why nothing makes sense. Our abusers were wrong about every smallest thing. And certainly, they were wrong in how they met their responsibilities to their own children. Given the choice of loving of victimization, they chose to victimize. We only need to see that. Then, we can begin self-rescuing, which involves the way we see and think. If you haven't read Joseph Campbell and his writing on the Hero's Quest Leafy, this will be a good time for you to do that. Just do an internet search. Charles Williams is the writer I most respect in all the world. Read: Descent Into Hell, if you can. That is my favorite book, and I read a great deal. Read Patricia Evans on Verbally Abusive relationship. Eckhart Tolle has interesting things to say about how we interpret reality. Frank Herbert, Bill Ransom, Stephen King, Anne Rice. all of them, interesting takes on how to see. Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnack will bring the sincerity of gratitude. And once that happens, we begin to heal with a bullet. It isn't about them, New Leaf. This is for you. The key thing I think is to learn where we are seeing ourselves through their eyes. Call in witness; if you are wrong, change it. If there has been cruelty and torture, choose love. Forgive. All those are really simple words but impossible things to accomplish. None of this is easy. No one fits anywhere else, Leafy. You need to be your own center. That is what we are doing, here on FOO Chronicles. Reclaiming the center of self. The abusers were wrong from the beginning. They never were right. We are there, waiting for ourselves. All we need to do is show up determined to love the child that we were. That's it. The hard part is confronting the feelings our abusers convinced us were true. The liar is my Mother, Leafy. I love her. The question becomes do I love her more than I love me? So, my job is to love me. That is all we are doing, here on FOO Chronicles. Learning to cherish ourselves. Easy cheesy. In retrospect. :O) I don't know any answers, Leafy. I only know that when I make accusations, I am on a wrong path. I am other directed when I do that. We need to be self directed before we can heal. It isn't about the sister. It is about loving the little girl that you were, whoever the abuser was. It is not about accusing anyone else. It is not about blaming or finding a villain or a village to pillage. It is about loving you. This will be harder than you think. If you are able Leafy, and you set an intention of health and wholeness and of compassion [I]for yourself now and for the little girl you were then[/I], I think you will come through beautifully. This is not about the sister, Leafy. You are angry at yourself. You are seeing yourself through the eyes of your abuser. This is retraumatizing you. You have been hurt too many times already. This has not helped you or anyone else. Stop doing that, New Leaf. Love that little girl that you were. There is no other answer. Nothing to do with the sister. Everything to do with you, and with how you decided to see yourself. Very hard to get there. You can do it. You are asking the wrong questions, New Leaf. "How do I go about saving (which has to do with seeing her with compassion instead of repulsion), holding strong for, believing in, that little girl who was me." That is the question. There is no other question. Think of IZ. How did he do that. How did he feel comfortable and appreciative and entirely present as the woman cared for him, groomed and braided his hair. How did he do that. That is where we are going. That place. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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